Monday, December 12, 2016

What can we say come December 24/25? Christmas Eve and Day

Christmas on a Sunday.  And Christmas Eve on a Saturday night!  We’ll have an over/under betting pool on attendance, which will be predictably higher for Christmas Eve, and quite low come Sunday morning.  The low, smaller Sundays invite and allow for a very different kind of preaching, I think – less formal, quieter, shorter, maybe more conversational.  And I always think Christmas Eve begs for something short, warm, calm, quiet. 

The Revised Common Lectionary lists a boatload of texts, “propers,” etc.  The epistle and Isaiah readings are interesting enough.  The sequence of three Psalms (96, 97, 98) are actually cool for a homily.  Lots of singing, ascribing glory to God, probing the theme of the Lord’s kingship.  Not a bad season to explore what “praise” is.  We are so utilitarian about God, asking if prayer works or how God will help me.  But praise just focuses on who God is, how amazing God is – and if we look to the birth of Jesus, we have no takeaways or lessons or action items.  We are just awestruck, and thus joyful. 
I like Walter Brueggemann’s way of stating it (in Israel’s Praise): “All of life exists for the sake of God. Praise articulates and embodies our capacity to yield, submit, and abandon ourselves in trust and gratitude to the One whose we are. God is addressed not because we have need, but simply because God is God.” Joy to the World seems to ring from these Psalms.

This leads us to the Gospel readings.  For us, we’ll use Luke 2:1-20 on Christmas Eve, and John 1:1-14 on Christmas Day.  What a pair.  Narrative, and then the highest theological reflection.  Little details in Luke’s birth story are worth lingering over.  I love that it was Augustus who was Caesar when God came to reign on earth.  Not just any Caesar, and not a weakling.  The greatest of all the caesars (in the same way that God delivered Israel from Egypt under not just any pharaoh, but Rameses II, the greatest of them all)!  It’s intriguing to me how God uses a political decision made in total ignorance of the true God to get Mary and Joseph where they need to be.  The David/Bethlehem background is endlessly fascinating, especially the way David was chosen there (as he was the smallest of Jesse’s sons, but “the Lord does not see as we see” – 1 Sam 16:7).  A manger – a feeding trough for animals; Jesus is the bread of life. 
No room at the inn – I just love Frederick Buechner’s little reflection (in The Magnificent Defeat, and also in Secrets in the Dark) on the regret of the innkeeper…  I’d be tempted just to read this story, maybe with minimal personal reflection.

Storytelling/story-reading isn’t bad for such days.  Our family’s favorite Christmas Book (for all ages), Why the Chimes Rang, has been my sermon on several Christmas Eves.

The shepherds of course are interested.  I find myself pausing over and being stirred by the simple closing of the story: “Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart.”  This is a season for quiet, for pondering – and I strive for a sermon that feels more like pondering than anything else.

John 1:1-14 is one to ponder over.  High poetry, almost requiring no explanation, like a symphony or a work of art.  Just reading the text slowly is powerful.  It needs no illustration, no jokes, no “points.”  I’m tempted to try to counter the Da Vinci Code version of early Christianity – that Jesus was just a man, and Constantine fabricated the divinity stuff centuries later.  How much higher of a view of this child born in Bethlehem could there be than John 1’s?  We light candles, each one replicating that “light that shines in the darkness.”  The “Word became flesh,” very full, even overflowing with grace and truth – in a culture that increasingly thinks there’s no such thing as truth (with fake news, ideology, etc.), and in a world where grace/mercy just never happen.

I love our Christmas Eve service.  If you want to watch/listen, we have a great rendition of "O Holy Night," great choir and the beauty of raised candles during "Silent Night." What a lovely pair of days we who love and serve Jesus have before us.

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