Christmas Eve 2015 12/24/2015
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
Isaiah
Grace and peace to you from Jesus the Christ, who has come into the world on this holy night. Amen.
I must confess….every year I can hardly wait for the local radio stations to begin playing their All-Christmas-music- All -the -Time format. You know, when they switch from playing Adele or Taylor Swift or Blake Shelton and instead play non stop…Bing and Dean and Manheim Steamroller dreaming of a white Christmas and Silver Bells and Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer. (Okay, maybe not that one.) But as soon as I hear Christmas songs 24/7 I know that the season is finally here and in a couple of weeks it will be time for me to go out and buy my Halloween candy.
It is true, though, that our lives have soundtracks. There are songs that evoke in us powerful images of heartache or achievement or hope or summer or our teenage years or lost love. I mean, how many people thought that calling up their ex just might be a good idea when they heard Adele sing…Hello? Songs usher in seasons and bring back memories and tell our stories.
For example, the theme song from Rocky inspires us to never give up. And who among us, when swimming in the ocean doesn’t have that moment when it floats through our mind… Duh duh…duh duh.
The church has a long history and a beautiful history of surrounding the story of Jesus with song. Just leaf through the hymnal and you will walk through the life and ministry of Jesus and of his disciples and the hope that the church holds.
The hope that brings us here together tonight.
We’ve surrounded the story of Jesus’ coming into the world as a baby in a manger in the little town of Bethlehem with songs that weave the score of our faith and of our very lives.
For many, one of the first songs we learned was Away In A Manger. Maybe you even learned it complete with hand motions. Perhaps you taught it to another child that way.
Tonight we began our worship together at the invitation of the carol bidding the faithful to come and adore him.
The message of angels singing to shepherds is punctuated with the refrain of Gloria!
And, as so many people tell me, it’s just not Christmas until we light our candles in church on Christmas Eve and sing of a night that was and is both silent and holy.
These hymns and carols contain for us the story of Jesus in ways that are easy to recall….are easy to remember…perhaps when our hearts and spirits are having a hard time remembering anything else. These hymns and carols will tell us the old old story again and again. What child is this? This is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. We will remember that the first noel’s were sung to poor shepherds in their fields. We will call upon our friends to rejoice with us as Christ is born today.
Tonight the choir will offer us one of the more exquisite hymn texts I have ever heard in the anthem they will next sing. In the hymn Before the Marvel of This Night, the hymn writer imagines instructions to the very angels who will deliver the news of the birth of the Christ child. The choir will sing them, but I want you to hear them, so that you will ready your hearts for the story they tell.
Before the marvel of this night, adoring spread your wings and bow. Then tear the sky apart with light and with your news the world endow. Proclaim the birth of Christ and peace, that fear and death and sorrow cease. Sing peace, sing gift of peace.
Awake the sleeping world with song; this is the day the Lord has made. Assemble here, celestial throng, in royal splendor come arrayed. Give earth a glimpse of heavenly bliss, a teasing taste of what they miss. Sing bliss, sing endless bliss.
The love that we have always known, our constant joy and endless light, now to the loveless world be shown, now break upon its deathly night. Into one song compress the love that rules our universe above: sing love, sing God is love.
These carols and hymns give us words to put around the Word made flesh….Jesus the Christ. God, come to be with us and dwell with us and take on our humanity. God who was willing to come to earth as a wordless baby….unable to speak. The Word made flesh came to earth without words and yet brought the most profound message that the world has ever known.
And then God depended on others to carry that message into the world:
Shepherds, who could have certainly done almost anything else besides leave their flocks to go search for a child whose existence was sung to them by angels…
Angels, who tore open the sky with their singular message: Glory to God in the highest and earth peace among those whom God favors…
Joseph, whose role is written between the lines and who is a model of faith and fidelity in the face of the unbelievable…
Mary, whose hymn of revolution upon hearing that she would bear the Christ child reminds us still that Jesus has come to turn the world upside down.
And finally to us, the Word comes and comes again and we are entrusted with the message that came to earth on that silent night so long ago. It is not a message of rules or exclusion. It is not a message that includes some but not others. It is not a message of judgment or discrimination.
It is a message of peace for all people and for the whole creation. It is a message of God-with-us in a time of fear and uncertainty. It is a message of quiet in the noisy din of the world. It is the truest soundtrack of this season.
And most of all, thankfully, most of all, it is a love song and a love story: that God loves us in ways that are beyond our ability to imagine or comprehend. That God loves us in spite of ourselves. That God loves us in the present tense, not only in a long ago story. That God loves us enough to come and be with us…to abide with us….in every pain and in every sorrow and in every glad and good thing.
Friends in Christ, sing a song of love in this and every season, for unto us a child is born who is the Savior, Christ the Lord. Amen.