Scripture: Luke 2:1-14; Titus 2:11-14 Series: Christmas Season
Because the birth of Christ is the great contingent moment that changed the world’s direction, our worth no longer hangs on the forks and counterfactuals of our own lives — God loves us unconditionally and takes from us the pressure to save ourselves.
Illustrations: mcclellan-antietam-lost-orders, one-word-generals, gettysburg-contingent-moments, chattanooga-ridge-assault, walker-of-the-year, seventh-grade-offensive-guard, almost-music-major, trombonist-audition-cartoon, whirlpool-of-counterfactuals
December 24, 2025
The Rescue
Christmas Eve
Titus 2:11-14. Luke 2:1-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. o gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds. - Titus 2:11-14
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room. Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
- Luke 2:1-14
I’ve long been fascinated by military history because of the nature of contingency. All military history plays on this balance of contingency versus inevitability. In hindsight, almost every battle result looks inevitable, but in actuality, they are all contingent circumstances.
A great example of this is the battle of Antietam in the Civil War, when George McClellan, the worst officer, and in my perspective, the worst officer in US military history, any branch. One of his soldiers stumbles upon the Confederate Battle plans and McClellan falls into victory, but he doesn’t press his advantage.
The famous names of military history are filled with the people who pressed their advantage. They have one word names: Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon. Wellington. They found an advantage and they pressed it. McClellan did not. But it was contingent. The battle could have gone in a different direction. Gettysburg is another great example.
The country is on a precipice. Every history of Gettysburg is built around these four incredibly contingent moments where the results could have gone in another direction and the confederate army could have marched on Washington.
The first is the first day of Gettysburg, when Oliver Howard rallies the First Corps, and they hold strong and make a strategic retreat to Cemetery Ridge. The second day on Little Round Top, on the southern end of the battlefield, when the flank is held by the charge of Joshua Chamberlain and the 20th Maine Volunteers, with the 1st Minnesota, when 250 men charged the 1700 strong Alabama brigade and forced them to break ranks. And on the third day, on Cemetery Ridge, and Pickett’s charge, another extremely contingent moment. Many lambasted the foolishness of Pickett and the Confederates in charging up a fortified position, yet less than a year later, at Chattanooga, the Union Army will do an even greater assault on a well defended ridgeline, and take it. So it was a feasible moment, a contingent moment, but the southerners failed. It could have crushed the Union line. The troops were fresh. But the line held and the direction of the country changed. Historians call it the high water mark of the Civil War. These contingent moments, it could have gone one way, it could have gone another.
Christmas Eve
Now, we’re here on Christmas Eve. It is not a history lecture. But the reason why we’re here on Christmas Eve is that there was another even greater contingent moment that we are remembering and celebrating where the world could’ve gone a different way, where our lives today can go a different way, and that is why we are here tonight.
On the surface, this doesn’t feel like one of those contingent moments. You could have stayed home and your life might have been the same. You might have had an extra drink or prepped for tomorrow or got some dishes out of the way, it doesn’t feel like a fork in the road moment in world history like Picket’s charge.
We often feel contingent moments in our own lives. Moments when the trajectory of our life could have gone in a different direction. Maybe the moment when we meet a future spouse, when we pick which college to go to, which major to commit to. Even in high school when we decide how much to study, what grades we are comfortable with.
Walking
I grew up in College Station, Texas. I went to A&M Consolidated High School. I was the child of a faculty member at A&M. Most of my good friends or children of faculty members at A&M. They were quite impressive people. They did really well in school and got lots of awards.
At the end of Senior Year, we had an award ceremony at the high school, to honor people who had been gotten different awards, National Merit Scholar, different scholarships. I was surprisingly invited to this event.
So were my friends, who were off to Stanford and Yale and places like that. They were getting their fancy awards. Friends who were accepted into the Naval Academy and West Point were being honored. It could have been a contingent moment.
I was honored that night, not because of a scholarship I was going to receive or as National Scholar. I was honored because I had earned Student of the year in a class. Each of the teachers was able to name a student of the year. Often, it would be padded on to all the other big awards.
I didn’t get any other honors, only one. My award was Student of the Year in walking.
