To me, there’s something really powerful about the fact that we are all here together for this one hour on this ancient and mysterious night. I think it’s really powerful – and I think it’s not the least bit accidental.
Of course, there are a lot of things that brought us here. First, for some of us, it’s our faith community. It’s where we live into these pulse points along the way.
It’s also just beautiful. These windows, some still with glass from the 18th century, seem to reflect the candles as if the light were living inside the glass itself; the music is filling this place like the heavens.
Some of us may be here because it’s part of a family tradition. Or just because we needed a place to go, or this was close to the restaurant. Those are all perfectly legit.
Some of us may feel replete from cocktail hour and dinner; some of us haven’t had a chance yet to get anywhere near cocktail hour or dinner, and we’re looking forward to that happening sometime after the 10 a.m. service tomorrow.
Some of us may feel totally clear on what this whole God-becoming-human thing is, and some of us may feel there’s just no way it’s ever going to be clear.
But the point is, whatever the path is that’s brought you here, whatever path your feet will follow back into the night, whatever it all means to you – what’s most important is that we not take for granted one moment of this precious hour together. Everyone who’s in this room.
Because to me, it’s no accident that we are all here tonight as pilgrims whose journeys converged, even if only for an hour. And to stop and really feel that has everything to do with where we go from here, not just where we go with out feet but where we go in our hearts.
So – what is it that’s brought us here? If it’s not just that it was tradition or that this was the church that was near the restaurant – all those things may be true and totally fine, but if it’s not only those things that have brought us here, then what else has?
To tell you the truth, I think the answer is, quite simply, that it’s a yearning that has brought us all here tonight.
A yearning. A hunger. A search for something we need. That’s what I think it is. And you know what? On Christmas Eve, it would be really easy to leave it at that and sound plenty lofty. It’s so easy to say that a yearning is what brings people into a holy space.
But I don’t want to take the easy way out tonight. I think we have to get more specific. We can’t just leave it at a vague yearning that’s brought us here, because if we do, two things are going to happen. First, probably it won’t mean very much to you; you’re just not going to buy it – and good for you. And second, if we just say it’s some general yearning that has us here, then it’s too easy to read in other things that aren’t really about that particular yearning. It’s too easy to read in things like cravings or neediness or addiction or wanting the presents we expect.
And the thing is, I don’t think any of that stuff is the same as the tender, quiet voice that speaks deeply inside of us on a night like tonight, that has guided our feet someplace different.
And tonight of all nights, we need to let that voice, that yearning, have its say. Not because this is the only night it’s there. But because that tender yearning is the one thing that is there all the time. It’s the one thing that’s there all the time. It’s just that we tend to hear it more on a night like tonight. That’s why we need to let it speak.
Which finally gets us into that million-dollar Christmas-Eve question – of exactly what this yearning is all about.
It seems obvious to say it’s a yearning to know God, or to know the holy, or the transcendent – whatever word works for you. But to tell you the truth, I don’t think that’s enough to get us in here.
I think the yearning that gets us in here at 11:00 on a dark, rainy night isn’t a hunger to know something. I think it’s a hunger to feel something. To touch it, to hold it close, to feel something move in our hearts in a way that’s different from all the “changes and chances of this life,” as that great prayer says – and that’s especially true these days, with the changes and chances that are rocking our economy and our society and, for a lot of us, just life.
In fact, a lot of us may be pretty sick and tired of those changes and chances, tired of things being taken from our hands, from our lives, from our expectations. And we just want to hold something we trust and feel like it takes us further than that stuff that the world seems to make so important and yet so dicey at the same time.
And so we find ourselves looking for it here – as pilgrims, together. And we hear the story of a baby in Bethlehem centuries ago in a place where animals ate dinner. And as much as we know we’re supposed to love that story, in truth it might not feel all that relevant to the problems of real life – like “thanks for the sweet story, I know what’s waiting for me back on my email, or my situation at work, or my family of origin, or just the feelings inside of me that just seem to have a life of their own.”
Except that right there is where I think this yearning for something we can feel, and something we can feel about God, becomes linked up with what this night is about. Here’s what I think brought us in here. Because what happened this night all those centuries ago wasn’t an idea about God. It wasn’t just a nice thing to think, a nice new theological twist for philosophical debate.
What happened this night, and why we’re here now, was that God came straight into all the places in our lives where we can feel and where we do feel, every day. Not just nice ideas about the greatest source of love. But that greatest source of love coming into the very cells and bloodstream and feelings and experiences of a real human body and a real human life. And that’s when this night starts to be about something we can feel.
