Christmas Eve Meditation -- 11:00 p.m. Service
By the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
 

Our 5:00 Christmas Eve service at Epworth is a wild and wonder-full retelling of the story of Christ’s birth for children... of all ages.

I love the story about a more traditional Church Christmas pageant, and a little boy who decided to... improvise.  Cast as the innkeeper … he was ready … When Joseph and Mary came to his door and asked for a room, he took one hard look at them and said, “You’re in luck!  We just had a cancellation!”

However the hospitable innkeeper who finally welcomed Mary and Joseph actually said it, and for whatever reasons, … a whole lot of people said “no” before they every reached his door.

The sobering truth of our frantic-paced lives is that most likely we are like the harried and hassled innkeepers with no room left.  Like them, for all kinds of understandable reasons, we shut out things God wants us to let in.

When innkeepers said “no” to Mary and Joseph … they said “no” to a promise disguised as a problem … they said “no” to new life disguised as an inconvenience.  They said “no” to abundance because all they could see was scarcity.  Christmas is the invitation to open our lives … to invite in the promise and possibility of new life that inevitably comes to us, arises within us, surrounds us all the time.

“Transformed by hope” has been the theme of our worship life here at Epworth during the season of Advent.  “Transformed by hope” is the expectation and the promise brought together in the birth of Jesus we celebrate this night.  

Whatever else was going on in this year’s presidential election, a powerful part of what happened was the people insisting on the reality of “hope.”  Some call it desperation … some call it faith … some call it vision... it is the tenacious truth that insists on hope no matter what the circumstances.

This month marks the 20th anniversary of the deadly earthquake that struck northwest Armenia on December 7, 1988 … 25,000 people were killed, another 15,000 seriously injured, and over a half-million lost their homes.  Among the news stories of pain and loss was this story of love and tenacious faith:

In the midst of the chaos, a father rushed to the school where his son was supposed to be... only to discover that the school building had collapsed.  The father began to dig in the debris in the general location of his son’s classroom.  The fire chief tried to pull him away saying, “Fires are breaking out, explosions are everywhere. We’ll take care of it.  You might make things worse.”  But the father kept searching.

This man dug for hours, 12, 24, 36 hours.  In the 38th hour he pulled back a piece of masonry and heard his son’s voice.  He screamed the boy’s name.  He heard back, “Dad!  It’s me, Dad!” …

With him were 14 classmates still alive out of 33 in the classroom. When the building collapsed, it made a wedge and it saved the children.  “Come out, Armand! Called his father.  “No, Dad, let the other kids go first. No matter what, I know you’ll get me.”    

(Mark V. Hanson “Are you going to help me?”)

This is a time in our economic and political lives … and for so many in our personal lives … when it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and isolated, and to feel there is no room to let anyone or anything in.  But the unsettling promise of the season is that God-is-with-us.  Even, especially, when we do not sense it, we are not alone.  Even, especially when we are afraid, we are not alone.  John’s Gospel testifies… “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”  In “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we sing “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”

Whatever we bring to this night, whatever we are facing in this night … God is the loving power that will never leave us alone … in whom the worst and the best of our lives come together … and through whom we have the power and strength to move forward.  Thanks be to God.