Christmas Eve!! Preaching is a challenge, and a joy (I think). There's still usable Advent material in my previous blog, "Preaching Advent" - but beyond that, here are some key questions and thoughts I’ve
assembled over the years of preaching Christmas Eve.
(a) What
do they come for? I try to remember what people came for – and precious few
would say We come on Christmas Eve to
hear Rev. Howell’s sermon. They come
for the music, and at our place for that magical moment when we sing Silent Night, lower the lights, and
raise our candles. It’s hokey – and I
love it. I’ve tried to name the wonder
so it isn’t just “pretty.” If it’s
beautiful, it’s because it happens in the dark.
Lots of darkness in the world, and in our lives; so the little candle is
a promise, a pledge, a defiance. It’s a
parable of a faithful life of resistance to evil.
It’s also helpful to help them hear their own music. We have a soprano sing “O Holy Night,” and
there’s much in there (“chains shall he break…”); last year I drew their
attention to “Then he appeared, and the soul felt its worth” – suggesting that
the order matters: it is the appearing
of Jesus that defines our worth. We sing
“Away in a Manger,” and I’ve invited them to pray the last stanza (“Be near me
Lord Jesus, I ask thee to stay close by me forever, and love me I pray; bless
all the dear children in thy tender care, and fit us for heaven to live with
thee there”). When I wrote a book about Christmas music (Why This Jubilee?) a couple of years ago, I found myself surprised, delighted and moved over and over by the depth of theology and psychology and geography and history in our simple carols; I now try to help people really hear what they've sung by heart forever.
(b) Who comes? It’s a cheap shot to ding the C&Es. We aren’t crowded on Dec. 24 because of
them. Rather, everybody comes – and they
bring visiting parents, aunts, grandchildren, etc. But you do have the very occasional attender –
and how to speak to them invitingly? I’m
fond of what the novelist Julian Barnes said:
“I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.” I believe the most adamant atheist, and the
most casual spiritual person have a deep-seated longing for home – for Christ. Name the hollow place for what it is.
(c) What do they need to hear? I’ve chided the sporadic attenders and
pleaded with them to continue coming.
Not helpful. I do suspect
Christmas Eve isn’t a bad time to quite gently take on popular atheism. Among the many anti-Christian bestsellers was
God is Not Great, by Christopher
Hitchens (may God rest his soul…). I’d
play on that and say, Correct, God is not great. God, rather, is quite small, vulnerable, a
God who doesn’t conquer everything but gets defeated in the most profound
embodiment of suffering love ever. Jesus
did not rise up miraculously in the manger and denounce his foes. Jesus has a tender place in his heart for
Christopher Hitchens.
And Bart Ehrman. Amazingly, and
weirdly, a few years ago I received an email from him – on Christmas Eve. I had been trying to connect with him on
something – and he finally responded around suppertime on 12/24. I had reviewed his book, God’s Problem, which is an embarrassingly vapid regurgitation of
the most simplistic, easily answered critiques of Christianity – and his email
to me said he didn’t like worshipping with his Episcopalian wife on Christmas
Eve, because they raise all those candles.
“If good Christians would do something for the poor instead of raising
those candles, I would think more highly of Christianity.” I replied to him that, yes, a few thousand
would raise candles at my place on this evening – but we also would raise over
$100,000 for the poor.
(d) What mood are they in? Some are sentimental, some are giddy, some
are edgy – facing family dysfunction.
Some have already been drinking. I think almost all are in a bit of a “What
really matters” mood. If you’ve never
read Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas
in Wales, you should. He says this: “One
Christmas was so
much like another… I can never remember if it snowed for 6 days and 6 nights
when I was 12 or 12 days and 12 nights when I was 6… All the Christmases roll
down to the sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was
our street.” I’ve used this tactic: I’ll
ask, What did you get for Christmas in
1998? Or in 2004? No one can
remember, of course. Then I ask, Whom did you love in 1998? Who was with you in 2004? “Through the years we all will be together.” It’s not the stuff. I giggle when I recall my girls getting bikes
on Christmas Eve. But what year was
it? And where on earth are those bikes
now? It’s the people, the love, the relationship. That’s all we have to give, all we really
want to receive. And that’s what God
gives. Not this thing or that answer to
prayer. God gives God’s own self at
Christmas.
(e) What
is my tone? Of all preaching
moments, my tone on 12/24 had best be gentle, slower than usual, resonant with
wisdom, patience, kindness and wonder.
