theme: the reel christmas story christmas eve a …€¦ · · 2017-07-17six minute black and...

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – December 23-24, 2015

Theme: The Reel Christmas Story “Christmas Eve – A Christmas Carol”

Sermon preached by Jeff Huber

December 23-24, 2015 at First United Methodist Church, Durango

Scripture: Luke 2

VIDEO The Greatest Story Ever Told

SLIDE “Candlelight Christmas Eve – A Christmas Carol”

Over the last month as a congregation, we have been exploring the meaning of Christmas with the help of Hollywood Christmas classic films. We began with Miracle on 34th Street, then we did How the Grinch Stole Christmas, followed by It’s A Wonderful Life, and then last week the movie Elf and today we will explore the real meaning of Christmas through the most adapted film portrayal of Christmas from a novel that has ever been made. Charles Dickens’ novel A Christmas Carol has been adapted to film 21 times starting in 1901 with a six minute black and white silent film. The most recent was the 2009 Disney portrayal in which Jim Carrey plays Ebenezer Scrooge and Colin Firth plays his nephew Fred.

GRAPHIC 1 A Christmas Carol Movie Poster

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and the first printing was released on December 19. That first printing sold out in four days. He wrote A Christmas Carol as a way of trying to inspire, challenge and shake people in Great Britain to understand the connection between the birth of Christ and kindness, compassion and care for those who are poor, on the margins and struggling in society. He had seen in his own society children as young as five and six working in the coal mines and factories. Many people were sent to debtor’s prison, as his father had been sent there when he was a child, to spend many years working off debt that was accrued simply to feed and house their families. He saw people living in union work houses which were terrible places to live and work. The upper levels of society were completely oblivious to the trials and difficult life of those in the working-class. His hope was that in writing a short novel, a novella to be exact, it would touch the hearts of people to link together Christmas with the values that he saw a represented in Jesus Christ, compassion and mercy and love.

The story revolves around Ebenezer Scrooge, which everyone has heard of even if they haven’t read the story or seen the movie. His attitude towards


Christmas is represented in the phrase, “Bah Humbug!” The word “Scrooge” itself has come to have its own meaning as someone who is a miser, uncharitable and indifferent to the needs and sufferings of others. You will find in most dictionaries that “Scrooge” shows up as a noun which to find someone who is mean-spirited, unpleasant, unkind or uncharitable. In our first clip we meet Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas Eve with his nephew Fred, who is coming to visit with his uncle. We hear Scrooge’s perspective on Christmas in great detail. Let’s take a look.

VIDEO A Christmas Carol – Clip 1

GRAPHIC 2 Scrooge and Fred

What an uplifting gentleman, isn’t he? Part of what Dickens meant for us to recognize in this grouchy character is that there is a little bit of Ebenezer Scrooge in every single one of us if we are honest. We see it sometimes when we start thinking about those who need financial help and we think, “Why do I have to give up my hard-earned money to help people who don’t seem to help themselves?” We see it after we been to the department store and we spent $300 on gifts for people who don’t really need anything and yet as were walking close to the door we see the red bucket outside the front door and we hear the bell ringing and we start thinking, “How little can I put in there and not feel cheap? Maybe if I fold up that one dollar bill enough times it will look like a $10 bill and I could stuff down in there and get some good credit, especially since I’m the pastor and I think they go to our church!” There is a bit of the miser inside of each one of us.

Maybe we don’t struggle with being a miser, but if not then we might struggle with indifference and apathy towards the suffering of others. Apathy comes from the Greek words “a” and “pathos.” Pathos means, “To feel the suffering of other people.” “A” means “not.” Apathy means to not feel the sufferings of others or not to be moved or touched by it. Elie Wiesel, the author who was a survivor of concentration camps in Nazi Germany, put it this way.

GRAPHIC 3 The Opposite of Love is Not Hate – It’s Indifference.

We can become jaded over time. We can find ourselves feeling like we need to protect what we have and somewhat resentful of other people. Maybe we just don’t even care that other people are suffering. A Christmas Carol is about Scrooge’s personal transformation, his salvation and redemption. God sends three spirits or messengers, angels or ghosts, in the middle of Christmas Eve night to confront Ebenezer Scrooge and lead him to an awakening. There is the Ghost


of Christmas Past and the Ghost of Christmas Present in the Ghost of Christmas Future.

