CHRISTMAS EVE
iNTERGENERATIONAL SERVICE

On this holiest of nights we hear about the angel Gabriel appearing to a young girl and telling her that she has found favor in God’s eyes and she will give birth to the one we call Jesus. Promises made, promises fulfilled.

On this holy night we hear Mary praising God for all the mercy God has shown and the great things God has done. God has scattered the proud, brought down the powerful, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things – according to promises made to Mary’s ancestors. Promises made, promises fulfilled.

On this night we celebrate the birth of Jesus and hear how he was wrapped in swaddling clothes. On this holy night when the world is still and we are warm with the glow of the season, on this holy night when too many people are still going off to war, and too many people are hungry and homeless, and too many children have no one to trust, on this night promises are fulfilled and hope is born anew.

Wait a minute, you might say. How are hunger and war and poverty and homelessness a promise fulfilled? How are these human ravages hope born anew? The things that we face that overwhelm us are not so different from the devastations that faced the people of Jesus’ time. The message that Jesus brought to first century Palestine is a message for the ages. It is a message for our time.

The gospel message is very clear. It’s a message that echoes the words of the Hebrew Scriptures: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. As members of a faith community the most important thing we do is to worship God together. Every Sunday and sometimes in between. As a faith community we grow in our understanding of God and of each other by being together in this way. And it is a key way in which we show our love for God and for each other.  Worshiping together is the most important thing we do – everything else flows from that act.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. When questioned about who our neighbor is, Jesus tells us that our neighbor is everyone. And if we think we can get over by defining everyone as everyone we like, Jesus gives us this ringer – love your enemy. Oh boy, and we thought this might be easy. Love those who hate you, Jesus tells us. I could use a little work in that area.

Loving others can be a challenge. But sometimes I think we do a better job of loving others than we do of loving ourselves. In order to love another, we need to pay attention to our own losses, our own griefs. Each of us, everyone of us can probably do a better job of loving ourselves. In the hectic rush toward this holy night, we’ve done a lot of buying, and baking, and wrapping, and sending. Perhaps we haven’t taken the time to sit quietly with a cup of tea and make space for our longings and our losses.

Perhaps you’ve lost a job. Or you’re worried about your health. Or you miss someone who has died or who has moved away. It’s difficult to make space for those sometimes overwhelming feelings. “But if I pay attention to that,” you might say, “I’ll start to cry. And if I start to cry, I’ll never stop.” The truth is that if we don’t make room for our grief or our fear or our despair, our hearts will harden and it will become difficult if not impossible to love God and love one another.

Tonight we celebrate the light of the world. Tonight hope is born anew. Tonight promises are fulfilled. That light, that hope, that promise are not born only in a manger in Bethlehem. That light, that hope, that promise are born in your heart this night. 

That light, that hope, that promise lead you to love God and love your neighbor as yourself. They lead you to worship Sunday morning, lead you to greet each other with a friendly smile and warm handshake. They lead you to build homes for the homeless, to feed the hungry, to visit the sick. They lead you to sit with a cup of tea and tend to your own longings. That light, that hope, that promise born in your heart make you followers of the one whose birth we celebrate this night. Jesus tells us to love God and love one another. Amen.