The blessings of this Holy Night
in celebration of the Nativity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ
be with you and welcome you here under this roof
which tonight is a glorified stable adorned by loving hands
and where room is abundantly available
and no one is shut out.
Welcome!
And we want to offer a special welcome to Emmanuel Episcopal Church
to all those visiting here tonight,
family members and friends and neighbors,
all of us together joining in song and prayers
and the sharing of the feast of bread and wine,
the abundant feast of the Supper of the Lamb.
It is good to be here tonight,
to choose to come here in the midst of whatever else is occurring
in your homes and your lives for this holiday.
We are drawn here tonight
called out of homes and warm beds
called away from the Christmas tree with all the presents
and the stocking hung by the chimney with care
drawn away from the table groaning with food
from the goose and plum pudding
from the eggnog and wassail.
We are pulled – for this brief time, at least –
out of a world culture, economic system and political framework
that reflect a poverty of values
where greed fuels and directs the subtle policies implicit
behind motivations and actions
which affect the commonweal of us all
where self-interest keeps our focus in a narrow field of vision
and we do not hear the angels sing.
But tonight we are drawn here.
We may think that we have chosen to come here –
and we all have reasons we can give for why we came
and it’s more than just nostalgia for Christmases past
or sentimentality about candle light and Christmas music.
It’s even more than the beauty of worship
expressed so well through the words of liturgy and scripture.
We are drawn – ultimately – by the Christ Child himself.
Now it is true that a newborn infant has a special magic about it
that makes perfectly sane adults go gaga
and want to hold it and babble baby language endearments.
But this newborn child evokes more from us, much more.
This is the One who generates within us
a sense of awe and reverence and wonderment beyond our knowing.
This is the One who, if our old bones would allow it
and we weren’t so bound up in the limitations of our own sensibilities,
this is the One who would bring us to our knees.
humbled by the sudden recognition that here before us
is the Source of Life,
the Healing of the ages,
the Hope for the world,
and Love itself.
God’s Presence comes and is born among us.
And note this –
this most significant of all births did not occur in the capitol,
nor among the royalty or the clergy,
nor among the those well endowed with abundance
or the most prominent of the community
or in the place of privilege.
The birth happens in a stable,
a place not fit for human habitation.
And so too is the place of birthing
that occurs spiritually in the human person.
The birth of Christ does not occur in human hearts in the place of abundance,
but most usually in the place of poverty
and in the places unfit to live in.
Wherever in our hearts there is despair, darkness, sin, deep wounding,
betrayal, abandonment, failure, disaster, oppression or grief,
it is there that the human heart out of desperation or simple yearning
will open and become a manger
in the filthy, stinking stable of life circumstances
to welcome a tiny, hopeful birth
of the One who brings with him
the unfolding and expansion of the very Reign of God,
which is the liberation of our hearts from all this darkness.
Tonight as you come forward to receive into your hands our Lord
in form of bread and wine,
let yourself be connected in heart and imagination with Bethlehem,
with the stable unfit for human habitation,
yet cradling the very Source of Life, God’s Love Itself.
As you take into yourself the tiny wafer of bread, the sip of wine,
make this place that you are, and your own heart,
another new Bethlehem.
O little town of Bethlehem,
the hopes and fear of all the years are met in your dark streets
the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
