Christmas Eve Meditation
The Rev. Victoria Millar
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Covenant Presbyterian Church
Racine, WI
John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,* full of
grace and truth.
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A one frame cartoon shows this.
In a dark house, large, wrapped gifts are stacked like high-rise condos on the floor.
The house is dark except, way down low, light shines from behind the wall,
through a little arch in the floor molding, a mouse hole.
Two mice are illuminated.
One says to the other: “Night before Christmas or no night before Christmas, I feel like stirring.”
A few weeks ago, I read an opinion piece in the newspaper by writer Eric Weiner who was all stirred up,
stirred up with wit and dismay.
His opinion piece was titled “Americans: Undecided About God?”
and the question mark was worth a grin
as if Americans couldn’t decide if they were undecided about God.
His article began:
“The holidays are again upon us—it sounds vaguely aggressive,
as if the holidays are some sort of mugger…
and so it’s time to stick a thermometer deep in our souls and take our spiritual temperature
(between trips to the mall, of course).”
He went on to lament that speaking about God has been co-opted by fundamentalists or atheists--
a very polarized view, I would note.
He says he used to be an atheist
until a health scare and the onset of middle age created a crisis of faith.
He then ventured over to the fundamentalist side but quickly discovered he didn’t fit there.
Since then he has made his religious home in a category he calls the Nones.
These are the people who respond “None” when asked on surveys “What is your religious affiliation?”
Nones are the people who do not check Presbyterian or Catholic or Lutheran or Jewish or Muslim or Sikh or Hindu.
He claims the Nones may not believe in God, but [they] hope to one day.
Then he explains his bad experience of fundamentalism.
He writes: “All we see is an angry God,
constantly judging and smiting, and so are his followers.
Precious few of our religious leaders laugh.
They shout.
[But] God is not an exclamation point..”[1]
I also would run from anyone shouting about a completely angry, judging and smiting God.
He objects that God is not as an exclamation point.
Hmmm….I thought, studying my keyboard, I wonder what punctuation is right for God?
What punctuation is right for God?
I’d start out with a greater than.
God is definitely a >.
God is greater than our imaginations.
God is greater than our understanding of kindness and kinship, of forgiveness and fulfillment.
God is greater than our hopes.
God is greater than all our denominations and religious affiliations.
God is definitely a >.
What punctuation is right for God?
Perhaps you’ve noticed it is Christmas Eve.
On Christmas Eve, God is all about the ampersand.
On this night of all nights, God chose an address.
God chose to locate @ a human being, a child, not in a palace but in a scratchy barn.
But not the stable, the person is the address,
the child conceived by the Holy Spirit, his life a shining cup overflowing with the Holy Spirit.
That’s what Christmas is about, God’s @,
Jesus as God’s location in flesh, full of grace and truth.
Jesus is the window into the ? (mystery) of God.
God ever a ? but @ Jesus, we have been given a window into the heart of God.
And the child will become a man who calls us, welcomes us, feeds us and transforms us.
This child will become a man who melts us, molds us, fills us and uses us.
And about that ampersand, and closer to home.
Maybe everyone who is important in your life is in good communication with you and all is well.
That is not always true for me and it’s not true tonight.
Tonight my heart aches for one who is several states away.
But if there is magic in Christmas, let it be this:
a perception that in the manger, God shows us cold distance is not our emotional lot.
And we can decide where we want to be emotionally located with respect to others,
and sometimes our reaching out at Christmastime will reconnect us
and start the words and understanding flowing again.
And sometimes even no response can give us the peace and the patience to know for now
we did all our side could do.
What punctuation is right for God?
Actually, I believe God is due a certain kind of shouting, a certain kind exclamation point.
It’s the ! of the angels scaring the shepherds with their
“Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth!” (Luke 2:14)
An exclamation point is right.
The Iona Community in Scotland says it this way:
“Love’s the secret! Love’s the secret!
Love is God’s risk and God’s reason,
God’s rule and God’s rhyme.
Love’s the secret! Love’s the secret!
Love is God’s cradle, God’s table, [God’s bread and God’s wine].”
And God’s love is wondrous, it’s soft and also steely strong, it’s flexible and also firm.
God’s love does not give us all the answers but it gives us calm amid the questions.
What punctuation is right for God?
Did you know that the word asterisk comes from aster which is the name for star.
Tonight, of all nights, we look for what is under the star.
Now the word disaster originally meant under an unfavorable star.
But the opposite of disaster is stellar.
Christmas is stellar because that’s when we see not an icy universe bent toward destruction
but a
universe lit by a
a world held in the tender hands of God,
the God as close and touchable as newborn skin.
A hundred years ago, poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins put it this way:
But the Bethlehem-star may lead me
To the sight of Him Who freed me
From the self that I have been.
Make me pure, Lord: Thou art
holy;
Make me meek, Lord: Thou
wert lowly;
Now beginning, and
alway:
Now begin, on
Christmas day.[2]
This Christmas, whether the box you would check for your religious home is none or little or some or much,
may you feel deeply welcome here with this congregation, this family of faith.
On the night before Christmas, I think all of us here feel like stirring.
May each of us also be stirred by the Holy Spirit.
May each of us be even momentarily moved by the presence of God-with-us, Immanuel.
For even a little touch, even a tiny breath of God, goes a long, long way.
In the name of the greater than Father, located in the newborn Son, illumined by the stellar Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Weiner, Eric “Americans Undecided About God?” The New York Times, December 11, 2011
[2] http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/284, poem Moonless Darkness