When the Ghost of Christmas Past comes to visit Scrooge on Christmas Eve night, his first responses, “What business do you have with me?” I love the line of the spirit who says, “My business is your reclamation.” If you are in the business of reclamation that means you are taking things destined for destruction or things that don’t work anymore and you are restoring them. You’re redeeming them or making them useful again. I love the idea that this is a story about reclamation, redemption and restoration of something which is broken or is no longer useful. This is what God wants to do in our lives. The Christmas story is one of reclamation, redemption and restoration.

So Ebenezer Scrooge is taken by this first ghost to scenes from his past. He first is taken to scenes of his childhood and he was a joyful child. He wasn’t a Scrooge when he was a little boy, but very quickly you see painful experiences from his childhood. The truth is that we all have painful moments from our childhood – moments where we felt rejected or hurt in some way. The question is, “What do we do with those things?” Two main things can happen. Those experiences can deepen our souls and give us a greater compassion for others who are also hurting. The other is that they can cause damage or wounds which we let fester. We start to focus on them and get compulsive about them and it can cause bitterness. Ebenezer Scrooge took that latter path and became very bitter because of the hurt and pain in his past, but he didn’t have to be that way.

In another scene, Ebenezer is a young adult who is falling in love as he dances with a young woman. We begin to see that there might be hope for Scrooge but then he begins his work in accounting. As he begins that work, he is betrothed to be married. Somehow, he strays from the path of young love which included grace and kindness. He becomes focused on making more and more, scared to death of being poor. His focus on life becomes gaining wealth and we see what happens when we let fear grip us. In this next scene, Ebenezer is taken back to a time when his fiancée is calling off the engagement because she no longer recognizes the man she originally met. Let’s take a look.

VIDEO A Christmas Carol Clip 2

GRAPHIC 4 Ebenezer and Fiancé

“You were another man when we became engaged.” On more than one occasion I have had women who were members of our church come to me and


say to me, “My husband is changed. He’s not the man I married. That man was kind and giving and compassionate and tender, but he’s not that way towards me or our children anymore. He seems so focused on his career and getting ahead and planning for retirement. He hardly has time for us anymore and when he does he is impatient and mean and hurtful. I want my husband back. Pastor Jeff, how do I get him back?”

We all change over time and we are supposed to grow and mature. The idea as people of faith is that we would become more of what God wants us to be as we grow older. Hopefully we grow in love and kindness and compassion. This is what is supposed to happen to us and the path that leads to life. We are supposed to be walking down that path and over time, hopefully, we become more like Christ.

But we also have the opportunity to wander from that path and walk away from God and the things that God longs for us to be about in life. As we get farther and farther away from that path, the farther we are from that ideal that we are supposed to be, which is a loving human being who is caring and compassionate and patient and kind. The apostle Paul talks about it as the “fruit of the spirit,” in which we begin to embody love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control. This is the path that God has for us but if we choose we can become different in ways that are not life-giving but that are self-centered and focused on what we want. We all have that choice.

One of the questions that this story invokes for me is a profound one.

SLIDE Am I becoming more of the person God wants me to be each year, or less?

That’s a question I think we are all supposed to ask as we read the novel or watch the film. Am I my more patient, more kind, more loving, more gracious now than I was five or 10 years ago? Do I intend to be more so next year at this time? I have met many a Christian overtime who has become more narrow in the way the approach things as they grow and age. I have seen many become more hardened, more black-and-white, more easily angered and more judgmental as opposed to being more gracious and patient and understanding and open. Which one are you?

We see what Ebenezer Scrooge became and what path he chose. What Scrooge becomes overtime in life points to the reality that Christmas is really, at its heart, a story of redemption. Ebenezer Scrooge needed repentance and to be


able to see the error of his ways. He needed forgiveness and the ability to come back to a path that would lead to life and not loneliness and death. There is a word in the Greek language which describes what happened to Ebenezer Scrooge.

