2 Christmas B January 4, 2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Jeremiah 31: 7-14 + Ephesians 1: 3-14 + John 1: 1-18
Grace and peace to you from God, who has come into the world in the form of the Prince of Peace. Amen.
One of the most beautiful moments in this building every year happens on Christmas Eve. As we reach the conclusion of our worship service, the lights are dimmed and the choir begins to sing. As they are singing we begin a ritual that is exquisitely simple. Light from a candle here in the chancel is shared with a person at the end of each pew. Candle touches candle. Flame lights flame. In turn, the light is passed from that person to the next to the next and on to the end of the row. As the darkened sanctuary begins to fill with magical pinpoints of light, we join our voices and sing….
Silent Night. Holy Night. All is calm. All is bright.
At the end of the sacred hymn, we lift our candles together, high into the dark night, in a wordless prayer for peace.
It is breathtaking. It is a moment that makes us believe again that peace in our time, peace that the Christ child came to bring, is something that is entirely possible. That on this holy night when strangers and families wedge into the pews together, the faces that are illuminated by the glow of those candles are lit by the divinity of the Christ child. That somehow God is shining in each one of us.
What has come into being in him was life and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
I remember well my first Christmas Eve service here, six Christmas Eve’s ago. I was used to the Midwestern tradition that EVERYONE went to church on Christmas Eve, because well, it was Christmas. The Christ-mass. The congregation I served had to put folding chairs down the side aisles and after the processional hymn they put them up down the middle aisle. Sometimes the folding chairs had to spill out into the narthex. The fire department always looked the other way as we exceeded our occupancy allowance many times over.
So I was rather surprised when that was not what I experienced here. And I confess that I remain slightly puzzled. But I’m going with my hope that those who are not here are worshipping somewhere, perhaps with family or friends or in a warmer climate.
What I’ve come to relish over these years are the folks that we are blessed to meet on that one night of the year. And after six Christmas Eve’s in this place, some of them are familiar to me. There is the family with just the nicest young son. Only this year he stood head and shoulders above his mother. “See you next year!” he called out as he left. And I truly believe that when they are here on that one night of the year, they know God, not only in our singing and in the telling of the Nativity story, but in the flickering light of a candle’s flame as it is passed from one person to the next.
Today is still Christmas in the Church. It will be Christmas until January 6th, which is the Epiphany – the day we say the magi reached Jesus, although Scripture tells us he was something like two years old by that time. But in the Church, we keep time differently. It is Kairos, God’s time. It is time that is able to compress years into weeks and that is able to start over in its remembering every year. It is time that holds the story of the history of Israel and our adoption into that story. It is time that holds the covenants that God made with God’s people. It is time that holds God, with us, Emmanuel.
And because it is Kairos, God’s time, and not our time, which is Chronos, this time can also hold the darkness. Even as the light of Christ shines into that darkness, the Christmas season is able to carry both the light and the dark. Because the Christmas story in its fullness also holds sorrows as well as joys. It holds the weariness of Joseph and Mary and all of those who journeyed for the census. It holds the need for shelter that Mary and Joseph experienced. It holds the mothers who were not to be consoled when Herod murdered their children. And it holds the inevitable death of the child who is lying in the wooden manger, on the wood of a cross.
These threads of sorrow that run through the Christmas story extend into our present time. Even today there are weary travelers who cannot find rest. Even today there are not enough places to house those who need a warm and safe place to live. Even today, mothers mourn for the senseless deaths of their children – at school, or while walking home from the convenience store, or while sitting on duty in their patrol car. Even at Christmas the hungry need food and the weary need rest.
The mystery of the incarnation, of God come to dwell with us, is that it blesses both what is sacred in our life together and what is difficult in this journey. That God would choose to come as the most vulnerable among us, a baby born to unmarried, temporarily homeless parents, is a hopeful and hope filled mystery.
While my hopes are that those of us who are not here on Christmas Eve are worshiping elsewhere, what I have come to actually value is that on that night we become a place where hope is found for people who are not really strangers, but seekers. That something has drawn them to ask what is so special about this story. What is it in a story of a baby’s birth that offers some glimmer of light in the darkest of places? So in some ways I am able to imagine that you all have offered up your usual places in the pews so that someone else might hear the Good News. (Of course, be assured that if you were to come on our next Christmas Eve, there would be a place for you here too. Perhaps next to that lovely young man and his mother.)
Every Christmas Eve and every Christmas season offers us a chance to see with new eyes the humanity of Jesus. We see it in the baby in the manger and in his young, frightened mother. We see it in Joseph and in the astonished shepherds. And in seeing Jesus in that humanity – in seeing the divine come to dwell among us and take on our flesh, we are offered the hope that the prophet Jeremiah spoke of in our first reading today: “They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall become like a watered garden, and they shall never languish again. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.”
And in turn, each Christmas Eve and each Christmas season offers us a chance to see with new eyes the divine in one another. In the children making their way to the border. In the young man lying dead in the street for hours. In the missing school girls. In those who are in need of lunch or gloves or hats or scarves. In those who are in need of a place to live. Their divinity is illuminated by the light of Christ, shining into the darkness.
When we light our candles and sing Silent Night, “we honor the light that shines in the darkness, a light that unflinchingly shows us the world as it is and offers us a vision of what the world might become. In the space in between, it’s our work to look for the humanity of Christ in the humanity of each other, and to protect, nurture, and cherish it in all the forms it takes.” [1]
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
Thanks be to God for the gift of the Christ Child. Amen.
[1] Paulsell, Stephanie. Harvard Divinity School.