The Most Important Thing About Christmas

Is the Christmas Eve sermon the most important or the least important sermon of the year?

This is the question of pastoral hubris that I ask myself every year. Is my Christmas Eve sermon the most important one that I’ll preach over the year? There will be more people there on Christmas Eve than there will be on most other days at the church. This is a check in the “most important” column. Christmas Eve is one of the big two holidays and thus should bear some weight in my sense of duty as a theological interlocutor. Another check in the “most important” column. Most people think that it’s probably one of the only two days of the year that I work, so I suppose I should bring my a-game to the day.

Hubris. Plain and simple. Hubris.

Is my Christmas Eve sermon the most important sermon of the year?

This question is based on the premise that I have any real bearing on the sense of holiness that exists on Christmas Eve. What makes me think that anything I have to say could make Christmas any more or less special?

Yet every year, I sit and think about how to make this Christmas the most special, weighty, meaningful, moving sermon of all time. I tell myself that if I don’t reinvent the world’s experience of Christmas every dang year, then I’m not doing my job whatsoever.

But do you know what makes Christmas Eve worship really special?

The people that you’re sitting next to in the pews.

The songs that you have sung for decades that live inside you and transport you to every sacred moment of your childhood.

The story that you have heard every year that transports you to a birth in a stable and the song of angels filling the air.

Is my Christmas Eve sermon the most important sermon of the year? Not by a longshot. In fact, it might be my least important sermon of the year. Can you ever remember a Christmas Eve sermon that made you think “I completely understand Christmas in a new and revolutionary way”?

I’m not saying this as a way of excusing myself from phoning in my sermon next week. What I’m saying, though, is that I understand that Christmas is so much more than anything that I can say or do. I understand that Christmas is bigger than you or I. I am sure that I could have a sermon that would make Christmas worse, but there’s not much I can do to make it any better than it already is.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Peace,

Rev. Jeff Fox-Kline

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If these reflections sound familiar, we’d love to invite you to experience that shared sense of meaning and togetherness for yourself at Twelve Corners Presbyterian Church, located at 1800 S. Winton Road, Rochester, NY 14618, in the town of Brighton, NY. Come join us for worship, take a seat among neighbors, sing the songs that live deep inside us, and hear the story that continues to shape our lives. If you have any questions or would simply like to know more, feel free to call our church office or reach out by email through our website; we’re glad to connect with you.