Dear friends: Grace be to you and peace from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
If, ever, there is a time for singing in the life of the Church, it is on Christmas Eve. These are the songs that we have loved for all of our lives. The typical, four hymn service can’t begin to satisfy our longing, so we sing these great songs as a part of the liturgy and then bunch several more together during the distribution of communion. There is something about these songs that enable us to express the fullness of all that this evening means for our lives.
Tonight’s First Lesson, Psalm 96 is a reading that calls us to song. It instructs us to “Sing to the Lord a new song!” It calls on all of creation — in heaven and on earth and under the earth — all of creation to join in the singing. It asks for singing for the purpose of blessing God. It tells us that God is worthy of our song. From creation until the last day, we continue to sing because of our trust in the steadfast faithfulness of God.
And so, tonight, we sing. O, Come, All Ye Faithful; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing; O Little Town of Bethlehem; Joy to the World. We sing the songs of our childhood. We sing the songs of the Christmas of our memory. We sing the songs of the Christmas of our hope.
Because this is the celebration of God’s determination to experience the human life. Anyone who tries to be with people during the crises of life has heard how one can’t know what it is like when an experience is not shared. Protestants complain that Roman Catholic priests shouldn’t do marriage counseling when they haven’t had the experience. Addicts are reluctant to share with those who haven’t struggled with addiction. So how can God know anything about the struggles of humanity without having lived the human life?
This is the night when God meets us in the messiness of each of our lives. From the fragility of birth to the struggle through adolescence to the learning of a trade. He lived our lives — from the forming of relationships to the conflict in families and even in the endurance of great suffering. In the humanity of Jesus, God took the initiative to create a lasting bond with each of us — the very bond that has been God’s desire from the first day of creation.
That’s why we sing. We sing because of the relationship. We sing because, in Jesus, God meets us in our solitude with a heavenly companion who walks alongside us during the living of our lives. We sing because we are known. We sing because we are understood. We sing because we have a friend in Jesus.
We also sing, I think, as a way to connect this festival, in some meaningful way, to lives that are always in transition. Christmas is different — every year, Christmas is new — every year, The foundation of my Christmas experience was the way that we celebrated at Grandma’s house when I was a kid. The evening had a predictable pattern (in church-talk, a liturgy). But even in the midst of that pattern, still Christmas changed every year. Grandchildren were born and entered into the celebration. In-laws joined us. Relatives of relatives got invited to celebrate with us. And, eventually, advancing age forced a change in the location of our festivities as we adapted the liturgy within a family system that, itself, was becoming new each and every year.
It is more likely than not that your Christmas will be new this year.
- Some of you will remember the presence of those who will not be here for this year’s celebration.
- Some of you will be welcoming new children, new in-laws, new spouses, and grafting them into your traditions. My dad loved to be a part of the excitement of the Christmas of his newest grandchild.
- Some of you will be celebrating in new locations as you make accommodation for the onset of age or illness.
- Many among us will do their very best to maintain some semblance of tradition in the face of the uncertainties of unemployment and a weak economy.
It is more likely than not, because of the differences in so many of our life-stories between this year and last year — that Christmas will be new this year. Except. Except — that the story is the same. Mary and Joseph. The inconvenient Roman census. The difficult journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. No room. The stable. The manger. The angels. The shepherds. The song.
If this is a typical Christmas Eve at St. Stephen, there will be more than 400 people who gather to worship on this night. There is a certain pastoral delusion that sets in tonight about having all 400 of you here coming back to worship every Sunday of the year. And, if I allow myself to get even more delusional than normal, I dream about all of you coming back to worship a week from Sunday on the first day of keeping your New Year’s resolutions for 2012.
So what is it about this night that is attractive but is different from worship on January 1st? I suspect that some of you are here to keep Grandma happy or to humor Mom and Dad — basically here to keep peace in the family. I know that some of you are here because of the way that this hour is a part of your family tradition. Some of you are here because there is a kind of peaceful spirituality to this service that isn’t the same on a typical Sunday morning.
But I also think that you are here because of the story and because of the song. I think that you are here because of the way that what happens during this hour may be the only constant in whatever there is about this Christmas that is new for you this year.
For this is the place of singing. This is the place where we mark the transitions of each and every year — of additions to families and losses from them, of miracles and disappointments, of suffering and recovery, of the brokenness of our humanity and of new beginnings, of tremendous blessings and of opportunities to serve.
We mark them with our song. This is the place of singing because the newness (even of our Christmas traditions), the newness always leads us back to a proclamation of God’s “saving work every single day.”
At our staff lunch on Tuesday, Dave Skola was reflecting about how the songs from last week’s choral service kept rattling around in his head for, what was then, already a couple of days. That’s why I love a great song to end every Sunday service — a song that my brain doesn’t want to let go, a song that proclaims the love of God in Christ Jesus long after the sermon has been forgotten.
One of my seminary professors used to say that “we sing what we dare not say.” I have witnessed the truth of those words in nearly 24 years of ministry.
- We sing even when the loss of loved ones has left a hole in our hearts. Most people I talk with know exactly which songs they want to sing to mark those losses.
- We sing even when another holiday with Uncle Buck is making us nuts. Sometimes, family life is messy.
- We sing when our hopes are about something that our brain fears might not be true.
- We sing when words fail us.
- We sing as a way of teaching because the song is remembered for so long. I still sing the silly little ditty that my friend and I had planned to sing for our high school’s variety show.
- We sing to remember everything that Christmas has always meant in our lives even when (particularly when) we are trying to come to grips with Christmas — for this year — the way it really is.
We sing because Christmas isn’t about us. The Psalm couldn’t be more clear about that. We sing because of what God has done. I chose this particular translation of Psalm 96 because of its use of words like awesome and greatness and grandeur and strength and beauty and splendor — all descriptions of the God who gave us this baby named Jesus as the one constant in a Christmas that is new every year.
I hope and pray that the song of this night makes a connection for you both with the best Christmas celebrations of your lives but also with the story of God’s entrance into a world where nothing, ever is constant.
For we don’t need life to stay constant. We are able to deal with all of the changes that both bless and confront us from year-to-year. We can do that because of the gift of Jesus’ entrance into our world. It is the gift that brings us into the heavenly kingdom — the awesome gift of God that makes Christmas to be our occasion for singing. Amen.
Copyright © 2011 The Rev. Gary L. Froseth. All rights reserved.
