Christmas Eve
Saint Luke 2:1-20
Pastors have a tendency to notice these things more than lay people perhaps but as I drove around this past week I couldn’t help that the signs outside of many churches were announcing Christmas Eve Services at 4, or 8, or 10 P.M. but gone was a staple of most of our childhoods the Midnight Christmas Eve Service.
In this sense an old joke is becoming a reality. My brothers at Saint Mary of the Woods and Queen of All Saints used to howl at how many calls the office staff used to receive on the 24th of December asking, “What time is Midnight Mass.” “Ahhh. Midnight?”
Truth be told, before I retired, we hadn’t held a Midnight Service at Saint John’s for as long as I can remember. I think we had one when we first arrived but gradually as we all grew older and older the time got earlier and earlier.
And it is that way for our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters too.
Somebody gave me an article from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review in which The Rev. William Lechnar, pastor at Mother of Sorrows Church in Murrysville and the director of planning for the Diocese of Greensburg, said Western Pennsylvania's demographics have a lot to do with many churches celebrating their “Mass at night” earlier.
“In the old days, midnight Mass was the big Mass for Christmas,” he said. “It's different now. More and more families, especially those with young children, come to 4 o'clock Mass.
“Making our last Mass start at 10:30, it's not too late at night, so it's easier for people. Western Pennsylvania has an aging population,” he said. “A lot of people who used to go to midnight Mass were younger when they went. They're older now, and it's hard to expect them to come out so late.” 1
Some purists will scoff but I like the image of an earlier service better because it perfectly speaks to the struggle between Christ and culture.
Moving the services to an earlier hour makes people have to decide between staying at the party and coming to church. It makes people have to choose between another round with their friends or getting around to going to church. Will they search for a Savior or, as the Corona commercial puts it, keep trying to “find their beach.”
All the empirical evidence points to the search for the beach.
Just drive downtown on Christmas Eve and you will find more people milling around the front of the saloons on Ontario than streaming in or out of Fourth Presbyterian, First United Methodist, St. James Cathedral, or Holy Name.
All this makes, at least for me, the Christmas story even more relevant.
While our attention may be drawn to the young couple riding into town looking for a place to stay they were vastly unnoticed by most of the citizens of Bethlehem.
The place was packed because of a government ordered census. With this intrusion of the state upon their lives the people attention was turned elsewhere. Perhaps toward wondering what they were going to do with their friends and relatives who were in town, they hoped, just long enough to fill out the required paperwork and then head back home.
A census can be an intrusion but a house filled with relatives can get to be a bother. Hey! It could be Christmas not just in Chicago but at your house as you do everything but put on your pajamas and wind your alarm clock in the hopes that your dinner guests will get the hint and go home.
They didn’t notice the intense look on the faces of Mary and Joseph who without the benefit of Expedia® or Travelosity® had to search door to door for a inn with a room.
Nobody noticed the harried face of the innkeeper as the couple came to his door and he had to search frantically for one more space in his already overcrowded establishment.
I’ll bet you nobody even noticed the eager faces of the shepherds as they carried out their angelically inspired mission to come and worship the Christ child.
The Bethlehem of Jesus birth was a lot like the Chicago on the night of its celebration with most people going about their lives as if nothing important was happening.
But to those of us who are called to this place and places like it there is something more.
To those of us who long to hear to story and come face to face with the beauty and wonder of it all we find something that is lasting. Something that will stay with us longer than the “boom, boom, boom” of the dance music in any bar.
The light that illumines our faces is, what St. John would later call, a light shining in the darkness that the darkness cannot over come.
That is something all of us will need as we face the days ahead. We may need it amid our fears of what is going to become of us. We may need it as we face the loss of someone we love or an illness of our own. We may need it as we face any dark moment, any dark path, that comes our way. And the message of Christmas is that we are not alone in the darkness, not pinned in by the darkness, because light has come.
As theologian Douglas John Hall, has said, “God is alongside you – in the darkest place of your darkest night.” 2
Tonight your face will become one of the most important faces of the Christmas story and you will see how in a very real, very powerful way.
I only wish that you could stand where pastors get to stand on Christmas Eve as we Standup front, looking out at you, we will see the light of Christ passed from one person to the next.
It is a tradition in liturgical churches and, to tell you the truth, in neighborhood congregations, it can become a little “ho hum.” We’ve seen all the illuminated faces before. Perhaps not since last Christmas or Easter but we have seen them!
In Lutheran congregations the moment can become even a little “white bread” because, if you have seen one Scandinavian face you have pretty much seen them all.
But in my final year as Pastor of Saint John’s the meaning of Christmas came alive for me.
Because it was a joint worship with the three other churches that shared one building I was awestruck as I realized that the light of Christ was coming to faces who I had never met and faces who had known each other for years.
The light was passed between people who grew up in different denominations but who had all that swept away because they had come to worship the same Savior. The light was passed between people who didn’t sometimes even speak the same language.
The light was passed and the most important face of all in the Christmas story suddenly glowed brightly even in a darkened room. It was your face, and mine, singing about that birth that unites us all and changes our lives.
Silent night, holy night! Wondrous star, lend thy light;
With the angels let us sing, Alleluia to our King;
Christ the Savior is born, Christ the Savior is born.
________
1. R.A. Monti, “When It Comes to Midnight Mass Times Have Changed.” (Triblive.com), December 24, 2012.
2. Douglas John Hall, Lighten Our Darkness. (Louisville:Westminister/John Knox Press, 1980), p.4.
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