7.20.25 – Sermon written and preached by Leigh Rachal @ FPC Abbeville

Some say that Christmas is for children.

That it’s a sweet and simple story, about angels and shepherds and a baby asleep on the hay.

But the story we tell today—the story we keep telling—is not gentle. 

It’s not tidy. 

And it is startling in its clarity.

Because the heart of the Christmas story is about a God who refuses to stay distant.

About love that breaks through the silence and enters a world that is weary, worn, and wounded.

Sound familiar? 

A world filled with unrest and injustice. 

With sorrow and suspicion.

A world where people ache for things to be different but aren’t sure change will come.

And into that world, love is born.

Not abstract love. 

Not safe, theoretical love.

But love with skin on.

Love that weeps and walks and eats and heals.

Love that gets dusty feet and calloused hands and doesn’t mind the company of those others avoid.

Last week, we spoke of our nature. Of humanity. 

That we were made in love, by love, and for love.

But too often, we don’t live like it.

Fear creeps in. 

Anger takes root.

We forget who we are.

And we forget who they are, too.

That something in us bends away from the love we were created for.

Call it brokenness. 

Call it sin. 

Call it forgetting our true calling. 

Whatever we name it, we know the ache.

We’ve all lived it.

But God does not respond with fury.

God responds with flesh.

God’s answer to our sinfulness is not punishment.

It is presence.

Not condemnation.

But companionship.

Not threats of wrath.

But a life so full of love it cannot be ignored.

Jesus comes into this world, into this ache,

and shows us what it looks like to be human again.

To be love, in the flesh.

To feed the hungry. 

To touch the untouchable.

To speak truth with tenderness and to embody mercy in motion.

And when the world tries to silence that love—

when fear and power and cruelty do their worst—

Jesus doesn’t fight back with vengeance.

He stays true to love.

Even to the end.

And that end, the cross, has been distorted.

Some say it was divine wrath, unleashed.

That God needed someone to suffer.

That Jesus stepped in so we wouldn’t have to.

But no.

The cross is not the moment God stopped being angry.

It is the moment love refused to stop loving.

It’s where mercy met our deepest violence and didn’t even flinch.

Where love carried the weight of all that is broken, all we have lost,

and all we still long to be.

And in the resurrection, love got back up.

Not just as a triumph but as a promise.

That death does not win.

That sin does not have the final word.

That fear is not our master.

Still, the shape of Jesus’ love might surprise us.

He didn’t spend his life surrounded by the righteous.

He didn’t curry favor with the morally upright.

He was love that crossed lines. 

That ignored social rules. 

That made religious people squirm.

His life was not marked by heroic purity.

It was marked by a kind of holiness that looked suspicious.

The wrong dinner guests. 

The wrong friends.

He was always with the wrong crowd, it seems. 

And that is exactly what made his life so holy.

He didn’t shy away from sinners. 

He befriended them.

Not to excuse their pain, but to share it. 

To heal it.

The purity of Jesus wasn’t distance. 

It was presence.

He chose to be with people as they were: hurting, messy, longing for something more.

And in doing so, he revealed what sinlessness really is.

Not flawless avoidance.

But perfect love.

A love that enters the brokenness,

takes it on without being consumed by it,

and begins the slow, healing work of making all things new.

So why believe in Jesus?

Because Jesus shows us what God is really like.

Not a distant judge.

Not a divine scorekeeper.

But love. 

Fierce and tender and full of grace.

Jesus does not protect us from God.

Jesus reveals God.

In Jesus we see that God walks with the wounded, 

weeps with the broken, 

heals with his hands, 

and forgives with his whole life.

We believe in Jesus not because he makes us “right.”

But because he makes us whole.

Because he shows us how to be human.

Because he shows us how to be love.

We are singing songs that we usually think of as Christmas or Easter songs today.

But that’s because these remind us of the eternal truth of our faith.

These stories tell the central story of our faith

and they are just as true all year  - not just in Dec. or during Springtime. 

We have good news that is too good to keep to ourselves, 

promising joy not just for the already joyful, but for the whole groaning world

Because Christ is alive. 

Not locked in the past. 

Not tucked away in a tomb.

Alive and moving in every place where love shows up.

If you’ve ever feared God more than you’ve trusted grace,

If you’ve ever been told that Jesus came to save you from a God who couldn’t bear to look at you,

If faith has felt more like threat than invitation,

Hear this:

The God we meet in Jesus has always been love.

Jesus the Christ is Love Incarnate and he is alive and with us – still.

Still healing. Still calling. Still setting captives free.

And we, we were made in that image.

We are called to remember who we are.

And who we’ve always been.

We are Loved by Love itself….

And we are made in love, by love and for love.

Thanks be to God!