There is nothing quite like Christmas - this really is the one, this is the holiday above all others. We may each have an individual holiday that means as much or more to us, but this is the one, that is number one, for most of us, this is the holiday that means the most to the most number of people who mean the most to us.

This really is the one that delights and disappoints as no other holiday can, that delights or devastates as no other day can do.

We bring so much to it: hopes and dreams and expectations ... and ... bad memories, a list of annual disappointments,so often we aren't ready or it's not right, or something happens, or it just doesn't work out the way we thought it would and we are hurt or disappointed, or worse.

We may recall the horror and shame of really awful Christmases or the glorious glow of a Christmas so wonderful that all others, all subsequent ones, can never recapture that happiness.

We not only remember so many Christmas that we have experienced throughout our lives, we actually experience so many Christmases all at the same time each and every year: so many different Christmases that go on simultaneously around us: the Christmas of shopping and the Christmas of public civil religion; the Christmas of feasting and decoration, the Christmas of family and dearest friends, the one of tinsel and trash, the one of genuine caring, and the of fake, forced, fuzzy feeling - all those many christmases of which we are all so aware. And each can and probably will disappoint.

But there is a Christmas whose luster cannot fade into distant happy memories of unrepeatable innocence; a Christmas that will never bring wrenching humiliation -though it may bring a suitably corrective modesty into our lives.

Despite all the christmases, good, bad, and indifferent, that crowd around us, none can crowd out the first one, the lasting one, the genuine one.

Nothing can overshadow or crowd out this: God has come among us. The fulfillment of our longing and hoping and wishing and dreaming is no longer far off, hazily imagined, vaguely, or fearfully envisioned or imagined - God himself has come among us, to be like us, to be with us, to be near us, to hear us and cheer us and love us and comfort us and encourage us to go on.

We are called this night to acknowledge before the stable and before our souls that none of what we do is or can be the controlling, decisive element of our Christian lives. It is the encounter with the child, the coming of the Baby Jesus Christ into our lives, those lives which may be well-ordered, or a little off-key, or even very damaged. We did nothing to bring this child into the world, we need do nothing to bring him into our hearts, beyond simply accepting the gift offered. He himself will fashion the way to come to us, abide in us, be with us.

Despite all our fussing and fretting, depsite all the wonderful work of preparation we do, or the silly, obsessive preparation we also do, none of it affects the coming of the child, the gift that is given, the salvation that is offered.

The birth of the Savior is not the long awaited outcome of our search for God, our longing for meaning, our pursuit of the answer to the purpose of life.

It was simply given, and as little child. A tiny baby is the answer, lying in a manger.

The Incarnation is not the result of our seeking after God, it is not our discovery of the meaning of life through a devout processes in our lives, it is not the even the natural consequence of lives of a life of faith and devotion.

It is the sudden appearance in our lives of the glory of the Lord, his grand and gracious gift, that suddenly appears and shines round bout us, the glory of our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ, wrapped in swaddling clothes, and lying in a manger.

Without our having done anything to bring it forth, to help it along.

None of this happens because of good fortune, or co-incidence, or accident. It happens through the power of God in Christ, the glory of our God come among us, suddenly, powerfully, effectively.

Christmas, the real one, the one we hear about and sing about and tresure this night is not some vague and occasional comfort, a tender touching story. It is the difference between life and death. It is the difference between there being a point and purpose to our existence, and no meaning in life at all.

We proclaim in all this Christmas business that God was here, a child was born and grew and lived and died as one of us, and as God. And now God has himself been through it all, like as one, as one of us.

He knows what it is like to weep for his young friend who died, and to laugh and love and go to parties, and to be criticized, spit on and mocked and ridiculed, abandoned and betrayed, rejected by most people, marginalized and dismissed by the great guardians of faith and morals, the giants of much culture and even more religion. He is no stranger to any of it. He knows, has flelt, remembers, what is means to be comforted, loved and held. and jostled and left alone. Noticed and ignored. He's been through it all from the day of his birth.

Now this is a God worth having. Born for us, this night, in the City of David. A Savior, who is Christ the Lord.