Sermon."Believing and Defying Gravity"

It is the most wondrous story. The Christmas Gospel we listen to year after year, and every year touches something deep in us.

The joy of recognition.

The power of memories.

Faith defiance.

The generosity of joy.

The heartbeat of hope.

"It happened in those days.... " And it is happening again today on this Christmas Morning. Our history and our time merge with God's history and the time that began with the birth of Jesus.

The Gospel of Christmas is defiant and insistent. Every Christmas defies our knowledge with words that span our linear and reasonable world. And that is exactly why the angels fly and sing at Christmas: Flying and fearless as their message and their being. For life is far more wonderful than what we can understand and what we can calculate. Life calls us to dare to believe, dare to hope, and dare to love despite everything that can go wrong.

Christmas is about everything bigger than us. Christmas is the story of the greatest thing in life, about the little Jesus child who was born and came to us with a message of love that we can let our lives stand and fall on.

Christmas is our breathing space in a busy, embittered, darkened, despairing, and confused time. A time where we can find meaning by looking at the little child in the manger, hearing the song of the angels, and believing that we should not fear, but believe.

The Danish hymn writer Jens Rosendal wrote a lovely love song: "You came with everything that was you."

Our Lord Himself invited us to a feast.

Here we are seated at each stunned guest.

In the halls of love with eyes, wondering, and blue,

we just looked and looked and saw and swallowed the speech of life:

That life is worth living! Despite doubts and great difficulty

despite what hurts, love is and will be, and whatever the whole world says: love has our hearts.

Love has our hearts. We understand this today when we listen to the Christmas gospel and sing the most beautiful Christmas hymns, look at the lights in the church, and not least rejoice in those we celebrated Christmas Eve with and later spent time with this Christmas.

Love has our hearts. Also, when we remember those who are not with us today, but whom we carry with us in our hearts because love is. Through our relationships with others, we live and feel how connected and dependent we are. That life is given and received. Bestowed. It is not something we deserve or can take ourselves – it comes from us.

And that is precisely the beautiful and strong Song of Praise that The angels sang first to the shepherds of the field.

We sang the beloved beautiful Christmas hymn "Dejlig er Jorden/Beauty is all around us ". The beautiful hymn about the shepherds in the field, about the child in the manger, about times that come and go and will come – and about the angels singing. The beautiful song of the angels that lifted the earth up to heaven and opened heaven to the shepherds in the field. What a beautiful sight and what a sound!

It is quite unusual to have such a choir of angels because angels are not herd animals like humans are. Angels most often appear alone.

80 times in the Old Testament and 116 times in the New Testament. This is one of the only times in the Bible that an entire host arrives on Earth in this way. Because it was and is a special evening.

There is a special Angel House in Denmark? Have you ever visited the Angel House in Mariehaven near Ansager in West Jutland?

Grethe Engelbrecht lived in the house until her death at the age of 87 in 2009, and it is a special house. Because Grethe believed in angels, and her whole home was filled with angels. There, the angel also appears in a group. Everywhere there are angel figures and pictures of angels. Grethe Engelbrecht was a God-given storyteller, and her home was a living story about angels flying here and there. She painted angels everywhere in the home, on furniture, walls, cupboards, and ceilings. A few days before her death, she insisted on painting an angel on a glass surface in the front door of her house. To show the angel the way?

A little girl of 6 years old once explained to me that there are two kinds of angels: ordinary angels and guardian angels. Guardian angels are like shot out of cannons, she said. They are a little faster, and then they are often a little stiffer in the hair!

Or as one little boy subtly explained the angels' special airy nature: "Angels can fly because they take themselves so easily!"

Maybe that's why we have such a hard time flying and taking off from the ground because we often take ourselves so seriously that we are weighed down to the ground and take all possible and impossible sorrows in advance or can't forget all the mistakes that have been made that make us stuck in the past and the future. and cannot live or take off in the present.

Angels can fly because they take themselves so easily!

That is why the Bumblebee can fly. They say that the bumblebee cannot fly at all with its little chubby body and small wings, but it just does not know. The Bumblebee take itself lightly?

It is an old truth with modifications when we claim that the Bumblebee cannot or should not be able to fly, because scientifically there is a good explanation for why it flies. The bumblebee flies and can even carry something close to its own weight in pollen and nectar. Even though it is small, round, and chubby and seems a bit heavy in it, it can easily maneuver around. Because the wings beat at about 200 wingbeats per second in small figure-eight curves, which make the wings seem like small propellers, which gives this characteristic humming sound.