SLIDE Hamartia = “to miss the mark, stray from the path”

There is a similar word in Hebrew and both words are found in the Bible on multiple occasions. The English translation is the word, “sin.” We don’t like that word very much if we are honest. But literally, it means to stray from the path or to miss the mark. We also talk about it as brokenness and separation between us and God and what God wants for us and between us and others. Whenever there is brokenness or separation or missing the mark or straying from the path, there is sin and it is simply meant to describe the relationship.

When we walk away from God’s ideal for our lives then we have to turn and come back so we can find a new beginning. Christmas is about that new beginning. The Bible describes this as, “repentance.” The word literally means, “To have a change of mind and heart,” that leads back to a path with life.

SLIDE Repentance = “to have a change of mind and heart.

This is redemption, reclamation and restoration which is what Jesus came to offer. In the gospel of Matthew, chapter 1, we read these words about what happens to Joseph after he receives word that his fiancée Mary is pregnant.

SLIDE 20 As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. 21 And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

That child was born in Bethlehem would become our redeemer, a Savior who would suffer and die for the sins of the world. He would try to show us the way and in his first sermon in Matthew and Mark’s gospel is just one line. This is from Mathew 4.

SLIDE 17 From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.”

Some of you probably wish this sermon were one line! Jesus is literally reminding us how easy it is to stray from the path and that is time to think differently and have a change of heart and come back to God. The story of Jesus and his birth is a redemption story. We see it in the Christmas carols that we sing.


The composer of “Oh Holy Night,” penned these words.

SLIDE Long lay the world in sin and error pining

Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth

One of the things I love about A Christmas Carol is that Ebenezer Scrooge was in his 70s or 80s and has spent most of his lifetime going in the wrong direction but even he is not beyond redemption. God sends the spirits to redeem him, even as a 70 or 80-year-old man who has spent decades walking this path away from God. God says, “You are not beyond my reach. I can and will forgive you. I want to bring you back. I want you to find life, even if it’s so late in life. There is a chance for you to be reclaimed Ebenezer Scrooge.”

That tells us that none of us are beyond God’s redemptive reach. None of us have gone so far away from God or done something so horrible that God won’t take us back and give us a new beginning and a fresh start. That’s part of the gift of Christmas, that the baby who was born would be a Redeemer who would hang on the cross for the sins of the world and would offer us grace and forgiveness and mercy and put our feet back on the right path.

So in the last year, where have you wandered away from the path? Are you growing the way you want to be growing? Are you becoming more the person God wants you to be or are you following the path of Scrooge? Today the gift for all of us is an invitation to come back, to repent, and believe the good news of the gospel.

This leads us to the second ghost which comes to see Scrooge on that Christmas Eve. He is back in his room and he is trying to sleep but he can’t because he knows another visitor it is coming. Finally the Ghost of Christmas Present comes and takes him on a flight across the rooftops of London until they come to one of the poorest areas of the city. When they arrived there, Ebenezer Scrooge asks the ghost, “Why are we coming to these people’s homes? Why are we here in this part of town?”

The angel or ghost or spirit of Christmas Present shows him why. The house of the roof below them opens up in a vision and Scrooge can see inside and witness Christmas dinner where the family of Bob Cratchit has gathered. Bob Cratchit was a lone employee of Ebenezer Scrooge and was mistreated by his boss. He was paid as meager an income as Scrooge could possibly pay him and still keep him employed. Just before he left the office on Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge lectured him as to why he shouldn’t have to pay him to be off on


Christmas day. For the first time, Ebenezer Scrooge is seeing the family of Bob Cratchit in their own home and perhaps for the first time he really sees the son of Bob who is Tiny Tim who is very sick. Tiny Tim will not live till next Christmas if he doesn’t receive medical treatment which his father can’t afford because he is paid such a meager salary. Scrooge gets a chance to listen in on Christmas dinner which begins to lead to his conversion. Let’s take a look.


GRAPHIC 5 Cratchit Christmas Dinner

What’s happening to Ebenezer Scrooge? His heart is beginning to be like a human being again. For the first time, maybe in decades, he is beginning to care for someone besides himself. His apathy and indifference is wearing away and disappearing and suddenly he begins to feel something. There is compassion and concern for Tiny Tim and this is his conversion experience. His change of heart and change of thinking begins when he enters into someone else’s pain.

