ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS
December 17, 2022
Christmas Eve is one week away from today. There are many reasons for those words to create excitement and giddiness in the hearts of many. On the other hand, those words are a potential source of concern and anxiety for others. Clergy are among that latter group, and we tend to think of Christmas Eve as a sort of Super Bowl of religious services (alongside Easter). Some of us have tried to say everything in our Christmas Eve sermon for those who only come that one time a year. I attempted it one year, and let’s just call it an epic fail. Yet as I get older (and my knees are reminding me just how old that is), I am thinking the Christmas story doesn’t need a whole lot more than someone who helps point us to the immeasurable magnificence of the story being born anew today. If it’s a story of love and hope and joy and peace, then it will never be just something from the past. Those are holy forces experienced in history but never restrained by it. Maybe you’ll reread part of the Christmas story today, and then pray a prayer that goes something like this…
I don’t really understand the logistics or physics of what happened in a small, rather insignificant town in a comparatively unimportant region of the world some two millennia ago, yet what changed the orientation of human hearts in the years that followed continues to be alive and at work today. Emmanuel, God with me and with all of us, help me to search the ancient story for the message that is eternal and thus relevant for this day. Amen.