There was a PE class that I could get for a credit. It was one semester long called Walking. And you can imagine what we did. We walked. I was not in any varsity athletics in high school. I had tried football in seventh grade. They placed me as an offensive guard because in seventh grade, that’s where you put the least athletic people. So my, my athletic career did not continue.
I still needed a semester and a half of PE credits to graduate high school, so I took walking and I was named Walker of the Year, not because I was the best walker, there were people who are better at walking than me, but because the coach liked me.
When I think back at the trajectory of my life, I could have tried harder in high school. I could have got better grades. I could have been more successful than I was. There’s this contingency; my life could have gone in a different direction. I was blessed to be able to get into UT. I don’t think I would’ve gotten into UT today.
In college, I picked the major that would let me get out of college as soon as possible, which was English and History. I had had some AP credits, so I was able to finish that in three years. But doing that limited what I could do going forward. All this was before my call from God, my vocation. That took place in the summer after my freshman year.
I was on this trajectory that was contingent. It could have gone another way. I could have decided to go to Engineering school. I could have done pre-med. Once I chose not to do those majors, those options were off for me. I couldn’t go to medical school. I couldn’t be an engineer. I couldn’t be an accountant. There are options I could have had with my liberal arts degree, but it was contingent and choices were made. I had another choice about whether to major in music.
I even got all the forms signed and I was going to switch to a performance major and switch out of the liberal arts college. I was excited, I was earnest about it. I was really good. I felt like I could be successful in this music. And there was a moment, a crossroads where my life could have gone one direction and it didn’t. And part of that was remembering this old cartoon that I had seen on another professor’s door when I was taking music lessons. The cartoon had two trombonists sitting in a chair next to each other. The caption was, remember the person sitting next to an audition has practiced an hour more than you every day of their life.
I thought to myself: I don’t know if I want that life, but it was a contingency, it was a fork in the road.
All of us have had moments like this. I just share mine to illustrate this point. All of you have had these moments of contingency, whether or not you were looking at your own resumé and seeing the resumes and the people around you and they’re like, oh my gosh, look at all these scholarships and awards and I’m just Walker of the year.
And you may think my life could have been like this. I could have done this. I could have done that. You get stuck in this whirlpool of hypotheticals. I think for a lot of people who’ve had challenges in their work life, they think about, what if I had done this? What if I applied to this job? A lot of people with challenges in their married life. What if I had done this? What if I made this decision earlier? People challenged in grief. What if I had said this? What if I had done this?
These counterfactuals can be suffocating because we can always home in on these contingent moments in our life when we could have gone in a different direction but it didn’t.
Christmas
One of the great hopes of Christmas is that the world changed direction at the coming of Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, to give us life, to heal the brokenness of sin in this world. When we encounter Jesus, the pressure of the contingencies of our own lives can fade away. We are no longer defined by our jobs, our families, our kids. Our worth is not in relation to our peers or are neighbors.
Whether your list of accomplishments is a full page long or you are just Walker of the Year, you are loved and forgiven by God. Whether your marriage is successful or broken, you are loved by God. Whether your relationship with your kids is amazing or not, you are loved by God.
Your worth and your value is not based on a decision you made when you were 16 or when you were 20, or when you were 23 or when you were 28 or 38 or 68. Those decisions shape us. They do not define us. You are not defined by how you acted as a child. And if you are younger, you are not defined by what you do right now. There’s more to you than every decision you make. And we see that at Christmas. You are loved so much that God took the pressure off your life so that you don’t have to save yourself. That’s what Jesus does. By coming to us, he takes the pressure away from us so that we no longer have to save ourselves. The anxiety that we are not good enough need not rule us.
And so the contingent moments in our lives, the battlefields of our lives, where our path could have gone one way but went another, these moments no longer carry the same force. Christ’s love has been offered to you. Whether your CV is six pages long or it is empty, you are loved. That is what Christmas is. Accept that love. There are no conditions. Accept it, receive it, hold it. In the darkness of the night, remember that at your worst, God loved you and came for you.
This night is not accidental. It isn’t simply happenstance. The axis of the world swerves with a child born who is love incarnate.
And when you are lost, God will find you and bring you home.
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.