When Charles Dickens wrote this book he wanted people to see God’s compassion and concern for the people who were nobodies, pushed down, poor, oppressed and on the margins of society in London in 1800s. They were people who were made to feel small and looked down upon and God has concern for them. God loves everybody, those who are wealthy and successful, but the Scriptures teach us that he has a special concern for people who are pushed down.

We understand this because if we have two children and one of them is being made fun of or pushed down at school or they are struggling in life, don’t we want to just swoop them up in our arms and love them especially well? That’s how God is with his children. God is grateful for all of us but God’s heart breaks for his children who are struggling or being mistreated or pushed down or on the margins.

This is crystal clear in the Christmas story, especially in Luke’s gospel that we heard today. Matthew tells us about the wise men who come from the East with their expensive gifts but Luke’s gospel gives us a different perspective of the Christmas story because God is especially concerned for the poor. Mary and Joseph are peasants in the first century and with nowhere to stay they end up giving birth in a first century parking garage, a cave that would’ve been used for housing animals like donkeys and cattle. Luke tells us three times what kind of bed Jesus slept in which is an odd thing to tell if you think about it. Why would


you say that he was born in a Graeco? That’s a brand of crib today in case you are wondering.

What kind of bed did Jesus sleep in that first night? It was a manger which is the feeding trough for animals. It’s a very strange place to put a baby that is just been born and it’s even stranger that Luke tells us three times in the Christmas story this is where Jesus slept. Why does he tell us to so many times? Mary wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger. The angels came to the shepherds and said to them, “Behold, we give you good news of great joy. Unto you this day the city of David a child is born who is Christ the Savior. You will find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” When they arrived they find it just as the angel said, with Jesus wrapped in cloth and lying in a manger.

What would a 21st-century manger look like here in the United States? If a child were born in poverty today they might be in a clinic or maybe in a cheap rental apartment with little heat where they couldn’t afford much at the birth of their child. Not being able to afford a proper bed, or having a good place to stay, they might fix up a cardboard box with crumpled of newspapers to make it soft and then throw in some rags they might’ve found. That’s a picture of how Jesus came into this world. When God came and entered into our existence in human flesh and sent his son Jesus, the crib he slept in that first night would’ve been a cardboard box with newspapers crumpled up inside.

Why is Luke telling us this three times? Why did Luke tell us that some of the first people to find out where the night shift shepherds who were the poorest of the poor and the first century? It’s because the God has a special place in his heart for the poor and marginalized and the nobodies and the people made to feel small and we, if we are going to be followers of Jesus Christ, must have the same kind of heart and care for those who are struggling. Our heart is meant to break for the things that break God’s heart. That’s why A Christmas Carol has as its turning point Ebenezer Scrooge actually feeling something for someone else, compassion and concern for those who are pushed down.

The very first sermon Jesus preached that Luke records in his gospel is a bit different than the ones that Matthew and Mark record because Luke wants us to get this point. It actually comes right out of the Hebrew Bible which was the Bible that Jesus would’ve used, words from the prophet Isaiah in Luke 3.

SLIDE 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to


bring Good News to the poor.

Jesus would go on to talk about the last judgment and tell us that whenever people are hungry or thirsty or sick or naked or in prison or strangers, if we stop to help them, then we are serving Christ himself. If we didn’t do this we should be very, very afraid according to Jesus.

I think about the man who was all set to buy himself a nice, expensive gift for Christmas. It was something that he always wanted and he had saved the entire year’s we could buy this gift for himself and his family. He then found out that one of his employees whose wife had terminal cancer and they had racked up some serious medical bills that were crushing their family. Instead of buying this nice thing for himself as an early Christmas present, he took that money and paid off their medical bills. When he found out that the woman might not live until this time next year, he decided to send their family on a vacation somewhere with their kids who are 8 and 10 years old. He wanted those kids to be able to forge memories with their mom for those 10 days and they would never forget so they could have one last gift. That family left earlier this week on their vacation.

