Christmas Eve 2012

Christmas Eve, 2012 

Luke 2:1-20

This is my favorite night of the whole year; has been since I was a little girl. I remember going to the candle light service at my grandparents’ church in Kansas and getting to stay up very late. When I close my eyes I can see the light is soft and yellow and glowing. I can see the lights on the Christmas Tree in the corner which is covered with the snowflakes my grandma crocheted. And I can feel the candle my grandma and I held together and hear our voices mingle as I sit on her lap and we sing Silent Night. 

I know Christmas Day is supposed to be the big deal, but for me Christmas Eve takes the cake.  I think part of why I like it so much is something about the anticipation. Something about the waiting, the expectation I really enjoy. I love the excitement and eagerness.  I relish the planning, the thinking about gifts and the shopping the baking and the decorating – I love the decorating. And I love remembering the feelings of Christmas Eves passed. I conjure up that pleasant little bit of anxiety, that expectancy, that joy and I like to just sit in those feelings for a while. 

Of course, often even the anticipation is over too quickly. I have always, also since childhood to even now, wished that the candlelight part of the Christmas Eve service could go on just a little bit longer. It’s always been too short as far as I was concerned. Extinguishing my candle when the lights come back up was the worst part of the night. I wanted Silent Night to go on forever. I wanted that soft glow of candlelight and a little bit of Christmas magic to linger. I’m always wanting more of it, more of the music, more of the experience, more of the feeling. It’s like I’m anticipating something else happening, like I know there is something near, but yet just out of reach. 

As I’ve grown older I’ve learned how to enjoy it all a bit more – the anticipation and the actual experience itself. It helps that I get to plan the worship service and I get to decide how long we’ll hold our candles and sing Silent Night. J But more theologically speaking, I’ve come to understand that anticipation is actually a huge part of what it means to be a follower of Christ. We are a paradoxical people, living in an “already and not yet” kind of world. What I mean is that we live in a world where we have heard the angels singing Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth. And we live in a world that does not yet glorify God or have peace. And so we live having glimpsed the glory of the light of Christ and in anticipation of that day when that light will be the light of the world. We anticipate a time when, as Revelation says, God will renew the whole earth, or as Isaiah says the lion will lie down with the lamb and or as the angels sing, there will be peace on earth. 

It seems like this year, with the shots in Newtown, CT still ringing in our ears, we have more reason than ever to despair over the darkness of the world, to believe that Christ’s light, if it ever existed, has been snuffed out. That day 26 innocents died, and since then, in 10 days, another 146 have died by gun violence. These are not signs of a world full of peace or comfort or joy. 

I was reading a blog post my friend Jim wrote the other day. He remembers growing up in the 50’s his mother’s brittle and chipping plaster manger scene. It was one where all the parts and some hay were originally glued to the bottom of the crèche but had long since come unglued and now when the floor folded up and the scene closed up like a suitcase, all the pieces banged together and one or two sheep were missing an ear and the angel’s wing had been glued several times. He remembers that on December 26^th his mother would fold up the crèche with all the pieces inside and put it away on the floor of her closet to wait for the next year. 

We do it every year, right? We pack up the lights and the candles, we wrap up Mary and Joseph, the shepherds and the kings, the cows and the sheep and the camels – and Jesus. All the planning, all the anticipation, all the decorating and giving and singing, and it all gets packed up to wait for next year. And that is fine, good even to avoid clutter. The problem is when we do the same thing with our faith. All too often we take out Jesus when we think we need him, or when we want to feel nice, or are feeling particularly nostalgic. Or even worse, when we’re trying to prove a point, as though Jesus is around purely to support us in our arguments. 

But the reason we celebrate Christmas faithfully every year is not to simply gaze at a cute little baby figurine, it is to be reminded that God comes to us over and over, every day in very unlikely circumstances. That the light of God is not and will not be snuffed out when we carry it with us into our world.

It is the light of the stars God showed to Abraham and Sarah and promised that through them God would bless the world. It is the light of the burning bush calling Moses to lead God’s liberation movement. It is the light of our salvation, of whom shall we be afraid? It is the light which the people walking in darkness have seen and on whom those living in the land of deep darkness has dawned. It is the light that the darkness try as it might shall never overcome and the light that guides our feet into the way of peace. The light is ancient and it is new and it is everlasting. 

Each day, each moment this light is renewed in us. Whenever we encounter joy, the kind of joy that fills our hearts with mirth and our bellies with laughter, God is there. Whenever we encounter pain and our hearts overflow with compassion and our hands with acts of mercy, God is there. Whenever we encounter oppression and we take action for justice, God is there. 

This is the light we sing of tonight. But at our best, with the support of one another and the by a huge helping of the grace of God, this is the light we carry in our hearts throughout our lives to wherever and whatever the Spirit calls us. One of the reasons we admire Mary and Joseph so much, even the shepherds too, is that these folks are just regular people like us. But they are people whose hearts and minds were lit by the light of Christ and who followed the Spirit’s call to Bethlehem and beyond. 

This year especially, we cannot blithely sit by and pretend that all is calm and bright in our world. We know there is darkness and we know that it is closer than any of us would ever like to admit. It is our call, it is our job, it is our business to be about the work of light-spreading all our days until the day comes when the one true Light returns to bring lasting peace. 

So tonight, when we light our candles and sing Silent Night, you will be invited to place your candle in the sand box because this year our light will not go out. We will not snuff the light of Christ within us. We will sing Joy to the World with our heads held high and our hearts full of the light and the joy of Christ. Amen.