Christmas Eve, 2021(full size gallery)
We were back in the church for this Christmas Eve after being on zoom exclusively a year earlier. Masks continued as the omicron variant of Covid19 swept the world. Some churches like the Washington Cathedral moved all of their services online. We held ours in the church but with masks required. We had 39, 36 in house and 3 on Zoom. The weather was moderate in the 50’s with partly cloudy to cloudy skies.
We had a new nativity scene outside with 3 figures – Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus
This year may be noted as as return of enhanced music. Since last year Larry Saylor was with us on guitar, and Mary Peterman is back on flute as well as Denise Gregory with her voice. The choir had a new energy and depth which was shown on the “In the Bleak Midwinter.” The choir contributed soloists – flute, guitar and violin. Later in the service, Helmut sang “Silent Night” accompanied by Larry on guitar which was the way it was performed in 1818 on guitar and vocal. Helmut sang the first verse in German and the congregation repeated the 1st verse in English along with the rest of the hymn. Certainly a highlight of the service!
The sermon began with a line from Phillips Brooks poem and then hymn, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” It was based on his trip to the Holy Land in 1865. The background
“After an early dinner, we took our horses and rode to Bethlehem,” so he wrote home in Christmas week of 1865. “It was only about two hours when we came to the town, situated on an eastern ridge of a range of hills, surrounded by its terraced gardens. It is a good-looking town, better built than any other we have seen in Palestine. . . . Before dark, we rode out of town to the field where they say the shepherds saw the star. It is a fenced piece of ground with a cave in it (all the Holy Places are caves here), in which, strangely enough, they put the shepherds. The story is absurd, but somewhere in those fields we rode through the shepherds must have been. . . . As we passed, the shepherds were still “keeping watch over their flocks or leading them home to fold.”
Under a clear sky, the first stars just beginning to emerge, he rode into the still tiny and remote village of Bethlehem. He recalled the story of the birth of his Savior, and by being present in the place in which Jesus was born, was able to add vivid detail to the familiar tale in Scripture. There, on streets almost unchanged since biblical times, Brooks felt as if he were surrounded by the spirit of the first Christmas. He would later tell his family and friends that the experience was so overpowering that it would forever be “singing in my soul.”
“I was standing in the old church in Bethlehem, close to the spot where Jesus was born when the whole church was ringing hour after hour with the splendid hymns of praise to God, how again and again it seemed as if I could hear voices I know well, telling each other of the Saviour’s birth.” 3 years later he wrote the hymn
The sermon used a column in the Washington Post. Michael Gerson writes about his own hopes and fears meeting in his column which appeared this morning in The Washington Post. The title of the column is “This Christmas, hope may feel elusive. But despair is not the answer.” And then, this question. “What sustains hope when there is scant reason for it?”
What sustains hope? For Gerson, the birth of Jesus sustains hope. And here’s why. Gerson says that “the nativity presents the inner reality of God’s arrival.” Gerson goes on to say that God “is a God of hope.” God “offers a different kind of security than the fulfillment of our deepest wishes. God promises a transformation of the heart in which we release the burden of our desires, and live in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.”
Richard Rohr, the Catholic theologian from whom we often hear in my sermons, says that “God comes to us disguised as our life.” As Prior Aelred points out in The St Gregory’s Abbey Christmas letter, Rohr says that “our willingness to find God in our own struggle with life, and to let our struggles change us turns out to be our deepest and truest obedience to God’s eternal will.” Rohr says that “we are always the stable into which the Christ is born anew.”
Catherine share a story from the Discretionary fund from Lisa as an example of how love can transform our hearts and in so doing be part of God’s ongoing plan for the redemption of the world.
“As I’ve reflected on her story, I see Lisa as a person of hope. She is a good example of Rohr’s metaphor that we are the stable into which Christ is born anew. That rainy night, in the midst of her own struggles, this woman had spent time with grieving friends and brought them comfort. And then she had brought a child home unexpectedly so that the child would have a “home” for Christmas.
“Lisa carries the burden of her desires that the lives of the people around her should be better. Although she probably wouldn’t put it into these words, she also, to use Gerson’s words again, “lives in expectation of God’s unfolding purposes, until all of God’s mercies stand revealed.” She is playing her part in the unfolding of God’s love in this world by her compassion for others.
“And you all play your part in the unfolding of God’s purposes in this world through your generosity to those in need.”