Christmas Eve at last, a night on which memories are made. A night so full of memories that it's hard to keep your head clear, so full are they of nostalgia and expectation. There is magic and wonder in the air, even for us who are well past magic and wonder.
What is it about Christmas that can fill our hearts again with wonder and childlike expectation, we who are old for such things, and yet feel it nonetheless? It's not the buildup, really. It's not the special offers or deep discounts in the stores.
It's not all the folks crowded into the malls so dense you can hardly walk down the wide aisles without bumping into someone. And it's definitely not the mad rush for parking places, the circling, circling, circling of the lot only to get outdone by the one car that pulls in ahead of you when the guy backing out blocks your way in.
None of those things evokes Christmas for us. It's more the traditional things that do it. The houses dressed with lights. Santa's helpers on the corner ringing their bells for the Salvation Army. Carols sung in church. Putting up the tree and hanging the ornaments, each one a memory in itself.
I suppose what evokes Christmas most in our memories is the idea of going home, going back to some special place in our minds and hearts where Christmas is centered.
A place in our lives with dimensions and walls furnished in a specific way and inhabited with specific people. It's a place where we belong, which is to say that it belongs to us, where we feel safe and good even though things at any given time there may not really have been all that good, and yet they were.
Wherever home is on Christmas Eve, that place where we go in our heart, it is no doubt a composite, a place of reunion and peace and joy that is the fulfillment of a hope and expectation of a lifetime to find the home again that lives inside of each of us in spite of the disappointments and heartbreaks we have known.
Tonight we know precisely where that home is, don't we? Our home is in a manger far away from here, where a long time ago a worried father, a just and righteous man who wished to do the right thing by his engaged, made his way along with his expectant wife, into the city of David which is called Bethlehem.
There in the lowliness of a stable amid the wondering eyes of some sheep and perhaps a donkey, a child was born. The mother, barely more than a child herself, wrapped him in swaddling clothes, this boy, her firstborn, and laid him in a feeding trough, nestling him in the hay.
And as she lays him down for the rest he will need to grow strong and brave, this Christ child, we rest as well. For there in that place which is our spiritual home all the hopes and fears of all the years are met in him tonight.
That is the place where we long to go, to the heart of all our homes and the center of all our hearts. That place where we may run with shepherds and kneel with kings and lay down the burdens of our lives with all the treasures we have brought him, with no treasure being more valuable to him than simply the treasure that we are, just the way we are; don't change a thing. For he welcomes us "as we are", and all the rest he makes right - he makes whole - simply by our being there, by worshiping him, by being so close to someone so good.
At last we know why we have come tonight, because it wouldn't be Christmas without being here. We needed to come home, to be with our family, the people of God, poor broken lot that we are, to be with Mom and Dad, with our children and grandchildren, with our brothers and sisters and our goofy uncles and corny cousins, with the tax collectors and prostitutes, the Pharisees and hypocrites, the skeptical, the bored, and the baptized. God's own.
This is that place where we have longed to be. That place of reunion and peace and joy, where the glow of human love meets the warmth of heavenly compassion. Amen
Come sit by the fire and warm your hands. Have something to eat and take a cup of cheer. What a sight for sore eyes you are. You've been expected! Welcome home. And Merry Christmas to all. Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment