Christmas Eve

Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 88; Acts 13:16-17, 22-25

"If we have neglected the spiritual call of Advent for yet another year, and have allowed ourselves to become thoroughly frazzled by December 24, all is not lost. We are, in face, in very good shape for Christmas.


It is precisely because we are weary, and poor in spirit, that God can touch us with hope. This is not an easy truth. It means that we accept our common lot, and take up our share of the cross. It means that we do not gloss over the evils we confront every day, both within ourselves and without. Our sacrifices may be great. But as the martyred archbishop of El Salvador, Oscar Romero, once said, it is only the poor and hungry, those who know they need someone to come on their behalf, who can celebrate Christmas.

Tonight we are asked to acknowledge that the world we have made is in darkness. We are asked to be attentive, and keep vigil for the light of Christ. The readings are not particularly comforting. Psalm 88, a lament which is also commonly read on Good Friday, is stark in its appraisal: "For my soul is full of troubles, and my life draws near to Sheol," the underworld of the dead. The passage from Acts asks us to consider that, just as Israel needed God to lead them out of Egypt, so we need Christ to lead us out of our present slavery to sin. We, and our world, are broken. Even our homes have become places of physical and psychological violence. It is only God, through Jesus Christ, who can make us whole again.


The prophecy of Isaiah allows us to imagine a time when God's promise will be fulfilled, and we will no longer be desolate, or forsaken, but found, and beloved of God. We find a note of hope also in the Gospel of Matthew. In the long list of Jesus' forbears, we find the whole range of humanity: not only God's faithful, but adulterers, murderers, rebels, conspirators, transgressors of all sorts, both the fearful and the bold. And yet God's purpose is not thwarted. In Jesus Christ, God turns even human dysfunction to the good."

The genealogy of Jesus reveals that God chooses to work with us as we are, using our weaknesses, even more than our strengths, to fulfill the divine purpose. At tonight's vigil, in a world as cold and cruel and unjust as it was at the time of Jesus' birth in a stable, we desire something better. And in desiring it, we come to believe that it is possible. We await its coming in hope."  


We await HIS coming...again.

O God, who spoke all creation into being: 

When you created human flesh, we betrayed you by our disobedience. 
When you led us out of slavery in Egypt, we doubted and defied you. 
Yet you chose to come among us through your Son, Jesus Christ, who suffered death on our behalf, putting an end to the power of sin and death. 
For this great gift of your steadfast love, we give you thanks. 
Help us, O Lord, to keep vigil this night. 
Help us to watch for the signs of your coming into our midst, not in the splendid palaces of power, but in hearts humbled by need. 
Help us to believe that the darkness of cruelty and sin will never overcome the light, and the mercy, of Christ. 
Help us to endure, knowing that the evil and injustice of this world cannot prevail against your Word. 
We ask this in the name of your Word made flesh, our Savior, Jesus Christ.
(God With Us)

Please do not leave this most precious of gifts unwrapped this Christmas.  

Thank you for you friendship, support and encouragement. May you all have a joy-filled, love-filled, grace-filled day celebrating the One that makes Christmas, Christmas. 

Grace and peace

Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 35:1-6; Psalm 145:16, 19; Psalm 130:5

Waiting

"Anticipation lifts the heart. Desire is created to be fulfilled - perhaps not all at once, more likely in slow stages." (Luci Shaw)

Are you waiting for something?

Have you been waiting for a long time?

"It's the waiting that's hard, the in-between of divine promise and its fulfillment, like a leap across a ditch after take-off and before landing.  Most of us find ourselves dangling in this hiatus, which in the interval may seem a waste of time. We drum our fingers on the steering wheel as we wait for the light to change. We wait, gnawing with anxiety, for the telephone call that tells us we got the job. For politicians' promises to be fulfilled. For our health to improve. For our headstrong children to grow up. For Jesus to come and resolve the world's confusion and pain. (Luci Shaw)

"Waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminished a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy."  

(Romans 8:24-26 The Message)

"With such motivation, we can wait as we sense God is indeed with us, and at work within us...Though the protracted waiting time is often the place of distress, even disillusionment, we are counseled in the book of James to "let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete." Pain, grief, consternation, even despair, need not diminish us. They can augment us by adding to the breadth and depth of our experience, by enriching our spectrum of light and darkness, by keeping us from impulsively jumping into action before the time is ripe, before "the fullness of time." I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I hope." (Luci Shaw)

"Oh my Lord, keep me from frustration and impatience when I see little evidence of your living and growing in me. Reassure me that waiting time is not wasted time. That your purposes for us all are large and all-embracing enough to hold firm and prevail, no matter the obstacles or distractions. You have told us that "now is the accepted time...now is the day of salvation." But perhaps your "now" is different from ours. You see our lives from the infinite perspective of eternity, of kairos. We want immediate action, change, growth in chronos, in "real time." We want to see our problems being resolved, Now.

Help us to realize, as those who love and believe in you, that we, too, are pregnant with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, and that day by day we are being enlarged. Augment our hope, widen our imagination, and nourish our anticipation that the astounding fact of "Christ in you, the hope of glory" will turn true in us in your good time. (Luci Shaw, God With Us)

Amen