It’s such a privilege to stand here and address you tonight, to be one of the many voices that you’ll be hearing throughout this weekend and over your celebration tomorrow. Part of the privilege is to be able to look out and see so many faces, and so many stories, and so many different ways our lives are linked together. I think what I want to say to you is, I thank you for being here tonight. I really am grateful that you’re here, and I know that you don’t have to be here. You’ve had to come from your own homes and your own celebrations and your own festivities. You’ve had to put something to the side, and you’ve had to leave something unwrapped. There’s something left unwrapped, isn’t there, in order to be here tonight.

 

And I appreciate your being here. Being here with the community gathered, worshiping together, to give thanks to God for what God is giving us.

 

And I know you want to be here. We are drawn here from around the world, not only to this congregation but in congregations—think of it—in cities around the globe, gathering on this night to be a part of those who turn their faces toward Bethlehem. To remember, to sing about, to read about what God did in Jesus Christ.

 

In fact, this is the ninth time we’ve gathered in here today. Nine times we’ve gathered for worship. You should’ve seen the five o’clock service! That’s where about sixty percent of the congregation is age seven or under. Which means that the glucose and peppermint factor is about 300 percent higher than your blood sugar at this minute. We only could have the service for about half an hour, because by the end of it, the whole sanctuary is just kind of hovering about three inches off the floor. Just spinning with kinetic sugared energy.

 

At the end of it, we process out to the stable together: the angel choir, the little children who are dressed as angels with their coat-hanger wings covered with cloth, and their tinsel halos; and the shepherds dressed up with sticks and bathrobes and towels pulled over their heads. They process out and lead the way together. And I walked along as kind of a shepherd to the shepherds to see that they all got there. As they did, one shepherd had found a way to tug on the belt of the bathrobe of the shepherd in front of him. Just a-pulling. He got that bathrobe rope up kind of high around his neck, and every time he tugged on it, the shepherd ahead kind of gurgled and pulled his head back. And he kept hollering out every time he did it, “Knock it off! Cut that out!” It was a very un-Christmassy sentiment, but it was kind of fun to watch.

 

Lee Fletcher, who is just about that high from the pulpit, was an angel. When she got out to the stable finally, she had had all that she could take. She pulled her tinsel halo off and said, “This halo itches!” and threw it on the ground.

 

You know the feeling, don’t you?

 

It’s really a service where our ministry is especially is needed. So a number of the members of the pastoral staff try to be in the narthex and around the church, particularly for those who are coming late to the service. Because invariably, people coming in during the last quarter of that service—it could be you, and it certainly has been me—are feeling frustrated that they are running late. I came around the portico and caught one mother just reading her nine-year-old the Christmas Riot Act! Immediately she is embarrassed when she sees the preacher, on Christmas Eve, hollering at her kid that way. So I just try and comfort them. I just put my hand on their shoulder and say to them, “It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be alright. It’s going to be over soon.”

 

One poor couple came up… the service began at five and they walked in at five-thirty. When the mother realized that she was late and they had missed the whole service, she just broke into tears. We just patted her and said, “It’ll be okay. It’s going to be okay.”

 

I want to say the same thing to you. We’re glad you’re here, but your halos itch a little bit, don’t they? There are some of you that we may need to say to, “It’s going to be okay. We’re glad you’re here.”

 

We’re here, and I look out at you and I see… I can’t know all of your stories, but I know enough of them to have it be fairly emotionally overwhelming. I see the stories of how we’re connected...the illnesses that some of you have contended with this year. Some of you are grieving because of people we have buried together. Some of you are here as your first Christmas at being a married couple. Some of you are here with a new baby, even at this service. Some of you are here carrying burdens out of the last year. Some of you are frightened over what is facing you in the future.

 

We come with all kinds of different circumstances, but we come here with people around the world. What are we doing here?

 

We come to bear witness. We are bearing witness through our presence. As surely as when you stand and recite the Apostles’ Creed, when we come tonight and sing carols and listen to these scriptures and hold that candlelight, you are bearing witness that God loves the world! And that God loves the world so much that he has given his son as a way of redeeming the world. As a way of reconciling the world of itching halos and gurgling shepherds. Reconciling them to himself.

 

Then when we hear Bill’s prayer, and hear him lift up those who live in the midst of genocide, those who live in the midst of war and famine in other countries, we think about our tears that we show up late to a Christmas Eve service. Well, it makes us seem kind of callous, doesn’t it, with the blessings we know.

 

What do we have to cry about when there is so much need in this world, so much famine, pain, grief. It needs bearing witness that God loves the world. In the face of all that there is in the world that would tell a different story, a different outcome, the record needs bearing witness that God loves the world so much that he gave his only begotten son. Sometimes in our neglect of it, we can seem callous, or insensitive.

 

Of course, it was for the callous and the insensitive that God created Christmas.

 

It was for the hurting, and the needy, and the angry, that God sent Jesus into the world.

 

It was because God knows your halos itch, and you are tempted to pull your neighbor’s bathrobe belt, that God sent Jesus.

 

It is because God knows that we are afraid of death, that we’re grieved by the pain we live in that God sent Jesus. To bring an end to violence, God sent Jesus, who grew up to become the Prince of Peace, so that on this night, certainly on this night, we stand together around the world trying to remember that we are united by one man whom God sent to be the head of our family. One family, united in that one Prince of Peace who has reconciled us to God. On this night we remember, looking at Bethlehem, God loves the world.

 

So we want to bring something back. What you bring is your witness. Your presence here. It’s your affirmation. It’s like the poet says,

 

Ye, beneath life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,

Who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and steps and slow.

Look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing:

Rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing.

 

We come to hear angels sing. To bear witness that angels do sing. And when they sing, they sing “Glory to God in the highest!” because God loves the world and has sent his only begotten son, that we might know him and that we might be reconciled to God.

 

And in the face of that great gift, that great truth, it’s right for us to pray. Won’t you pray with me:

 

Most loving Father, we thank you for this night, and for all that it represents. We thank you for the homes and the families and the stories represented here tonight. You know what it has been like for us over the last year, O Lord, and so we lift that up to you.

 

We pray not only for ourselves, but for others. We thank you for the hope you bestow on a weary world. For the peace you bring, wherever people live in the midst of conflict. For the love you pour out, and people who so desire it and need it. For the joy you give, so that even the sad and the weary might have Good News to proclaim and sing forth.

 

We praise you most of all for Jesus, your word made flesh. And we ask that he may light our way as the holy star lift the way for those who first came to Bethlehem to gaze on him there and to be drawn toward you. Amen.

 

 

©John T. DeBevoise 2006