Let us pray: In the name of God, Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. Amen.
There is a story that says that on Christmas Eve an enchantment falls upon the earth. It is a time when the Spirit of a newborn Child whose name is Love possesses the world. The way to Christmas lies through an ancient gate patterned after a sheepfold and guarded by angels with stardust in their hair. It is a little gate, child-high, and there is a password: “Peace on earth to all of good will.”
Tonight, I invite us to step through the Christmas Gate and, for one brief illuminating moment, ponder once again the Nativity story of the Word who came into the world wordless and became one of us so we could be one with Him.
This night is unique among the other nights of the year. You and I gather together as families and friends to pause and ponder the absolute audacity of God to come into the world not as a powerful prince, but as a homeless child. The Nativity of Jesus stretches past the limits of rational thinking and takes us to the farthest reaches of wonder where we are left standing in the unmapped realm of divine mystery.
Christmas is when you and I celebrate and honor our Eternal God who chooses to come into the world as one of us – as a baby, who is speechless, dependent and vulnerable. The One who was proclaimed as Messiah, the Branch of the House of David, and the God whom nations proclaim as Lord, Savior, and King is seen this silent and holy night as a baby, held by his mother, who holds him and rocks him to sleep with a lullaby.
How can we not be drawn to Bethlehem? No matter how many times you and I have heard the story from Luke’s Gospel, Christmas conjures up memories and images from the past that we hold dear this night. It makes us hopeful and happy. It takes us back to childhood to a time of innocence and wonder. We still yearn for the innocent blessing at the manger.
Perhaps we are drawn like the shepherds and kings to Bethlehem again because we yearn for that innocence with those we once so happily possessed. Perhaps, we seek to remember a faint song whose melody and words we have forgotten. Perhaps, it is to glimpse back to another world – a landscape of delight from the past that has been eroded with the years. Maybe, it is to find some discarded talisman we left behind when we grew into adulthood. Some would say it is a quest for a second naïveté that will restore once again the wonder, the awe, and the curiosity we once held in an earlier time.
The quest for a lost innocence is the shadow side of maturity. Our quest today is nothing new. It is timeless. This yearning haunted Thomas Traherne, the 17th Century Anglican mystic and priest, who wrote, “The light that shone in my infancy in its original and innocent clarity was totally eclipsed; so that as a man I had to learn it all over again.”
Christmas allows us to reclaim our innocence. It is the time re-learn who we were.
The gift of this night pulls us back away from the cares and worries of the moment. There is time enough for tomorrow but tonight we’re on vacation. It’s time to take a break, relax and to dream: dream of the coming of light and sound from a shining star, of the glittering array of Cherubim, Seraphim, archangels, angels, and white-robed saints who echo through the firmament of heaven that this Christmas is to be a Holiday.
Christmas is our moment to take a holiday from all encroaching demands, fears, worries and anxieties that confront us every other day of the year. Tonight, we shed all that. Tonight, we travel light. Tonight, we wonder and marvel at Love’s pure unfolding. Tonight, God’s calls us to celebrate, to rejoice, and to share in the Christ Child’s birth.
Christmas is when angels and devils dance together, where the lion and the lamb lay down together, where peace like a river flows among enemies, where all souls are children at play, and where the entire starry host of heaven mingle as one, and God cries, “Holiday!”
On this holiest of nights, we are invited to know the secret fully known only to children and sages: That God is made known to us not through elaborate theories, carbon dating, or complex books, but in the flesh of a new born child. The Word made flesh comes to us wordlessly, silently, and tender as a kiss.
In the well known hymn, In the bleak Mid-Winter, by Christina Rossetti there are two verses that serve us tonight as affirmation and invitation:
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,Tonight, what we are is enough for God. Tonight, God wants our hearts to be merry – To be of One Heart, One Mind, with Him. For tomorrow, we know, the Child of Bethlehem will mature into a man setting his face towards Jerusalem.
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air,
But his mother only in her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved with a kiss.
What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd I would bring him a lamb,
If I were a wiseman I would do my part,
Yet what can I give him, give him my heart.
There will be another day when force will have its day. There will be another time when complexity will have its moment. On another occasion, justice will have its season. And we will pray that we have the will to follow Him to that barren tree that is another kind of gate.
But tonight is not that night. Not yet. God is still a child this night; and we are to walk through the Gate of Christmas towards Him as children to share in joy, happiness and merriment. For the moment, the host of heaven calls us to take a holiday with God and shout out the password to all who will hear: “Peace on earth to all of good will.”
So this night of nights you and I are on holiday. Come let us adore Him and become children again and enter into His Heavenly Peace with comfort and joy.
Merry Christmas! Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment