"An Earth Made Fair, and All Her People One"

Three Christmas Eve services last night, each of them special, each of them unique. 67 souls at the 3 pm "family" service. Used all child readers, and mostly child musicians, as well as recognizing infants born in the past year in a special ceremony where we read their names and ring a small triangle. It's what I think of as the "wiggly" service, and I'm trying to figure out ways to make it a little more engaging for kids who have "ants in their pants" and have trouble sitting still for long periods of time without squirming...having been such a child myself, and still remembering what it was like. Getting rid of the homily would probably be a good first step.

195+ at the "Main Event" at 5 pm: a half-hour prelude concert, followed by a traditional Christmas service of Carols and Scripture readings. I continue to be amazed by the abundance of musical talent in this relatively small (100 households) congregation, and how effectively my music director brings them all together to perform regularly throughout the year. But Christmas Eve is especially special. May have delegated just a little too much on my end of the Sanctuary - one of my lay readers was MIA, and no one had recruited either candlelighters or ushers. But we just picked up the slack and soldiered through. Preached the same homily I had at 3 o'clock and nobody squirmed at all...or at least not that I could notice. Lot's of "once-a-year'ers" at this service, so I want to give them a good experience and not scare them off -- neither too scholarly nor too sentimental, but just enough of each that they get a flavor for what we do the rest of the year.

20 hardy souls at the 11 pm Candlelight service. Had planned to share leadership of this service with our affiliated community minister, but she e-mailed in sick earlier this week after hurting her back...I didn't ask how. So I literally pressed into service one of my "stalwart" families at the 11th hour to help me with the Scripture readings. This is the service I'm least happy with, mostly because it is my favorite. So next year I think I may move it up an hour, make it even MORE simple, and see whether I can boost attendence a little.

In years past I haven't really preached on Christmas Eve, prefering instead to read things like Robert Fulghum's "Treated to Christmas" or (at the late service) Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Christ Climbed Down." But last year people complained that I was missing an opportunity, and so this year I wrote something of my own. But what I discovered is that the same homily doesn't really work for all three services, so next year I may try to do something much more child-friendly at 3 pm, preach a traditional homily at 5, and then perhaps speak extemporaneously that the Candlelight service and see how that goes.

Just in case anyone is interested, here is the text of this year's Christmas Eve homily.


CHRISTMAS EVE, 2006

“And being warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed into their own country by another way.” [Mt 2:12]

I don’t know whether anyone else is really bothered by this or not, but how wise would we consider someone today who took-off on a months-long journey to a foreign land inspired by something they read in their horoscope, simply so they might shower an unknown child with expensive gifts, and then just randomly changed their return itinerary because one night they had bad dream? And yet this is precisely what Matthew tells us the Wise Men did at the birth of Jesus, when they saw his star in the East.

I imagine as for a lot of folks nowadays, my first exposure to the story of the Nativity came from basically secular sources: from things like “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” or the Christmas Songs I learned in school, and Christmas Stories read to me by my grandparents. And of course, from experiences like our own annual Christmas Pageant, where as a child I also acted out as children have for generations the story of the miraculous birth of the baby Jesus. And somehow from all these experiences, I came to the conclusion that the whole thing happened in a single evening: Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and discovered there was no room at the inn, found alternative lodgings in a stable, gave birth to a child, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and lay him in a manger, and then the angels and the shepherds and the Kings all arrived in turn, everyone sang “Silent Night,” and they all went home again.

But in reality, if it happened at all, it probably happened quite differently than this. The traditional “pageant version” of the Nativity actually combines two distinct (and in some ways contradictory) versions of the story found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Luke, as we heard, tells a tale of shepherds and angels and a manger; of a family traveling far from home and giving birth to a child under unusual circumstances; and then links all this to a Roman census which we think took place in the year 6 AD. Matthew, on the other hand, tells a story of astrologers visiting from the East in search of a child whose birth was foretold by the stars, sometime during the reign of Herod the Great -- who died in the year 4 BC. So there’s a ten-year difference of opinion right there...or maybe it was just an unusually long labor.

Even the time of year is a matter of some dispute. Shepherds typically keep watch over their flocks by night in the spring and early summer, which caused at least some early Church Fathers to place the date of Jesus’s birth sometime in late March or early April. The reason we celebrate Christmas in December is quite clearly an attempt to tie it to the symbolism of the winter solstice, a result of the Emperor Constantine’s fourth century accommodation with the pagan mystery religion of Mithraism, which also celebrated the birth of their deity, the Sun god Mithra, in this darkest time of the year.

But the visitation of the Magi is without doubt the most mysterious part of the story. Who were they, and why were they there, if indeed they were there at all? And what was this star that they saw in the East, which caused them to travel to Bethlehem? The word “Magi” is derived from a Persian word identifying a specific caste of Zoroastrian priests, and is more typically translated as “sorcerer” or “magician.” Tradition tells us that there were three, because it also tells us that they brought three gifts; and over the centuries they have even acquired names: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar.

The gifts themselves are highly symbolic. Gold is a symbol of worldly wealth and power, although in a powdered form it was also sometimes used as medicine. Frankincense is a type of incense burned during prayers and religious rituals, while myrrh, that “bitter perfume,” is an oil used for embalming the dead. Suitable gifts for a king, or even for another magician. But hardly appropriate presents for the infant son of a peasant carpenter, born amidst animals in a stable.

And what about that mysterious star? The most common interpretation is that the Magi observed an astrologically significant conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the year 7 BC, although others have speculated that the star was a comet, or perhaps even a supernova. And then there is the part of the story involving Herod, a part that we rarely dramatize in our pageants. But according to Matthew, shortly after the Wise Men’s visit Herod sent his soldiers to murder every male child in the region of Bethlehem under the age of two, and that Jesus only escaped death by fleeing with his family into Egypt. Thus having inadvertently alerted Herod to a potential threat to his reign, the Wise Men also warned Mary and Joseph of the danger to their child in time to allow them to make their way to safety.

Christmas for us is often thought of as a season of homecoming. It is a time when we celebrate family, and the values of Peace on Earth, Goodwill to All. It is a time for feasting, and philanthropy, and above all it is a celebration of and for children, each of whom is so precious in our eyes. And yet the Christmas story itself, as told in Scripture, is in many ways a very different tale. It is a story of a young family far from home, dependent upon the hospitality of strangers for their safety and security, and in danger of their very lives. It is a story of refugees living as exiles in a foreign land, pursued by soldiers on the whim of a murderous tyrant. But it is also a story of a great potential good which emerges from humble origins, and the hope, and the promise, of a better way of living in the world, and being at home on “an earth made fair, with all her people one.”