St. John’s Episcopal Church
Tallahassee, FL
Luke 2:1-14
This will sound odd,
but on this beautiful Christmas Eve
what I want to talk about is . . .
voices.
The world is full of them,
and honestly,
they never shut up.
Like the Grinch once said:
“The trum-tookas and sloo-slunkas,
the blum-bloopas and who-wonkas . . .
all the noise, NOISE, NOISE, NOISE!”
Except, for us in our daily lives,
it’s not the Who girls and boys
all rushing for toys.
Instead, for us, it’s the noise of . . .
headlines and hot takes,
and rings, dings, and pings;
of TikToks and reels
and algorithmic things;
of politics and preachers,
whatever crisis is next;
it’s conspiracy theories
in your uncle’s group texts;
it’s mean Christians claiming
you’re not going to heaven;
and this year’s worst affliction:
the curse of six-seven.
We are bombarded by all of this,
and none of it speaks of love.
But tonight . . .
tonight is a night when,
just for a little while,
we get to shut that garbage off
and remember the one voice
we’ve been longing to hear
whether we know it or not.
* * *
If that sounds crazy,
think about what we know about babies.
Long before we ever have
the ability to speak or even think,
scientists say we come into the world
listening.
Even in the womb,
they say we can hear and are shaped
by our mother’s voices.
We tune into the rhythm
and tone
and music of her voice.
And when we’re born,
we instinctively
know it
and seek it
and turn to it.
They call this
a voiceprint . . .
it’s like a fingerprint,
but made of sound.
For each of us, it’s unique,
and recognizable,
and you carry it with you forever.
And if that’s the case,
then maybe it’s not a huge leap to think
that there’s an even greater voice
from even longer ago
that we’re all longing to hear:
the voice that spoke the universe into being,
the voice of our Creator,
still calling us to this day.
* * *
As for Jesus,
if all of this is true for us,
then some of it is true for him, too.
For the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us
not as a hero,
not as a warrior,
not as an abstract cloud
or a fully formed man . . .
. . . but as a baby.
One of us.
And if that’s true,
then that means
before he ever performed his first miracle,
before he ever taught people or healed them,
before he died or rose to life again,
he was formed in his mother’s womb . . .
which means he came first
to listen.
He listened and learned
the voiceprint of Mary:
her lullabies,
her prayers,
her laughter at the table.
He listened and learned
the creak of Joseph’s footsteps,
the clink of his tools
in the workshop.
God could have stayed far off.
God could have yelled down to us,
booming from the heavens,
shaking the foundations of the earth.
But instead,
he decided to come close.
He came down low.
He came listening
in the form of his only Son.
But . . .
that’s not all he did
For, it turns out that
the One who came to listen
also came with a voiceprint all his own,
the very voice of God . . .
. . . the same God
who spoke light into darkness,
who breathed life into Adam and Eve,
who thundered on Mt. Sinai,
and who whispered to prophets.
Jesus brought that voice with him.
He was that voice.
He is that voice.
And he brought it close enough
for you to hear.
Not to shout over the noise,
but to be the stillness inside it.
* * *
So on nights like tonight
when you finally get to calm down
and shut off the pings
and dings
and cellphone rings,
these are the nights when maybe, just maybe,
you get to hear that voice again.
And if it feels familiar . . .
it’s because it is.
So hang on.
Hush.
Just
be still
for a moment.
Because the world will be
plenty loud again tomorrow,
but it doesn’t have to be right now.
Tonight, you get to listen for something deeper:
the voice that made the galaxies
and called to shepherds,
and cried out from a manger,
and cried out again from the cross.
That voice has always known your name,
and it has never stopped speaking.
You were born to know that voiceprint.
And once you hear it,
you may love it,
or fight it,
embrace
deny it . . .
but one thing’s for sure:
you’ll never forget it,
because
it
has never
forgotten
you.
Amen.