Sighing is in order. If you have
a smart-alecky voice like mine, you have to practice.
(f) Where
do I go first? Since homilies on
Christmas Eve should be short, you have to take people somewhere quickly. Not a lot of reiterating the text, or ramping
in with chit-chat. And you have to take
them to a very different place quickly.
Could be your grandparents’ Christmas tree. I like a couple of historical moments. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s wife died in
1835, he remarried in 1843, then she died in a house fire in 1861; shortly
thereafter his son was wounded in the Civil War. With war raging, and bearing so much loss, he
woke up on Christmas day and wrote, “I heard the bells on Christmas day Their old familiar carols play, and wild and
sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, good will to men. And thought how, as the day had come, The
belfries of all Christendom Had rolled along the unbroken song of peace on
earth, good will to men. A voice, a
chime, a chant sublime of peace on earth, good will to men. The cannon
thundered in the South, And with the sound the carols drowned of peace on
earth, good will to men. And in despair I bowed my head ‘There is no peace on
earth,’ I said, ‘For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good
will to men.’
This sequence moves me every time.
There is sorrow and good cause to feel forlorn at Christmas – but Longfellow
continued: “Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: ‘God is not dead, nor
doth He sleep; The wrong shall fail, the right prevail With peace on earth,
good will to men.’” That was my sermon
one year.
Or you have Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s amazing letter from a Nazi
concentration camp: “I think we’re going
to have
an exceptionally good Christmas. Since
outward circumstance precludes our making provision for it will show whether we
can be content with what is truly essential.
I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that
we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the
birth of Christ will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the
better we understand what Luther meant: We are beggars, it’s true. The poorer our quarters, the more
clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ’s home on earth.” The image of no presents, empty hands, in
poor quarters, even being apart. Christ
comes to humble hearts.
(g) What about the text? If you follow my blog, you know I’m big on
attention to exegetical detail. I think
I am less so on Christmas Eve – although there are little details in the texts
that intrigue and could be lingered on to make a whole homily. The name Augustus – who promised everything
Christ came to deliver: peace, salvation, good news, unity. You could cite historians regarding the
situation when Jesus was born – but it would be hard to top Madeleine L’Engle: “That was no time for a child to be born / With the earth
betrayed by war and hate / In a land in the crushing grip of Rome; / Honor and
truth were trampled by scorn / Yet here did the Saviour make his home. / When
is the time for love to be born? / The inn is full on the planet earth, / Yet
love still takes the risk of birth.” The phrase, “No room in the
inn”: easy to spiritualize, and I’d commend Frederick Buechner’s
eloquent lament over the fate of the innkeeper. Mary “pondering” in her heart. So much in Luke 2, much less John 1…
(h) Anything
you might report on? I think of the
prophets and their symbolic actions: is there something you can do and then
just tell about it? A couple of years ago, in
the gap between Christmas Eve services, I drove to inner city Charlotte just to
see what if anything might happen, if I might notice something. I parked, and immediately (as if God set it
up) a city bus stopped where I was standing.
An older woman, looking utterly exhausted, got off with a battered,
rolling suitcase. She sighed and looked
at me. I innocuously said “Merry
Christmas!” She moaned a little, and said,
“Not for me.” I said, “Tell me about it.” She squinted, looked me over, dressed as I
was in dress shirt, wool slacks, and with my very Caucasian complexion, and
said, “You don’t look like the kind of fellow who would understand.” I hung in there and said, “Try me anyway.”
I reported this in my homily that evening –
and tried gently and briefly to explore who’s hurting out there, would we
understand, and how Jesus came not so much for us but for her and her kin,
looking very much like someone who would understand.
(i) The
main thing, the only thing. It’s the
Incarnation. God became flesh; God came
down; God is as close as my own heartbeat and the breath I just took. God understands us, and redeems us from the
inside out. This is why God’s revealing
of God’s heart and mind came through an infant – something we all once were,
something that elicits tenderness from even the hardest among us. This is the only real unique thing about our
faith. Hans Urs von Balthasar: “Only the Christian religion, which in its essence is
communicated by the eternal child of God, keeps alive in its believers the
lifelong awareness of their being children, and therefore of having to ask and
give thanks for things.”
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** Check out two of my books, Worshipful: Living Sunday Morning All Week, and Weak Enough to Lead: What the Bible Tells Us About Powerful Leadership, are available.
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