It seems as if the bumblebee defies the power of gravity while taking itself as easily as angels do. Nature and Faith are indeed mysteriously greater than all that we can understand.

Defending the good is how we defy gravity.

So writes the amazing young poet Amanda Gorman in an equally fantastic poem inspired by one of the great Christmas movies this year, "Wicked". Have you seen it?

In the film and the story, there are also some who defy gravity and fly, and the poet Amanda Gorman also lifts herself towards the sky when she writes in her beautiful poem "Do Us Good":

Only with decency

Do we discover people are not born evil

but born equal.

So, we will dream.

Soar into the blue.

Rise up to a new reality.

Because defending the good

is how we defy gravity.

To defend good is how we defy gravity. Defending the good is how we break the limitations and break down boundaries.

To defend the good, to do the good, to believe in the good, is how we contradict and fight the evil, the dark, the inhuman, and the judgmental that often weigh us down.

To defend the good is to believe in a good and gracious God.

When we defend the good and do the good, we defy evil, doubt, distrust, and fear.

That is what the angels do, defying gravity and evil, by singing: Do not fear, only believe!

That is what the bumblebee does, flies despite gravity and theories.

That is what we do when we dare to believe in goodness, when we stand up for truth and goodness, when we rejoice in the happiness of others, when we give more than we receive, when we stretch the boundaries and limitations of being human.

That is what the little child in the manger room came into the world and us for: to tell about the power of love, and to remind us of the path of hope in a world that is all too often paved with hatred, hopelessness, war, and darkness.

Therefore, the song of angels is necessary for Christmas.

Christmas is a necessity for humanity.

There must be at least once a year when we remember that we are here in the service of love. We can then bring joy, happiness and peace to the world.

Christmas is the time of year when we can collectively defy gravity and defend good. And try to take ourselves lightly, but stand firm on the message of love.,

When we let the light, the stars and the song of the angels guide us and show us the way, then we find the little child in the manger. And recognizes that as a child, life is vulnerable and big at the same time.

We recognize ourselves in the small child in the manger. The fragility and grandeur of life.

We recognize our beloved children, grandchildren, friends' children, stepchildren, shared children, neighbor children, and students in the small child.

We recognize the strong message of hope telling us that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

That love is stronger than hate.

That life is stronger than death.

That the good here and now in this moment is more important than the mistakes of the past or the plans. It is here and now that we must defend the good.

Now is the time to live out the Golden Rule of treating others as we would like them to treat us. When we do good, we are always on the side of the weak and vulnerable and promise to protect life from the tyranny of the strong.

If we do not defy gravity and defend good, who will?

So, listen to the angel’s song this Christmas.

Angels who can teach us to take ourselves a little easier and listen to the eternal song of peace on earth and between people.

Angels who can teach us to be human beings and fellow human beings, who face life with faith and not with fear, with hope and not with distrust.

Angels who teach us to build bridges over walls of discord and divided pasts in this time of ours, marked by division between us, disagreement after the election in November, fear for some, or hope for other, joy for some and sadness for others – so that we gain the courage and strength to believe the best of each other and, not least, want the best for each other.

The Italian writer Luciana De Crescenso said: "We are all angels with only one wing, and we can only fly when we embrace each other."

The human embrace and reconciliation can make us lift our eyes and defend the good, this embrace can make us look beyond the tip of our own nose and our own little world.

The Gospel of Christmas gives us special eyes and hearts for the child. Not only our children, however sweet and kind, beloved and dear they may be, - but the children of the world.

The little scared child in the rumble of war in Ukraine.

The little crying child in Israel and Gaza.

The small child on the run to find a better life.

The little hungry or homeless child in our streets.

The little child in the crawl space and the angels' beautiful song of peace on earth always point us to the children who need our love, our protection, our constant and sky-faring defense of good.

When we defend the good, we defy gravity, evil, distrust, and fear.

Yes, it is now, and it is Christmas.

We must set our dreams free, believe in the light and remember that Christmas does not only last until Easter, but as long as we want and if we defend the good. For what we want, we must give.

Because how we want others to do to us, that is how we do to them.

So, let us give the good a try. A Christmas Try.

Let us sing along to the song of the angels.

Let us defy the power of security and gravity and strengthen vitality and generosity.

Let us embrace each other, life and hope.

Let us wish each other a Merry Christmas, hope for a blessed New Year with an unbreakable faith in the light, joy, the child, and goodness in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.