The Most Important Word this Christmas

Christmas Day, Selection II, RCL
Sermon for December 25, 2025
Adapted from this wonderful sermon from The Rev. Samuel Wells

My friends, I speak to you this morning in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.

Well, merry Christmas, Epiphany! Joy to the world, the Lord has come, let earth receive her king. Joy to South Haven, our Lord has come, let us here at Epiphany today receive our king, our Savior. I know that some of us here were in attendance last night also, so we tried to save a few of the best-known songs for this morning, like that one, Joy to the World. You won’t hear the same message from last night either, don’t worry, and for those of you joining us this morning for the first time, welcome. Merry Christmas.

Last year at Christmas, I preached about Muppets and about the undignified joy of David; last night, I preached about Buddy the Elf and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. This morning, if you’ll allow me, I’d like to start a new tradition, and that is preaching a Christmas morning sermon, here in my pajama pants, heavily inspired by one of my favorite sermons. This year’s inspiration is from the Rev. Samuel Wells. Father Sam is an English priest currently serving as a vicar in central London; he’s a prominent theologian and author, and he served as the Dean of Duke University Chapel in North Carolina for a few years too. It was there, on Christmas Eve 2010, that he preached a sermon called “The Most Important Word,” and it has stuck with me ever since; I genuinely do think about it often.

I’m not preaching it entirely verbatim this morning, don’t worry, but I owe much of my own love of the Anglican/Episcopal tradition to Sam Wells, and to Fr. Josh Bowron in Charlotte, one of Father Sam’s many disciples. I hope you will appreciate the Christmas connection here too, this morning; it’s one you can carry throughout your year.

I first want you to imagine a few scenes with me from the month of December, from the season of Advent, and then I want you to think about what the scenes have in common. The first scene is Christmas shopping for a loved one, but this loved one is someone who you have a difficult relationship with. You know that you probably should know what to get them, but you really don’t, and so you buy something that you think they may ...like? When they open the present, you see a forced smile, and you feel like the chasm between you hasn’t shrunk at all. If anything, it has widened with this gift. You tried. End scene.

The second scene may be familiar to some here or listening online: you have friends and family coming to visit from out of town. You do everything you can to make their stay perfect; you shop, you clean, you bake, you schedule, you have complete control over the entire visit, and everything really is perfect. As you hug them goodbye, you say, “It’s a shame we never really talked much this visit,” and then after they have left, you collapse in a heap, resigned to your couch or bed for the next few days of recovery. End scene.

The third and final scene is this: You know that not everyone has a family or friends to be with on Christmas, and your heart is breaking for those left out in the cold, or in poverty, or in grief. So, you gather presents and donations, you ask everyone to give you gift cards for Christmas so you can give them to those in need, you make sure others are cared for during this festive season. You end up gathering a lot of donations. End scene.

So, what do these scenes have in common? This morning, I want to suggest that each scene is based on one tiny word, the word “for.” When we think about those for whom Christmas is a difficult time, we want to do something “for” them. When we take care of family and friends visiting, our impulse is to do things “for” them, cooking or cleaning, whatever it may be. When we buy that gift for the loved one we don’t really know, our instinct is to do something “for” them that somehow makes everything right again. 

All of those scenes sound like they have good motivations, we should be trying to do something for others, shouldn’t we? It’s almost like that word, “for,” is the epitome of Christmas: we cook “for,” we buy “for,” we offer charity “for.” But somehow, it doesn’t quite go to the heart of the problem, does it? The loved one is still distant, the visitors weren’t quite engaged, the poor are still strangers, with met needs perhaps... perhaps not.

“For” is a fine word, but it does not dismantle resentment, rebuild relationship, it does not overcome misunderstanding, deal with alienation, it does not overcome isolation.

And most of all, “for” isn’t the way God celebrates Christmas. God isn’t up on high in a cloud solving all our problems at Christmas; God isn’t sending us shiny trinkets, possessions that will make our life better. No, God isn’t about doing things “for” us, really at all. In some ways we wish God was. We’d love God to make everything happy and surround us with perfect things. When we get cross with God, it’s easy to feel God isn’t keeping God’s side of the bargain – to do things “for” us, now and forever, Amen.

But God, thankfully, God shows us something else at Christmas. God has a different word for us. The angel says to Joseph, “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” And in John’s gospel, which we’ll read Sunday, we get the statement of what Christmas means: “The Word became flesh and lived with us.” It’s a small word, like “for,” but a different word lies at the heart of Christmas and at the heart of the Christian faith. The word is “with.” 

In John’s gospel, the new creation story starts with, “The Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. Without him not one thing came into being.” Before anything else, we have a “with,” the “with” between the Word and God, or as we think of it, the Father and the Son. And at the end of Jesus’s ministry, we have another with: “Behold, I am with you always.” Even at the end of the book of Revelation, at the end of all time, we have another “with”: “Behold, the home of God is with mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.”

“With” then, is the most important world in the Bible, the most important word for us this morning. It is the word that describes the heart of God and the nature of God’s purpose and destiny for us. “With” is the theme of creation, of the covenant with Abraham, of the sending of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, of the end times depicted in Revelation. From the first to the last page, it’s all “with.”

But you see, “with” is harder than “for.” You can do “for” online or from a distance, you can do “for” without conversation, without relationship, without a changing of you. There’s nothing wrong with gift-buying or hosting or philanthropy, surely, but the only real answer is “with,” spending time with each other, learning each other’s stories, sharing each other’s burdens, caring about each other as a person, never a project. The “with” is what we all desperately want, and yes, the “for” is fine, but it doesn’t quite meet the moment. We all need the “with.”

And that, that is why it is unbelievable, glorious, worthy-of-celebrating good news that God didn’t settle on “for.” At Christmas, God triumphantly says “I am, I will be ‘with’ you, in ways you could not have previously imagined.” There is certainly a healthy amount of “for” in Jesus’s ministry: he healed and taught, he died on the cross, he rose from the grave and ascended to heaven, all for us. But the power of the things God did for us is based on the foundation of his being with us. 

God, at Christmas, tells us that there will never again be a “for” that is not based on a fundamental, unalterable, everlasting, unswerving “with.” And that, that is good news.

How should we celebrate this good news? By being “with” people in poverty and distress even when there’s nothing we can do “for” them. By being “with” people in grief and sadness and loss even when there’s nothing to say. By being “with” and listening to and walking with those we find most difficult rather than trying to pass them off with a gift or a face-saving gesture. By being still, being “with” God, in silent prayer rather than rushing in our anxiety to do yet more things “for” God. By considering all our relationships and asking ourselves, “Does my doing “for” here, does it arise out of a commitment to be “with,” or is my doing “for” driven by my desire to avoid the discomfort, the challenge, the patience, the loss of control involved in being “with”?”

God, above all, could have chosen to be “for” us on Christmas. God knows how thoughtless, ungrateful, distracted, selfish we can be. Most of the time, we want God to just fix our problems and spare us the relationship. But that is not God’s way. God could have done it all on God’s own, but God chose to do it all “with” us. That is the wonder of Christmas. That’s the amazing, good news of the important word “with.” May we all strive not only to “be for,” but to “be with,” this week and throughout this new year.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Amen.