Jesus Is Born
The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Eve
December 24, 2025
The Rev. Josh Evans
St. John’s Lutheran Church
Albany, NY
Christmas is a good time for poetry.
Here’s one – or part of it at least:
(If you were here for our Christmas pageant on Sunday,
you’ll know where this is going.)
“As a kid those Sunday mornings made me restless, bored, and numb,
and my Bible was the one way to pass time.
So I spent the hour in search of stories brimming with suspense,
and I found Esther, Ruth, and Rahab were sublime.”
(“He did say Christmas poetry, right?”
“What do Esther, Ruth, and Rahab have to do with any of this?”)
Raised in the Bible Belt,
former worship leader-turned-drag queen singer-songwriter Flamy Grant
entices us to toy with the boundaries of what is “appropriate” for church,
as she reflects in her song, “Esther, Ruth, and Rahab,”
on her mind-numblingly boring,
not to mention male-dominated,
religious upbringing,
finding for herself stories – in the Bible –
that were much more interesting:
“Castaways who outwitted and outplayed,
an immigrant ancestor to the incarnate Divine.”
Ah, there it is!
What do Esther, Ruth, and Rahab have to do with any of this?
Everything.
Well, aside from Esther
(who may not have actually existed – that’s another sermon)…
these are Jesus’ people,
his family.
Their stories are in our Bible,
and they’re a part of Jesus’ own ancestry,
part of his very DNA.
Those long genealogies of funny-sounding names
aren’t just there to trip up readers.
There are fascinating stories
tucked away between the lines of those names.
“Abraham was the father of Isaac,” Matthew begins,
and quickly moves on to “Isaac the father of Jacob” –
but not so fast!
There’s the whole story of Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael
buried in there too…
…continuing through the years with almost-parenthetical asides
to the messy, complicated, and intriguing stories
of Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth,
and “the wife of Uriah” aka Bathsheba.
So you have your reading assignment now for next Christmas.
(Didn’t think you would get homework on Christmas Eve, did you?)
These lesser-known stories surrounded Jesus in his upbringing,
with Mary and Joseph undoubtedly opening the proverbial family photo album
to tell him about their family,
where they come from,
where he comes from.
These stories surround us too,
every time we hear this story as Luke tells it –
beginning on the long trek
“from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because [Joseph] was descended from the house and family of David” –
another phrase packed with meaning
and wild stories tucked away between the lines.
These stories are inseparable from this story
because they are inseparable from Jesus,
connected as they are by DNA and family history.
These stories are messy and honest and human.
And to brush over these stories as though they don’t exist,
or worse, to ignore them entirely,
is to miss the whole point of this – [big seminary word incoming] –
incarnational event:
The Word became flesh
and lived among us.
Which is to say:
The Word became human
and lived – not in a gilded palace or ballroom –
but in a manger,
surrounded by barn animals,
held by his mother far from home
because of a government decree that displaced an entire people,
visited by nameless, unregistered, undocumented shepherds
who apparently did not, or could not, or chose not to,
return to their hometowns
but were instead “living in the fields” on the very margins of the empire.
Each character of the nativity and the family history
inseparable from Jesus;
each story reminding us
of the God who became one of us
in all the messiness and complicatedness of human reality;
each story reminding us
how our scriptures are, in fact, full of flawed, messed-up humans
and messy stories –
and this is the reality
that the Divine chose to step into anyway.
It doesn’t get much more “good news of great joy” than that –
that God themself would step into the mess
of a messed-up human family,
all because God loved that human family so much.
***
Christmas is a good time for poetry.
Here’s another one –
this time from Mary Oliver,
“Making the House Ready for the Lord”:
Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but
still nothing is as shining as it should be
for you. Under the sink, for example, is an
uproar of mice — it is the season of their
many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves
and through the walls the squirrels
have gnawed their ragged entrances — but it is the season
when they need shelter, so what shall I do? And
the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard
while the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;
what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling
in the yard and the fox who is staring boldly
up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will
come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,
the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know
that really I am speaking to you whenever I say,
as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.
***
From a messed-up family tree
“descended from the house and family of David,”
Jesus is born.
Into this messed-up and messy human reality,
Jesus is born.
For those of us on top of every last detail,
with everything “as shining as it should be,”
and those of us who are barely holding it all together, if at all,
Jesus is born.
For those of us who put up our trees on November 1
and those of us who struggle to feel the joy of the season,
Jesus is born.
For those of us who doubt and question and wrestle,
and those of us who are lonely or angry or afraid in these days,
Jesus is born.
Into this messed-up and messy human reality,
Jesus is born –
for us,
for you,
for all –
good news,
great joy.