This sweet little baby, “meek and mild etc.,” is quickly going to be eclipsed by the one he becomes, the one who will make everybody who meets him see themselves differently, or to have to choose not to see themselves differently and make an effort to keep it at arm’s length. You gotta work to be neutral about Jesus. You can see it even with King Herod’s reaction to the wise men, which we’re not really supposed to hear about tonight, but that part of the story looms over the magic of the manger scene. Herod having all young boys killed because he was so threatened by this sweet little story we tell tonight. That doesn’t happen because of an idea, that happens because of something people feel.
This baby is quickly going to become the one who will be angry and who will shed tears and who enjoy dinner parties and who will touch people who were untouchable – which sounds nice enough in a story, but let’s try it on for size and go touch the untouchables out in Philadelphia and see what it brings up inside of us. This baby will become the one who will call a problem a problem and who people will try to trick and assault and will eventually kill. As is so often said, the wood of the manger becomes the wood of the cross.
Ok. When we shift the story that way, from the idea of a distant baby to the fullness of a real human life – the tears, the love, the uncertainties, the bearing of what’s unfair and what’s downright brutal – that’s when something can happen for us tonight.
Because when we look into that manger and only see God as a sweet baby, it all stays abstract. But when we look in there and see God giving over to everything a life involves, giving over to everything our lives involve, then and only then can we can let ourselves begin to see the fullness of our own humanity in that manger. Then we see how close God wanted to get to what we really are.
But here’s the twist, the punchline, the key that turns the lock.
Why would God work so hard to get so very close to something … if it wasn’t something that was very, very good.
You see, that’s the flipside of tonight. It’s true, on this holy night God got humble, got down with humanity. But it was to show us how precious and good and noble that humanness is. That goodness, that nobility, had been there from the beginning, but we humans forgot about it. We still do. And it’s when we wake up to it again, folks, when the Christmas magic begins. Not with cheery St. Nick, as much fun as that is, and not with nice parties as nice as they are, and not with the presents and the guests and the festivities.
The magic begins the moment we look into that manger and see ourselves.
When we see our tears, our hopes, and our stumbling efforts at love. When we see a body that can feel affection and sensuality and play, and then pain and loss and cancer and AIDS and whatever has affected your life and whatever memories are rising up for you tonight.
The magic happens when we see that God gave over to being vulnerable to everything that it means to be human.
In other words, God’s not among us as a king who could command armies and build heavy walls to keep people out. Not as a big statue-type of god who descends from the clouds and spits fire and makes everyone believe in him out of sheer fear. And not as somebody in a bulletproof vest – with nail-proof gloves. All those things would only have kept a distance between how great God is and how ordinary we feel in our skin and hair and tiredness and sore feet and aching backs.
The everyday things we think, our anxieties, and inadequacies, or the joys and delights – all the things we might think a lofty God wouldn’t be interested in. God says, You’re wrong. You hear that sound of a baby crying. I’m willing to go there, I’m willing to let that be my voice, just to show you how much I want to be close to you – in life as it is truly lived.
Now that’s something I can feel. In my skin and my laugh, in my fear and my hope.
Which makes me think. Maybe a yearning to see God is also a yearning to see ourselves, not like in a mirror, which just shows us what we would see on our own – which I, for one, don’t find very helpful. But maybe it’s a yearning to see ourselves with the eyes of love and compassion and insight that give us a future even better than what we had hoped.
As one great spiritual writer says, God sees not what you’ve been but what you want to be. What you desire to be in those most tender places of hope and pain and longing. And as we each seek to be that person, even when we fail at it, that is still an act of love and creation. So that even in those deepest places inside where we might not yet be what we hope for, God is with us.
Which might be big part of what’s so important about living into this holy story tonight. Not just to remember something that’s in the past. But to bring ourselves up to the edge of our own future.
And as a last thought, that hope might also be what’s so terrifying about tonight. Not terrifying-bad, but terrifying in being more love than we humans can bear.
Remember – the sequence of the story isn’t that the shepherds saw the angel and were terrified. The glory of God shone around the shepherds. And we think of shepherds as a bit idealized, but in their time, they were seen as outsiders, as nobodies, who used other people’s land. They were looked down on. And it’s around them that the glory of God shone. And that’s what scared the hell out of them.
It’s the glory of how noble their humanity was to God. How noble, how worthy, how precious. But it took love to light that up from the inside.
So whatever brought you here, whatever you believe, whether your life feels great or broken or great and broken – through all of it, remember that you are glorious and you are noble. And more than anything, that’s what God wants you to know this night.
As the last lines of the Isaiah reading say, you are named the One Who Is Sought Out. You are named, the One Who Is Never Forsaken, Never Abandoned.
So be joyous. This mysterious night, when like the shepherds, we go from deepest darkness into exploding light that’s brighter than we can handle, claim the nobility of your humanity. Right now. Absolutely as you are.