Christmas Eve! Dec. 24, 2025 | Word Out!
Download the 11 PM Bulletin from December 24, 2025
READINGS AND SERMON
Isaiah 9:2-7
2The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.
3You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.
4For the yoke of their burden,
and the bar across their shoulders,
the rod of their oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
5For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
6For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
7His authority shall grow continually,
and there shall be endless peace
for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time onward and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
Titus 2:11-14
11 The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, 12 training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, 13 while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. 14 He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Matthew 1:18-25
Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be pregnant from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to divorce her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had given birth to a son, and he named him Jesus.
Sermon: “The Secret”
Grace to you, and peace, from God, the source of life and light, and from Jesus, the Christ, who is that life and light in the world. Amen.
I have a secret—this secret I’ve shared a couple times here at Queen Anne Lutheran Church, most recently at our eight o’clock service. I wanted to make sure, however, that more people heard it.
According to the traditional ordering of the books in the Old Testament, what Jews call the Hebrew Bible, God gradually disappears. Let me repeat that: According to the traditional ordering of the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible from a Jewish perspective, God gradually disappears. Scholars have known this for roughly a century, and yet most Christians, and dare I say Jews, don’t.
To clarify: when I use the phrase “traditional ordering,” I refer to the ordering that Jews gave it, before the spread of Christianity at the end of the first century. So, the original ordering, which you’ll still find in Jewish Bibles, goes: Torah, which is the first five books of the Old Testament. Then, Prophets, which is the middle of the Old Testament, and then the Writings, which contains a number of my favorite books, including The Book of Job, the book of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, etc. So, the “traditional ordering” was Torah, first five books of the Bible, Prophets, then Writings.
When the Christians came along, they tried to make sense of their experience of God and Christ. And so to do that, they reordered the books of the Old Testament. They left the first five books as they were, Torah, but they switched the Writings and the Prophets such that the Writings were now in the middle and the Prophets were at the end.
Why did they do this? Because they wanted to show that when the Prophets were anticipating God’s servant to appear, Jesus Christ, that this would take place right before readers got to the New Testament. They mixed things up.
But again, if you go to the traditional ordering, you’ll find a pattern there: that God disappears. Secondly, when I say God disappears, what do I mean?
I mean that God, directly visible and audible at the beginning, slowly and gradually recedes from the people of Israel, such that God is less and less detectable in the later books of the Bible. This is according to the overarching, chronological narrative of Scripture.
Now you ask, what evidence do I have for this? What examples can I provide to illustrate this progression, this pattern, that takes place according to the original ordering of the books in the Old Testament?
Well, in the beginning, with Adam and Eve, as you may know, they have the ability to see God, who is depicted anthropomorphically, which is to say as a human-like being, who walks around in the garden, speaks with them, asks them where they are.
When we get to Moses in the book of Exodus, he is the first intermediary between God and human beings. Adam and Eve experience God directly. The Israelites, on the other hand, felt that God’s presence was too overwhelming, and so they asked Moses if he would intercede to protect them from God’s overwhelming presence. We learn, accordingly, in Exodus 33 that Moses spoke with God “face to face, as one speaks to a friend.”
Then we get to Elijah in First Kings. Elijah is the last prophet to perform a public miracle. In First Kings 18, Elijah, some of you Bible nerds may recall, calls down the fire of Yahweh from heaven to consume the altar of Baal, who was the god of the rival Canaanites. That is the last public display of God in the Old Testament.
When we get to the prophets after Elijah—Jeremiah, Micah, Isaiah, Daniel—my favorite—these men encounter God privately, as a voice, in visions, or in the case of Daniel, through dreams.
Then God, with a few notable exceptions, stops speaking to people altogether, such that all they have left are memories of how their ancestors experienced God. Listen, for example, to Psalm 143. Its author writes, “I remember—I remember—the days of old, I think about all your (that is God’s) deeds. I stretch out my hands to you, my Lord. My soul thirsts for you like a parched land.” So now we’re talking solely about memories concerning what God once did.
And when we get to books like Esther and the Song of Songs, they never mention God explicitly at all. So that’s the pattern, that’s the progression, that’s the secret of the Old Testament: God, with regard to the overarching, chronological narrative of the texts, gradually disappears. In the beginning, God is visibly manifest and audible; at the end, some books don’t even mention God at all.
Now, by this time, you’re probably asking yourself, okay, but why is the secret so important? Why bring it up on Christmas Eve? I mean, I’m here for the candles and the carols. Why are you doing this to me?
Well, with good reason. In the first century, at the end of the progression I’ve been discussing, God seemed absent. God seemed distant. God seemed far away.
The Christian story offered a corrective. According to one scholar, against the backdrop of the Hebrew Bible, one reads in the first four books of the New Testament— Matthew, Mark Lutheran, John—the four Gospels, a narrative in which, after centuries of hiddenness, God once again manifests God’s presence in human form.
God, once removed, is now among us. God, once distant, is now close. God, far off, is now near in the person of Jesus Christ. And that is good news! And for those of you who don’t come out of the Lutheran tradition, we call good news “Gospel.” And this is another form of it. God, perceived to be absent or distant, has come again to be near with us in the birth of the Christ Child.
Now, nowhere is this gospel better summarized than in our Gospel reading for this evening. Take a look, if you wish, to Matthew 1:22-23. It says,
“All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
23 “Look, the virgin shall become pregnant and give birth to a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.”
Now again, consider that against the backdrop of the trajectory that I just named. God, once far off, is now near to us in the birth of Jesus Christ.
But don’t take my word for it. Don’t take Matthew’s word for it. Consider the angel in Luke’s gospel and its word for it. The angel says, “To you is born this day a Savior.”
“To you is born this day a Savior.” Now I know that there are many Christians out there who constantly talk about how Jesus died for our sins. That’s a complicated matter. There are different ways of interpreting it. Sometimes, I fear, these Christians, and perhaps some of us, forget that the Gospel occurs not simply at the end of the story, but here, at the beginning of the story; that Christ didn’t just die for us, Christ was born for us.
Christ was born to save, to heal, to close the gap between God and human beings. He was born not only to us, but to me, and to each of you.
Martin Luther writes, “When I die, I shall see nothing but black darkness, and yet that light—“to you is born this day the Savior”—remains in my eyes and fills all heaven and earth. The Savior will help me when all have forsaken me.”
So, what do you do now that the secret’s out? What do you do with this good news, this great news, that God, once perceived far off, has come near? That God, formerly believed to have disappeared, is now visible again? That a Savior did not simply die for your sins, but was born for you, and brings God’s presence to you?
Will you “go tell it on the mountain,” as the African American spiritual says, or will you keep this good news, and the secret it presupposes, all to yourself?
The choice is yours.
Amen.