Not all of us have the resources to pay off an employee’s medical bills and then send their family on a vacation as a Christmas gift, but what do we do when we see people hurting and in need? We talked a few weeks ago in a sermon about angels here in our congregation about a family that was down to their last $40 and they were in line at the grocery store and they realized they had $50 worth in their cart. They were scrambling to figure out what to put back when the clerk told them their bill had been paid by the person in front of them who said to wish them a Merry Christmas. What if we just kept our eyes open and when we saw people in need we were willing to give $10 or $20 or afford to pay $50 for someone’s groceries we just did it in the spirit of Christmas and a God who came as an infant to a peasant couple with nothing to their name?

As people of faith, our hearts are supposed to get bigger and not smaller as we grow closer to Christ and follow the path that God longs for us to follow. Yes, it’s easy for us to become jaded because we see people who rip us off or take advantage and take the money and do the wrong things with it, but we can’t let that destroy the spirit which God has placed inside each of us to become generous and compassionate and have concern for the nobody’s and those who are pushed down and made to feel small. We are God’s instruments for helping those who God sees and cares about deeply. God has special concern for those


who are struggling and his heart breaks and our hearts are meant to beat as his. Are we paying attention this Christmas season?

Here’s the second question I have to ask every Christmas. Am I becoming more generous every year? Am I more generous this year than I was last year or five or 10 years ago? Do I notice people who are suffering more or have I become more jaded? Christmas is a time to get back on the path and see people the way God sees them, with a heart that breaks for those for whom God’s heart breaks.

Scrooge is back in bed and he is now waiting for one last messenger, the Ghost of Christmas Future. He shows Scrooge things that are to come if nothing else changes and Scrooge continues on his chosen path. He’s taken to the Cratchit house once more in the corner he sees a lonely crutch with no Tiny Tim anymore. He then is taken to a business with three men in suits who are talking and laughing about someone who has just died. They talk about how this man never loved anyone or cared for anyone so they are wondering who will get all of his gold and belongings that he has left behind. Who are they talking about? Suddenly, Scrooge realizes they are talking about him and his selfless life.

Finally, he is taken to the cemetery where he sees his own tombstone and his date of death is Christmas day. His transformation and conversion is complete as he cries out, “Spirit, hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been. Assure me spirit, that I yet may change the shadows you have shown me by an altered life. I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.”

That is repentance. I know who I used to be but I don’t want to be that person anymore. I want to keep Christmas all year long and be a different kind of man or woman than I was. That call of repentance, the cry for forgiveness and grace, is the final step in the conversion of Ebenezer Scrooge.

It’s interesting that this happened for Scrooge as he glimpsed death, both his own and that of Tiny Tim. Somehow, when we think about death or have a close brush with death, whether it’s a close friend or family member or our own, it tends to lead us to the big existential questions. “What does my life mean anyway? Did I make a difference while I was here? Did I leave a legacy? Will anybody even be sorry that I’m gone? Is the world any better because I was here or is it actually may be worse?”

Beyond that are the questions of judgment like, “What will happen when I


die, if anything? Is there any hope beyond death?” It’s these questions which finally lead us to take that next step of repentance and change which are about following Christ, something bigger and deeper.

I have been with many people who have made the journey from life to death. I was visiting recently with a chaplain at the hospital and we were talking about death and I asked them if they witnessed the difference between persons who were people of faith who were dying and those who had no faith in something more and they talked about the struggle of those with no faith and how they go into death kicking and screaming and often times in pain, as opposed to those who have a sense of peace because they believe in their heart that the baby born in Bethlehem would one day say to his disciples, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those of you who believe in me, even though you die, yet shall you live, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.”

It makes a difference that Jesus said to his disciples just before his own death, “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place for you then I will come back for you that you might be with me where I am. In my father’s house there are many rooms.”

Those words change how we face death. In the end, after the crucifixion of Jesus, on the third day there was a resurrection and it makes all the difference as we face our own mortality that death will not have the final word. Here is a note from a woman who is relatively young, in her 60s, and in the care of hospice as she faces the last days or weeks of her life and the journey that is to come.

I reiterate what I have said before. I am so thankful to still be here, to enjoy God and life, my family and friends. It seems that it may not be long now until I get to find out what comes next.

