Reflection notes for Christmas Eve 2010...

NOTE: Here are my closing notes for the Christmas Eve worship this year. As has become my custom, I don't really preach or teach on this night; I leave most of the discernment to the lessons and carols. But just before we leave - just before we move into total candle light and sing "Silent Night" - I offer a brief refleciton - and then a blessing. Here's what strikes me this year...

There is an old, old English Christmas carol that our Puritan ancestors in Great Britain not only banished in their day, but sent so far underground that it wasn’t reclaimed for the people until some 400 years later. We know it as the Sussex Carol that Ralph Vaughn Williams resurrected early in the 20th century – and it is a treasure. The first verse begins: On Christmas night all Christians sing to hear the news the angels bring… news of great joy and cause of great mirth, glad tidings of our Savior’s birth.

• Do you know it? It is one of my favorites – with a delightfully tricky syncopation – that goes on to proclaim the importance and promise of Christ’s birth.

• The carol ends like this: When sin departs before his grace then life and health come in its place – for out of darkness we have light which made the angels sing this night: Glory to God and peace to men, now and for evermore. Amen!

That is what we have been called to proclaim – and embody – because of Christmas: the joy of God’s grace, the light of God’s love within the equally real darkness and the way of Christ’s peace in a broken and wounded world. Joy, love and peace – almost sounds like an Al Green song, doesn’t it? Simple words and yet so hard to make flesh within and among us, too: Eugene Peterson, the man who brought us The Message version of the Bible, has written that:

In the fifty years of being a pastor, my most difficult assignment continues to be the task of developing a sense among the people I serve of the soul-transforming implications of grace – a comprehensive, foundational reorientation from living anxiously by our wits and muscle to living effortlessly in the world of God’s active presence. For the prevailing truth in North American culture – which is not all that different from the Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman culture of our biblical ancestors – is, to all intents and purposes, is to live in a persistent denial of grace.

Consequently, pastors are usually hesitant to say anything real to those who gather on Christmas Eve to hear the lessons and sing the carols, right? I understand that problem and over the years have tried to solve it – usually without much success.

• Sometimes I’ve tried to be prophetic and profound on this night – which never works – because people don’t come to worship on Christmas Eve to hear something new.

• Sometimes I’ve tried to tap into the zeitgeist of this season’s sadness and speak about a blue Christmas – and believe me that REALLY doesn’t work – because on Christmas Eve people don’t want to hear something sad.

• And I’ve even tried to go the popular culture route of being sentimental and sweet – retelling some of the cute and insipid stories of the season – but that usually leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth – mine included – like too much cotton candy at the fair.

So now on Christmas Eve I usually just let the ancient readings speak new truths to our hearts – make certain that like the angels we have lots of good Christmas songs to sing that bring news of great joy and mirth of the glad tidings of our Savior’s birth – and take a few minutes before we sing “Silent Night” to share the promise of Christmas with you in a nutshell. By grace I have come to trust that the rest is up to the Lord.

So here it is – the blessing of Christmas Eve – as I understand it in 2010: In Christ Jesus the Lord our God has clearly chosen NOT to “dwell with the high and mighty, but with the lowly, the unexpected, and those considered ‘nothing’ by this world.” That is to say, people very much like you and me.

Not because we deserve it or have earned it – not at all – this blessing comes to us as pure grace: a gift of love from the source of love. And just so that we might begin to grasp this blessing God comes to us in “weakness and vulnerability” – as a poor child – born to very ordinary parents in a sad and forgotten place. (David Lose at http://www.workingpreacher.org/

And here is the truly good news of Christmas Eve: If God can work in and through such ordinary characters as Mary and Joseph and all the rest, could it also be true that perhaps God can also work in and through you and me? The stories of the Bible have been passed on to us, I think, “to make sure we realize that it is not just human flesh "in general" that God takes on in Christ; it is our flesh. And it is not simply history "in general" that God enters via this birth, it is our history and our very lives to which God is committed.” (Lose)

Are you with me? Of course there is nothing new here – it is the old, old story of Jesus and his love – and yet…

… and yet we need to recall “that this story of long ago is not only about angels and shepherds, a mother and her newborn. It is also about us – all of us gathered amid the candles and readings, the carols and prayers. God came at Christmas for us, that we might have hope and courage amid the dark and dangerous times and places of our lives.”

And so we gather: to remember – to sing – and to be blessed again by the Word made flesh trusting that God might also enter us, too.

May he who by his incarnation gathered into one all things earthly and heavenly, fill you with the sweetness of inward peace and goodwill; and the blessing of God Almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be upon you and remain with you always.