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Christmas Eve
December 24, 2005
Delivered by Reverend Sandra Stayner
Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14
A friend of mine once told me a story about a Vietnamese refugee family their church had taken in. The woman had had a miserable childhood. She was the result of a union between her mother and an American soldier whom she never knew. Because she was half American she and her mother were despised by other Vietnamese who teased her mercilessly throughout her childhood. She finally married a wonderful young Vietnamese man and they had two children, but the alienation the young woman had experienced as a child continued even though she was now married so eventually the whole family decided to relocate to America. Having been raised in a country that was predominantly Buddhist she had very little understanding of Christianity. However the whole family would come to church on occasion in gratitude to the congregation that had taken them in.
One day my friend received a call from this woman saying that she needed to see her immediately. When my friend got to her apartment, the woman asked her in and started telling her about something that had happened to her the night before. It was hard for her to speak because as soon as she began her story tears flowed down her cheeks. "I crying not because I sad" she kept saying, "I cry because I'm happy." My friend was a bit disconcerted because it was so difficult to make out what the woman was saying through the tears and very broken English. But she eventually realized that the woman was desperately trying to tell my friend about something that had happened to her the previous night.
The Vietnamese woman explained that she had woken up in the middle of the night and was immediately wide awake. She could see something at the end of her bed, but she wasn't frightened at all. She peered into the darkness, trying to make out what was there, before realizing that it was Jesus standing at the end of her bed. Jesus was in her room. As soon as she recognized him, she told my friend, she was bathed in wonderful warmth that made her feel loved in every pore of her body. She said that Jesus didn't speak to her, but she knew instinctively that he had come to tell her how loved she was. After a short time her vision of Jesus seemed to fade away, but the glorious feeling of warmth did not leave. It had stayed with her all night and only gradually did it begin to subside during the following week. After she had finished her story she kept saying over and over again to my friend, "I saw Jesus! I saw Jesus! I saw Jesus and he loves me!"
I wonder if the shepherds, religious outcasts known to be ignorant and lawless by the respectable, could ever have anticipated the depths of joy that would be released in their hearts as they encountered the Christ child. As they ran, tripping and stumbling down the rough streets towards the stable, could they even have dared to hope that they would have an experience of love so powerful that songs of joy would rise up from the bottom of their toes, and bubble from their lips as they excitedly shared the story of their miraculous encounter with love.
And tonight, as we dare to stand at the stable door alongside the shepherds and the wise men, and the lowly animals keeping watch, will we, like them, encounter the miracle of love, the Word made flesh, God come down to earth to be born as a human baby, vulnerable and weak? Will we receive grace from the joyful songs of the angels, the grace we need to once again receive Christ's love in our lives?
You see, the Incarnation, the birth of Christ reveals the incredible miracle that once and for all the heavens have opened and God has come into this time and space, and will come and fill our lives with his presence if only we will allow him in. C.S. Lewis once pointed out that the birth of Christ is like a bit of manuscript that has been missing from a great piece of music. Without it the music is incomplete. Once inserted back into its rightful place the new manuscript brings out new meanings from the whole of the rest of the work, causing you to notice things in the work you never before noticed. (The Grand Miracle, C.S. Lewis.) What is revealed in the birth of Christ is the true, unconditional love of God poured out for all regardless of their state. "Herein is love, not that we have, loved but that God first loved us."
No matter what has happened in our lives before this moment, we are again tonight, offered an opportunity to be reconciled with God if we will only, like Mary, surrender to the love of God. "Do not be afraid" is the message of the angels. Tonight you too can begin the journey with the shepherds, where all your fears, your despair, every burden you bear will be taken into the presence of the living God who alone is able to make all things new.
Come to the stable this Christmas eve, and ponder again the glorious mystery of the Word made flesh, come to live among us then and now. See the Son of God, wrapped in swaddling bands, lying in a manger in the lowliest of conditions, and let the light of the love of the eternal God flood your life bringing release from the fears by which you have long been bound. Lay aside all your striving and conniving and let the love of God fill your soul, for it is the unconditional love of God that will effect the transformation of your life and the life of the world. It is only the birth of God's love in every pore of our being that will bring into our lives the peace for which we long.
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