[Propertalk] Christmas Eve & Day 2017 - part 1

[Robert P Morrison]

This is part 1 .
Blessings on mid-week 3 Advent, friends. We have Lessons, Poetry and
Hymns on Sunday morning, 4 Advent. This this as a draft for the
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day homily.
Bob
We're having Lessons, Poetry and Hymns for Advent on Sunday morning -
no sermon. Then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with this as the draft
of a sermon.
I hope you're keeping well. I enjoy your sunset perambulations, Ann,
and the "mutated" sunset greetings, Scott! Thanks to both of you!
Blessing and love,
Bob

	THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY  CHRISTMAS EVE / DAY 2017

	ISAIAH 9:2-7 / 62:6-12  24th / 25th DECEMBER, 2017

	TITUS 2:11-14 / 3:4-7  PSALM 96 / 97

	LUKE 2:1-20

	 Seventeen hundred years ago, a saint and scholar of the Christian
Church wrote, “Nothing, nothing so awakens the soul and gives it
wings … than divine song.” 1

	The Song of Holy Love 2 - THIS is what this night/day is all about.
THIS is what this night/day tells us is the point of our entire lives.

	 We’re aware that Christmas DOESN’T begin at Thanksgiving, or
even on the first of December. We believe that Christmas starts now.
We’re aware that Christmas is a season which runs until the sun sets
on the 6th January. But, really, once we come to see what happened
that night two thousand years ago, and once we accept and welcome God
into our lives; really, this Song of Holy Love should sing in our
hearts and show in our lives every day from now on.

	 Hold on to that thought that what we celebrate right now is The Song
of Holy Love.

	 Somewhere, I read that “For a star to be born, there is one thing
that MUST happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.

	 “So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction.

	 “This is your birth.” 3

	 Hold on to this thought also – what to some may seem pointless
stress and destruction is actually birth!

	 One of the things with which some people wrestle when it comes to
thinking about the Incarnation, the Birth of Jesus as
God-present-on-earth, is the science of life. It’s not a matter of
science OR religion, science OR faith. It’s both-and – science AND
faith – that give us the wonder of what God does for us.

	 I wonder what went through God’s mind in that nano-second before
Gabriel and Mary interacted.

	 I wonder what went through God’s mind as Jesus grew from a
blastocyst, through nine months, to a full-term human baby.

	 I wonder what God thought as Jesus was born from Mary.

	 I wonder what God thought as, for the first time, a
close-up-and-personal picture of life in a poor, human home registered
with God. I wonder if it was like what we see when a drone flies over
any part of this earth and sends a picture back to a receiving
computer. 

	 I wonder what God felt, as Jesus took that first breath; as Jesus
struggled to focus new eyes on Mary, and Joseph, and the simple
furniture of the carpenter’s house.

	 I wonder.

	 It’s amazing what God set in motion. It’s enough to be amazed at
the whirling whole of creation, stars, planets, moons, circling and
circling around – or, for that matter, when that explosive bang
collapsed gases, compressed the resulting birthed product out and away
with unimaginable energy. It’s amazing to imagine the smile on
God’s face as God pictured what the barely perceptible particle that
has become the earth would look like when Jesus would arrive on it in
billions of years.

	 I wonder.

	 It’s amazing! THIS is what we celebrate tonight/today – the
coming home of God on a visit to this one tiny corner of the universe.
It’s SO hard to get our minds around this; in fact, that’s why we
refer to it as faith. When our understanding of science takes us as
far as it can, then our GRINNING faith takes over, and starts to seek
insight into how our science fits into the way we think of God. And
here, perhaps, we need to be quiet again in order to take in exactly
what it is that we celebrate tonight/today.

	 We’ve done this so many times. We’ve seen the lights; we’ve
heard the special hymns; yet no matter how many times we’ve done
this, each time, each year, there seems to be something new that we
discover when we experience it.

	 This is how God works, making us more and more aware of the fact
that no matter how glorious, how incomprehensible God is, God still
comes to us in tangible form, using images and languages that we CAN
comprehend. THIS is how God still surprises us.

	 I think this is what makes each Christmas celebration a sign of the
Song of Holy Love.

	 The lyrics of The Song of Holy Love concern intensely personal,
intensely practical aspects of life. The words which God sings to us
talk about absolutely everything that DOES and COULD impact our lives.
When God sings, it’s of infinitely more significance than that of
the 1980 E.F. Hutton commercial. As actor A.E. Houseman put it back
then, everybody listens.

	 Would that that were the so with The Song of Holy Love! Back when
the first notes and words emerged, there were those who felt that they
didn’t need to pay attention, just as there are right now, never
mind let The Song become part of their lives.

	 There WERE those who DID listen, but then they put it out of their
minds, finding it unimportant, again, just like today.

	 It seemed that when that Song was first formed, it was only those
who were attuned to notice and respond to the slightest changes around
them who reacted.


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