The Story of God - Christmas Eve, 2025

The Very Rev. Fr. Stephen Crawford

What’s your favorite Christmas carol? This is one of my favorite questions to ask people this time of year. As a priest I have this great privilege where people open up to me about their lives, how things are going, what parts of their lives have been hard recently, hopes—disappointments. What an honor! I love these conversations. But also … I really like talking about Christmas carols.

And I’m sometimes surprised by people’s favorite carols. There is probably something personal about it, something about this particular song that grabs you. Often times it’s the music. Many of our favorite Christmas hymns sound like a royal fanfare announcing the arrival of our King—Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King! Others are written, also very appropriately, to sound like lullabies: Silent night, holy night.

Personally, I love the words of so many Christmas hymns. A lot of times the words can follow a similar pattern as the music. Some get at the meaning of Christmas—who Jesus is and what he came to do. Who is this baby boy, and what on earth is he doing here? This is none other than the God of the Universe, the One who made all things—God from God, Light from Light eternal, lo! He abhors not the virgin’s womb, only begotten Son of the Father; O come, let us adore him!

But then there is something else that carols can do. They tell the story. Sometimes they tell it in a fairly simple way, but sometimes they tell it in a way that is striking. My favorite example of this is the second verse from “Angels we have heard on high.” Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why these songs of happy cheer? What great brightness did you see? What glad tidings did you hear?

We sing this hymn and suddenly I’m in Bethlehem at night, as a band of shepherds comes skipping and dancing down the street. These men are singing and laughing as they pass by, and all we can wonder is what on earth could have gotten into them. It tells the story in a way that draws us in.

If we put these observations together, we might notice something pretty remarkable, something that really gets at the meaning of Christmas. One, it is a great story. In fact, this is the opening chapter of the Greatest Story Ever Told. And two, the main character of this Great Story is not the shepherds or the angels or the wise men. The main character isn’t Joseph or even Mary. The main character is God.

The Bible teaches us that God doesn’t change. He is who he is. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever. The Lord is eternal. He’s beyond time. In some sense he’s outside of time, so that every moment that has ever been or ever will be is somehow present to the Lord all at once. These are precious truths. These are reasonable truths. People have thought this way about God for a long, long time. And it’s so important, one, because it is not unreasonable to trust in this God and, two, because you can trust in this God. The fact that God doesn’t change means that once you realize how much he loves you, you can be confident that he will never change his mind about you. If he makes a promise, there is no doubt that he we will keep it. These are eternal truths that you can stake your life on, and we should hold fast to them.

However, we celebrate tonight and all through this Christmas season that God has stepped into our world. Eternity has entered into time. Eternal truths about God are indispensable. We can’t do without them. But they don’t make for much of a story.

But now it has happened that God has entered the story. God has entered into the story of our world, with all its twists and turns. The Divine Playwright has left the wings and stepped out onto the stage of our lives, right in the middle of the production. The Ancient of Days becomes the Son of Man. The Eternal Ground of all Being turns out to be the Shepherd who goes looking for the one that is lost. The Unchanging Absolute comes to us as the Prince whose heart is filled with love and who stops at nothing to win his Bride's heart--who stops at nothing to win your heart.

I do love hearing about people’s lives. I’ve seen some beautiful moments. I’ve also seen some incredibly painful moments. Things have very often not gone how people hoped. Life can have such disappointments and such heartaches. There are a lot of people who are not very happy with how the story of their life has gone. Thankful, yes! Usually. And yet …

I mentioned that it is reasonable to trust in God. However, this fact about our world is one of the biggest reasons people find for not trusting in God. Things have not always gone the way they were supposed to go. Many of us have learned to temper our expectations in order to avoid being let down. I’m not sure we should do that. But I think in our more honest moments, we recognize that somehow this wasn’t supposed to be the story of my life.

This is why Jesus came. This is why Eternity stooped down into the time of our world. If life has been good to you, thanks be to God! If life has been hard, hold onto hope. For most of us, it’s been some mix of the two. But however the story of your life has gone, God has entered the narrative. When everything seemed lost, the Hero came swooping in to save the day. The rescue mission is underway. The great romance has begun. And because of this--because of what he did, because of what he is doing--we can trust that all shall be well. Because the plot hinges on him, your story is going to end “happily ever after.” Amen.