Christmas Eve - Love Knows Your Name

Love knows your name.

The Seasons of Advent and Christmas are seasons of stories. From holiday blockbusters to tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago…to the latest Hallmark romantic comedy about a high-powered educational consultant who falls in love with a small town minister at Christmas…wait, that sounds a lot like my life.

We tell stories. And we know the stories. I thought, for a fun, we’d do a quick Christmas story trivia. Can you name the following Christmas movie characters?

What is the name of the child whose parent’s, not once, but twice, leave him, “Home Alone?”

What is the name of the Herdman child who plays Mary in the Best Christmas Pageant Ever?

What is the name of angel who saves George Bailey after he plunges into the river in Bedford Falls?

What is the name of the Who down in Whoville who wonders why one wicked Grinch would walk away with a Whoville Christmas tree?

Why do we know these names? Because we love these stories. And so many other stories.

You have a story. I have a story. Our lives tell stories and our lives unfold like stories.

Think for a moment: What is the story your life is telling? What is the story you believe about yourself? What do you wish was different about your story? Could your story change?

Obviously, tonight is about a story, the Great Story. Tonight, we celebrate that Love was born and continues to be born into the Grand Story of God’s love for all creation. Love became flesh. We call this incarnation. God dwelling among humanity. This is the great story of Jesus.

The reason we tell this particular story again and again is that it is The story that all our stories belong to.

We tell this story to remind ourselves that we belong to the story of God’s indwelling presence here, among us. God is love. Our purest, most essential understandings of God are simply to say that God is love. And God, who is love, is telling this story, writing each part, orchestrating the narratives of each of us, wrapping and weaving them together. Love dwells among us.

Now, a good storyteller can step back from their work and see the broad narrative arc. They see how things move from beginning to end. We, with some reflection, can do this as well — we can examine our lives and see the kind of story that we are a part of. You know what I mean? Perhaps you’ve been a part of a love story, where you met your person and found happiness together. Or perhaps you are living a story of hurt, where you’ve been met along your narrative with pain, abuse, or neglect. Maybe you feel like you had a good story, but it’s pretty much all written now, so that’s that.

And another thing the master storyteller knows is their characters. Probably even more than the arc. They know the characters because they have sprung up out of the world the writer is creating. Each character’s emotions and history and motivations — these are all wrapped up in what the author knows about the character.

Obviously, both narrative arcs and emotional states can be less than predictable. The road isn’t always straight. Characters change. Author’s direction shifts.

But if we keep with this analogy, what we need to remember on a night like tonight is that we, too, are a part of a story. A good story.

This story is about the healing of all creation, through the loving, living, indwelling God in Jesus Christ. Born in a stable, a traveling spiritual teacher, killed at a public execution, raised from the grave to conquer death — Jesus. Jesus’ story, as it unfolds through history, is a story that expands, not staying rooted only in Jerusalem or Judea, but out to the ends of the earth. And how does it move to the ends of earth? Through you. And me. God’s story now dwells in us.

God dwells with us. The ancient Hebrews had a word for this — Emmanuel. God with us.

Love with us.

The great love that authors the story of Creation and the story of you…dwells with us. In us. Moving through us. Telling stories of hope and peace and joy and love and redemption and restoration, in and through us.

Remember how we said that this season is all about stories. And remember how you know the name of the characters in some random Christmas movies?

Think of this, then: God, the One who is Love, the Author of Creation, dwelling in Jesus Christ — Love knows your name.

You are no minor character. You are no forgotten extra. Your life tells a story of God’s design and the God, who is love, knows your name.

I’ll close by saying this: I, we, this community — we want you to know that this is a safe place where you could live your story. We want to know each other’s stories. We want to walk with one another through the trials and joys of our stories. We want to know each others’ names, in very real ways, so that we can learn to tell each others’ stories and honor what God is doing in our lives, together.

What would it be like to know that your story could change? How might Love help you tell your story?

Love, God, Christ, Emmanuel — God with us knows your name and knows your story. Tonight, that loving God meets you in all your longing and possibility and fear and hope. God, with us. With you. Amen.