What’s the most important “it’s not Christmas unless…” thing for you? Cranberry sauce? Bing Crosby or Mariah Carey? Rudolph and Frosty? Decorating the tree? This Christmas Eve worship with family?…For us, it’s watching Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol” together—and not just any version. It has to be The Muppet Christmas Carol. It is not fully Christmas until we watch this and sing along to the wonderful music. Michael Caine is Scrooge, and he is by far the best Scrooge there ever will be.

Near the end of the movie (which is a very faithful and accurate rendering of the original book, by the way), Scooge is in tears and deep sorrow, because by truly seeing his past and his present he can see that, unless he learns from them and changes his life, his future is bleak. He cries out, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.” Scrooge has realized who is, and he promises to become, instead, who he could have been all along. He promises to keep Christmas in his heart every day of the year.

There’s great wisdom in Scrooge’s promise to live in the past, the present and the future all at once. The past is the tapestry of memories and events into which we have been woven today. The past serves as a guiding light—both for what to do and what not to do. The joys and sorrows of the past are always with us, in ways large or small, and recognizing that rather than ignoring or erasing our past is one of the keys to understanding who we are.

The present—now—that’s when we actually do things. We celebrate in the present, we reach out a helping hand in the present. “Now” is always the time—the only time—when we have opportunities that we ignore or act on to be ambassadors of those themes of Advent that we’ve been hearing in sermons this month: Every fleeting “now” is always and only the time when you can make the choice be ambassadors of light, of hope, of peace, of joy, and of love—or not. Every moment of “now” is a chance to embrace life’s wonders, to savor the beauty that surrounds us, and to cherish the relationships that grace our journey. And every moment of “now” is when we lay the foundation for the future.

The future, of course, is the source of our visions for what can and should be. The future is the inspiration and goal of our dreams. The past no longer has possibilities; the present is full of the possibilities facing us this day—the future holds infinite possibilities if we will only pursue them. As Christians, we look to the future not just for our own personal visions, but also as the fulfillment of God’s vision. We look toward the end of the age, when, in the words of today’s Psalm: The heavens will rejoice, the earth will be glad; the sea will thunder and all that is in it; the fields will be joyful and all the trees of the woods will shout for joy before the Lord when he comes to judge the world and to set things right for all time, always.”

Christmas Eve is the point for us all when the past, present, and future come together. Somehow, beyond understanding, on that night in Bethlehem, the Creator of all, unknowable and unseeable, came to be with us as a little baby. Somehow, it turns out that the universe, created so long ago  in the past, seemingly out of nothingness and chaos, was actually created out of love. God is love, and love must be shared. God loves the stars and planets, the sun and the earth, and all creatures great and small, and trees and flowers—and you. God made it all and loves it very, very much.

But because God is outside of our space and time, God can’t be seen. And sometimes, when you can’t see something, it can be easy to forget about it, or maybe it can be easy to not pay attention to it any more, or maybe it can be easy to be confused about it. And that happened for us with God—God always sees and loves us, but we forgot about God, and we got confused about who God is and what God wants. We forgot about love.

So, what did God do? God said, “Since you can’t see me and know me as I am, I’ll come to be with you where you are, as a human being. Then you can actually see me and hear me. I’ll come, and I’ll be with you, and I’ll show you how much I love you. I’ll help you; I’ll have parties with you and laugh with you; I’ll be sad and cry with you. And I’ll explain to you in person that what I want is for you to love each other and be kind to each other and help each other. Then you’ll know what I really want you to do. All I want is for you to love me and to love each other.

And so, somehow, the Creator who made everything, came to be with us as the little baby Jesus—a little baby who needed his mother to give birth to him and love him and feed and put clothes on him. Luke’s Gospel wants to make that point so strongly that twice it says he was “wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” That what this evening, this “now,” brings to us—God in our presence, in our present, arms wrapped up tight, swaddled so he can’t move. A little baby asking for our love, asking for our love right now in this place, in our hearts and in our lives.

The future is here, too, because this helpless baby Jesus, arms bound tight, will grow up to be the adult Jesus who teaches us all those things we had forgotten about God, all those things about God we had become confused about. This helpless, bound baby will once again have his arms bound—on a Cross—so that we will never forget or be confused that God’s way is only the way of love—love and nothing else—love that looks up from the beautiful, wide eyes of a baby—love that looks down from the pain-filled eyes of a criminal on a cross. Love for us, with us, for all time, always.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said “I have decided to stick with love…hate is too great a burden to bear….Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.” This is the truth and the beauty and the wonder of Christmas and the gift of our Savior’s birth: It does more than transform us all into God’s friends—it transforms us into God’s beloved children. As John says in chapter three of his First Letter, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.”

I don’t want a lot for Christmas
There is just one thing I need
I don’t care about the presents
underneath the Christmas tree
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is you.

Mariah Carey may have made this the number one Christmas song of our generation, but God wrote the words 2,000 years ago in Bethlehem, and the angels sang it to the shepherds. My prayer is that you’ll hear their song, too, and see in that baby in the manger the truth that all God wants for Christmas is you.