2012
Christmas Eve Mediation
In 1974, when I was just five
years old, a particular collection of children’s poetry and illustrations was
published by Harper and Row. Many, many
millions of copies of this book have been sold.
It consistently gets high marks from schoolteachers for its creative
telling of common childhood experiences.
I came to have a copy shortly after it was published. I don’t quite recall if it was a gift from
someone or if I purchased it for myself when the always awesome Bookmobile
pulled up to what was then Lincoln Elementary School in Summit , NJ
Classics like “Sarah Cynthia
Sylvia Stout Would Not Take the Garbage Out,” “Us” and my favorite, “Hungry
Mungry,” all creatively tell about very human situations and their possible
outcomes. But one poem I have to say I’m
in polite disagreement with. It’s found
on page 81, and titled, “No Difference.”
Being as short as it is, and since
I suspect none of you brought your dog-eared copies with you this evening, I’m
happy to read it for you –
“Small as a peanut, big as a
giant, we’re all the same size, when we turn off the light. Rich as a sultan, poor as a mite … we’re all
worth the same, when we turn off the light.
Red, black, or orange, yellow or white … we all look the same, when we
turn off the light. So maybe the way to
make everything right … is for God to just reach out, and turn off the light!”
I do appreciate the point being
lightly addressed here. A lot sure can
go wrong between us humans when we only see our differences and fail to focus
on what we have in common. My polite
disagreement comes from the suggestion of how God might choose to make things
right when this happens.
Good Christian friends, rejoice,
with heart and soul and voice! Hear this Good News -- it is not the way of
our God to “make things right” by flicking off the light switch, snuffing out
the candle, and casting us into deeper darkness when life in this world goes
wrong. Our God is not okay with our
being completely blind to realities that try to place a pall of dark despair on
the holy light of love, peace, justice, and unity. By
God’s loving grace and through the light of our faith, we are summoned to
clearly see such things, name them, and work together to dispel the dark from
our hearts and from everywhere in God’s world. Our
sacred scriptures reveal again and again that God is forever a first responder
-- igniting our faith, lighting our way to better days, and revealing pathways
where signs of unconquerable calm and inextinguishable bright can be found and
followed.
We are gathered here in this
beautifully peaceful, hope-filled, joyfully unifying hour to recognize and celebrate
this good way of God. We do so by our
singing, our praying, our listening to the Greatest Story Ever Told, and, soon,
our lighting candles. This is
Christmas. The Christmas we most truly
desire and need. At the heart of our
gathering, the true reason for this time together, is our celebration of an
ultimate darkness-chasing, world changing moment in time …
This was the time that fully
proved once and for all that God’s holy response to the sinful dark disasters
and violent desolations of this world is to turn on the Light. The Light of the world. God has
called on a great many faithful people to help reveal this Light since the
beginning of Creation. But it wasn’t personally and purely revealed
until the time when starlight pierced a dark sky to shine upon a sparse guest
space where a poor, humble, and blessed young family welcomed their first
child.
This child, a son, had been long
expected; way longer than just nine human months. His arrival started with His sacredly sudden
presence within the womb of young mother Mary. This
was a complete shock to her and her fiancée Joseph, but it had been anticipated
by ancient prophets for thousands of years.
They knew this child’s arrival was
to be love’s pure light, the radiant beam from God’s holy face, the very dawn
of God’s redeeming grace.
Mary and Joseph responded to
God’s vital actions by faithfully doing all that was asked of them. Most especially, they named the boy Jesus, a name that literally means
“Savior.” According to Luke’s Gospel, by
his birth in this world “the tender mercy of our God” dawned from on high “to
break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1:78-79) So humankind also and eventually came to
identify this child Jesus another way, as the Christ, a word meaning “the anointed one.”
Good Christian friends rejoice,
with heart and soul and voice! Christ
was born to save! We who believe in Jesus
Christ, the One divinely anointed to save us from our sin, share in a powerful
common unity. We live as one great mass of our Lord’s light
and love in this wounded, wounding world.
We are a Christ-mass every second of every day of every year of life, worshipping
and serving as our Savior continues to cast light upon all darkness.
Goodness knows it’s been a
particularly intense, stormy, sorrowful fall season this year for many living
along our stretch of the country, in our immediate community, in our
families. We’ve all desperately needed
our Christ-mass. And glory be to God,
we’ve been faithful in both giving and receiving it.
Neighbors have helped neighbors
move through disruptions, devastations and on toward restorations. Grief-filled
gatherings have quilted loving comfort for communities. Countless candlelight prayer vigils in homes
and holy spaces have brought the peaceful, healing, and redeeming light of holy
love to evil’s most horrifying violence.
Yes, through the power of the Holy Spirit, the darkness dispersing
starlight, the calming Christ-mass light, has been faithfully displayed where
it’s most dearly been needed.
I don’t have enough words to
express how strongly I feel that we need to stay steady and true to this way of
life, to keep paying close attention to the ways God keeps igniting,
illuminating, inspiring us. This path, this sacred sidewalk, never
ends.
The wonderful artist and author
Jan Richardson has written that we need to pray for God to keep training
us. We receive this instruction from
our holy first-responder through our daily faithful practices and our coming
together as we are tonight. In her
beautiful words, we to so to pray for God to help us always know that “what
brings life … we may with persistence hold … and that which wastes our souls … we
may with grace release.”
Our life together is a constant
Christ-mass. It is never going to be as
easy as just saying or singing all is calm and all is bright. This our great hope, but this “all” will
happen at a divine darkness chasing time that is yet to come in Christ. In the life-supporting meantime, we bear our
faithful witness to the Light of the world through out words and deeds. We do
so believing deeply that Jesus Christ is never just away in some distant
manger. He is everywhere, in all places,
at all times, and that in Him there is
calm and there is bright to both
behold and be held by.
Amen!
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