Christmas Eve, December 24, 2013; The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz

O great Light and abundant Love, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.

I wish you could see yourselves the way you look from this pulpit! You look so beautiful! I was hoping that you would be here and I am so glad that you are. Thank you for coming to Emmanuel Church to spend some of your Christmas time. Welcome to those of you who are here for the first time, welcome to those of you who have been here more times than you can count, and welcome to all of you who are in between. I always like to begin my sermon on Christmas Eve by letting you know that I imagine that some of you have been looking forward to being here and could not wait to get to this lovely church on this holy night, to hear the extraordinary music and the lessons and the prayers of Christmas. And I imagine that for others of you, this was not your first choice, maybe you are here because it matters to someone you love, or maybe there’s a sadder reason that you’re here. Maybe some of you don’t even quite know the reason – and I’m especially grateful that you’re here too. Whether you skipped or stumbled here, thank you for coming into this refuge – this sanctuary. My Christmas hope for all of you is that, however you’re feeling, thrilled, ambivalent, healthy or unwell, joyful or heavy hearted, peaceful or downright stressed and cranky, you will leave here tonight feeling better than when you arrived.

The mystical prologue to the Gospel of John is something that I prefer to chant rather than read on Christmas Eve, so that we can all hear that it is a poem full of mystical metaphors and not a polemic full of fundamental facts. It’s a love song. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, the four evangelists, were not history professors or biographers, but “nimble musicians trading riffs on a well-loved classic” as Bruce Fisk calls them in his book, A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus.¹ “Nimble musicians trading riffs” on the Good News of Jesus Christ. Like any timeless, classic love song, the Gospel of John’s love song blurs the lines between the lyricist and the singer and the hearers, between cosmic and eternal, between particular and temporal, between ‘beyond time’ and ‘just in time.’ John’s love song starts out being about before time, long ago and forever, and it ends up being about this very moment. It’s not a song about loving God so much as it is a song about God loving so much.

It strikes me that Jesus’ name is never mentioned in the prologue to the Gospel of John, nor is the word Messiah or Christ. The assumption in the text is that the hearers will just know. And you did, didn’t you? It also strikes me that in the beauty of this poetry, it’s clear that something is already amiss, even in the beginning. Not everyone is receptive to this particular light, yet those who are have the power, indeed, the authority to become daughters and sons of God. If we can imagine the pre-Christian empire time in which this is written, what the writer is saying is that if you are receptive to this particular light, if you are drawn to this light, you can be counted among God’s beloved children and no one can tell you that you are excluded from the love of God. This is a prologue that is saying, don’t worry about the others, know that you are adoptable, desirable, and beloved by God.

It seems to me that the best way to respond to having a love song sung to you is to be still even if your heart is pounding. Being still is one of the hardest things to do at Christmastime – being still enough to receive the love that is being sung for you, to you, about you, over and around you. How difficult it is for many of us to do nothing even for a little while. How difficult it is to not just do something, but to stand there, or sit there. How difficult it is to just stand there or just sit there and not have our minds race around thinking about things left undone that we ought to have done.

I’ve been reflecting on a night prayer from the New Zealand prayerbook – perhaps you know it. It goes: “Lord, it is night. The night is for stillness. Let us be still in the presence of God. It is night after a long day. What has been done has been done; what has not been done has not been done; let it be.” Of course it is an appropriate prayer for any night, but it seems particularly fitting for Christmas Eve. It is night after a long year. It is night after a long Advent. Don’t just do something, sit there. There is a love song being sung to you this night about how much God believes in you, no matter what has been done or left undone. Whether you have found the perfect Christmas gifts to give or have come up empty-handed, or you are somewhere in the middle.

Janet Morley has a new book of collected poems for Advent to Epiphany called haphazard by starlight.  She takes her title from this Christmas poem by English poet Ursula Fanthorpe entitled “BC:AD” (as in the year delineators Before Christ and Anno Domini).

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.²

I love that whole poem, and I especially love the line: this was the moment when nothing happened. So often we are wanting something big to happen, we are wanting to do something big or someone else to do something big. So often we are wanting God to be something big and to show us something big. And yet, in the mystical traditions of Christianity (as well as in the mystical traditions of Judaism and Islam), God is no thing – nothing. God looks like nothing and nothing looks like God.³  And yet, our Gospel proclamation is that God is doing something — the Word (nothing) is becoming Flesh (something) and dwelling among us and for now, for this moment we are called to pause and respond by just being.

We are called to not just do something, but to sit or stand there. Just sit there and don’t do anything for a little while and notice that in this particular time and place: “You are [being] welcomed into a community of unlike people where difference need not be cause for division, as is so often the case in our world. You are [being] offered forgiveness for your faults and errors, for the violence you do to others and this earth, and so are released to forgive others and break the cycle of hatred and retribution. You are [being] claimed by a love and power beyond your own. You are [being] held in arms of grace. And in that embrace, you are [being] freed to participate in the restoration of human community and all creation.”⁴

“You are [being] freed to participate in the restoration of human community and all creation,” but you don’t have to do anything for a little while. If you feel that you must do something, pray the words of the liturgy, sing some songs, eat a little bread and drink a little wine. Above all, feel the love that is coming your way wherever you are on your spiritual journey – whether you wish it were better or it’s the best it’s ever been. Merry Christmas!

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