"A gift from our community of faith to you. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is devoted to preparing outstanding leaders for Christ’s church. One of the ways we nurture leaders is by building a loving community of faith and extending God’s grace to others. In this season of anticipation, we extend God’s grace to you and invite you to explore this book of Advent devotions. Through this collection, please join us as we prepare to receive God’s greatest gift—the birth of Jesus Christ."
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Advent Devotional for Christmas Eve
December 24
• Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)
Names of people and places saturate this familiar story, reminding us that the details of time and place are significant to understanding who Jesus is. Jesus’s birth occurs during the reign of a particular emperor and governor. His parents, who hailed from Nazareth, had to journey to Bethlehem, Joseph’s ancestral home. Born to an unwed couple, in a manger meant for livestock rather than babies, Jesus comes into the world at a pivotal time—when Roman power is exerting its force throughout the Mediterranean world—in a vulnerable state, when his parents can find no room in the inn. The names in this story remind us that Jesus, the Son of God, does not hover above history, lording over it without being affected by it, but enters into history, moved by the events of his time even as he changes them. Jesus, the Lord of all creation and time, has a particular story.
Each of us has a unique story as well: a story traced by struggle and pain, joy and laughter, intimacy and alienation, sickness and health, homecoming and exile, life and death. Jesus enters history and takes our unique stories as his own, incorporating them into his story. On this holy night, we celebrate not only the birth of the Savior of the world, but also how he comes to know our stories better than we know them ourselves. Jesus comes in the flesh, to a particular time in history and thus makes us able to understand our stories in the context of his. His is the story that gives life to the world. The great Reformed theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, in Christmas Eve: A Dialogue, writes, “Each one of us beholds in the birth of Christ his own higher birth.” Jesus comes to the world so that the radical reach of divine love might emerge anew in each one of us. Right here. Right now. Whatever the contours of our story, whatever chapters have been written, no matter how many remain, we find fulfillment in the story that takes place on this night: in Bethlehem and Boston; in a manger and in a refugee camp; in the midst of a storm and in the calm of a cloudless night. May the story begin anew. May we find a home in this ancient story where there is room for all.
Holy God, on this night of all nights, we give thanks for the way that the story of your Son incorporates each chapter of our stories, how you cherish each one of us in the overarching story of your love. Conform us more closely to that story, so that we might reflect some of that love in the world, tonight and in the days ahead. Amen.
David H. Jensen
Academic Dean And Professor in The Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair of Reformed Theology
For the glory of God and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary is a seminary in the Presbyterian-Reformed tradition whose mission is to educate and equip individuals for the ordained Christian ministry and other forms of Christian service and leadership; to employ its resources in the service of the church; to promote and engage in critical theological thought and research; and to be a winsome and exemplary community of God's people.
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