Can you hear the spirit in her words? She is not looking forward to dying, but she is also not terrified and dreading death because she sees it as an adventure. She is grateful for every day she has, but knows there is something coming beyond that because she trusts in the Christ that was born in Bethlehem, who lived and talked about resurrection, and then who backed up his words by being raised from the dead. Christ offers this life to each of us which is the most powerful redemption there is in the Christmas story.

The woman’s husband finished her note…

Join us in soaking in the spirit of this beautiful season, in which we honor Jesus who was born to, “set free those who are held in slavery their entire lives


by their fear of death (Hebrews 2).” May you find the same peace and trust that I get to see every day in my wife.

Without this faith, death looms large in our lives. I am pretty sure that I have fewer days ahead of me than I have behind me in life. If we have no hope for something happening after this life, then every single day we live is one less day that we have. What a depressing thought! Time flies when you get past 50 and we can dread every day because it’s one day closer to death, unless we don’t see death as the end, in which case, every day that we live is one day closer to the great adventure which is in store for us after this life. This life is really just the preface to that great adventure if we are people of faith in Jesus Christ.

I can promise you that every one of us knows someone who will die the next year, a coworker or cousin or a friend or a sibling or a parent or grandparent or maybe even a spouse or God forbid, even a child. I was visiting this week with a family who had their children taken from them suddenly just before this Christmas season. There is only one light which penetrates that kind of darkness, and that’s the hope that when this life is over there is something more and that Christ meant what he said, and because of that I might see my loved ones again someday and they are okay and safe in God’s arms. That changes everything.

We sing about that too in the Christmas carols.

SLIDE Good Christian men, rejoice, with heart and soul and voice;

Now ye need not fear the grave: Peace! Peace! Jesus Christ was born to save!

Calls you one and calls you all, to gain His everlasting hall.

Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save!

Are you still imprisoned to the fear of death or have you been set free?

Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning and he is a changed man. For the first time in decades, he can laugh. His heart is now generous and he longs to give to others. He could dance and he could even sing.


GRAPHIC 6 Scrooge on Ground

When there is singing and dancing and giving away there is redemption. Scrooge has been converted and reclaimed. Have you ever wondered where Charles Dickens got the name for his protagonist? Scrooge just sounds kind of


mean and nasty, but why did Dickens choose Ebenezer as his first name? You might be familiar with that term if you are a long time Christian because there is a hymn “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” which uses the term. We sing these words.

SLIDE “Here I raise mine Ebenezer…”

What is in Ebenezer? That hymn was actually written about 100 years before Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol and it was a popular song in England at the time. It’s actually two Hebrew words which are squished together.

SLIDE Eben = “stone”

Ezer = “deliverer or helper”

An “eben” is a stone and an “ezer” is a deliverer or helper that comes alongside someone who is weak and struggling and in need of help. It’s a stone of help. We find these two words put together used several times in Scripture and Charles Dickens chose this name for his lead character to point towards a truth, that while he might’ve began his life as a Scrooge he had become an Ebenezer, a sign of God’s help, God’s love, God’s comfort and God’s deliverance. He would become an instrument that God would use to bring hope and healing and strength to other people as he moved back towards the path of following God. He had been a Scrooge but he became an Ebenezer. Here is how the story ends.


GRAPHIC 7 Scrooge Reborn

Forgiveness and redemption; a kind and generous heart; freedom from the fear of death are all the gifts that God offers us a Christmas. My last question for us today is simple. Will we leave this place continuing to be a Scrooge or will we be in Ebenezer?

Would you put your hands on your lap like you’re going to receive a gift from God? I would like for us to pray together and invite you to whisper this prayer under your breath quietly to God, if you feel like this prayer captures what you are feeling right now.

SLIDE Prayer

Thank you God for Christmas. Thank you for sending Jesus Christ. Redeem me and forgive me Lord. Bring me back to the right path. Enlarge my heart oh God. Help me to grow more kind and generous and caring. Take away from me


the fear of death, and replace it with your hope. Thank you God for Christmas. In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen

theme: the reel christmas story christmas eve a …€¦ · · 2017-07-17six minute black and...

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