Christmas Eve
December 24, 2008
Luke 2:1-20
Many years ago, I sang in a choir in a church about like St. Aidan’s. I was a part of that choir for several years, having been sent there by God to cool my heals for a while and steep myself in the basics of our tradition. At least that’s what it felt like at the time.
Most of you know that I speak often about the kinds of questions raised by trying to live into our ancient faith in this modern age. Many questions raised by faith have nothing to do with modernity. Sometimes grown-ups end up asking questions because the only understanding of faith they have is the one they were given as children. Simple truths can seem rather complicated as the years go by. I think that’s kind of where I was in those days. At any rate, I joined that choir during a time when I was beginning to question much about the faith.
I had been raised in the church, and had come to believe that questions about faith could be discussed with God, so questions led me to prayer and familiar conversation with God. One day, in one of those conversations, it came to me that maybe I still had a long way to go in this faith development business, and somehow I ended up with the idea that I should quit stressing about what I could or could not believe and just plant myself in the choir until things became a bit clearer.
The head of the tenor section was a woman kind of like our Jan who could actually read music and who gave us guys our notes. Over the years I learned to read a bit and I came to enjoy the magic that can happen when a bunch of voices come together in song. I also came to love a very few anthems that we sang every Christmas and Easter. I guess that choir director thought if we did them year after year we might eventually get them right.
One of my favorites was a Christmas anthem that I would sing to myself even in the middle of Summer as I drove down the road or working on some project. “Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine, love was born at Christmas, Love for plea and gift and sign.” We have this song in our hymnal, but it is sung to a different tune. For years, I had that song in my head and looked forward to singing it every year. I once told the choir director that I sang my part of that song all year and he said, “please don’t.” “If you do that, by the time Christmas comes around you’ll have it all twisted up and it will be harder to get you back in line.” I sang it anyway. And I guess it kind of worked on my as I lived with it. “Worship we our God head, love incarnate love divine.”
As I stand here tonight with the task of trying to help us all make sense of or find a foothold in the whole landscape of the Christmas story, the connection that seems to offer the best hope of communicating the mystery of this feast is love. All that time, while my head was asking questions about what might and what might not be real, my heart was humming a song about love. The song was working on me in ways I didn’t recognize until much later. I think sometimes we moderns have come to trust our heads to much and our hearts to little, and we often treat the two as if they don’t really have anything to tell each other. I’m coming to believe that love, which is of the heart may hold the only answer to some of the questions asked by reason.
To grasp the place of love in the feast we are celebrating we have to begin with the story. Not just the Christmas story, but the Jewish story, the one about the God who wanted to be in relationship with humans. This God who is called the God of Abraham, of Moses, of Israel is a peculiar kind of God, distinct in some ways from other gods we hear about in the old stories. Our particular God is not just seen as one who must be appeased in order to bring about good harvests and healthy flocks and lots of children. Our God is seen as almighty creator, yes, and as provider of flocks and children and good weather, of course, but our God wants to provide these things for people who will be like friends, like relatives. The God of Moses and Jacob is the divine companion who accompanies friends on journeys and helps them out when they are stuck. This God gets into discussions with humans and reasons back and forth with leaders about what might be best for all. The Hebrew God is moved by our plight and eager to forgive. The Hebrew God wants to be in a participatory kind of relationship--a give and take relationship of mutuality with humans. That kind of relationship, they tell us, is what God intends. Now hold onto that image for just a moment while we shift forward a couple thousand years.
We often hear these days about how hard it is to believe in God. It is not really much harder to believe in God today than it was way back then. The difference is that what we believe about God is often tempered by the age in which we live. We know the universe began with a big bang. We know what happened down to about a millionth of a second before the whole thing went blewey. That millionth of a second we might concede to God but the rest,--maybe not. Oh it really isn’t quite that bad. It is not hard to imagine God as a force moving the universe or as the life that becomes possible as the particles of the universe assemble in just the right ways. We might just be able to imagine God as having a purpose since we know the universe to be in motion. As long as we don’t know where it’s headed maybe God can have that too.
One of the answers for the problem of God among those who aren’t ready to give up completely on the idea of the divine is to keep God kind of nebulous. We can still pretty easily assign to God the parts of the puzzle for which we don’t have pieces. Quantum physics and the creation of the universe, those areas where we don’t have enough information to push God out and where we let God live are not really a part of our daily life, of our day to day routine. I often go a whole week, sometimes even a month without thinking of the big bang. But what about the mysteries that are a part of our daily lives. What about the one big mystery that calls to us, vexes us, invites us throughout our lives. The mysterious force for which we have no explanation, a force that must be lived, not understood. If God is relegated to the unexplainable, then surely God permeates human life in the call and offering and exchange of love.
If we can open ourselves to the idea that maybe, just maybe behind and underneath all creation there is a purpose, an intention and an intender, then the God of Moses and Jacob looks pretty good. Israel tells the story of God who wants to be in loving relationship with humanity. They tell of times when the relationship faltered because we weren’t quite ready to participate. They tell of God working with us, trying new ways, loving us anyway while waiting for the day when we would be open to love and the possibility of relationship on a deeper level. I am connected to the God they speak of, not through reason, but through love. I don’t understand love but I know it is real. Love is a mystery and it is a part of life. It is surprising, powerful. It grows over time in leaps and moments of self forgetting. One day you aren’t ready for love and then all of a sudden things change, something happens, someone reaches out. Someone takes a chance. Love is risky. It comes to life in moments when everything is at stake. Where there is love there is some kind of relationship. Where there is relationship there is always the possibility and promise of love. Any story of a God whose purpose it is to deepen relationship with us over time must have in it provision for a risky act of self revelation, the kind of leap by which love grows. Israel’s story has in it the promise of a time when the moment would be right, a time when love would enter the world in a new way.
It is because I have some small clue about the promise and mystery of love that I can believe the story about God who decides to take a cosmic chance in the name of love.
We celebrate tonight a leap of love, one filled with all the risk and hope and uncertainty that come with such a pouring out of self, the kind of self giving that must take place for any relationship to move on to the next level. Tonight we celebrate a birth that is an act of love, a precarious leap taken by God in hopes of impressing the beloved....that’s you and me.
“Love came down at Christmas......”
And the only response desired by this loving God is sung in the lines of that anthem. “Love shall be our token, love be yours and love be mine, love to God and neighbor, love for plea and gift and sign, love for plea and gift and sign.” JB