Christmas Eve 2022

Christmas Eve_2022 December 24, 2022 It’s not uncommon for me to be haunted by snippets of song in my ordinary days. Those of you who hear me preach with any regularity probably get sick of hearing about the ways that the Holy Spirit communicates with me through the annoying habit of lodging songs in my head. This tendency is even more pronounced in the days leading up to Christmas. Maybe it’s the Christmas carols swirling around us everywhere, the so-familiar soundtrack of this season? A few years ago, I had a phrase of lyrics lodged in my head that I kept repeating, trying to figure out where it was from, until I finally took to google to help discern the message the Holy Spirit was prompting in me, typing in “the weary world rejoices…” Well, of course the whole line goes: “a thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices…” and it’s from the beloved Christmas song “O, Holy Night.” This was a reminder to me that even the most familiar songs and words, when taken out of context, can take on new life, new meaning. “Sing to the Lord a new song!” our psalm demands of us-year after year-on this holy night. Sing, sing, sing! It commands us three times in its first two verses. A new song? Really? I don’t know…we all like our familiar carols with their hazy nostalgia and their safety this time of year. New songs are hard to learn. If you’re a singer, you have to learn new words, new music, new timing and breath. Dusting off an old familiar song is so much easier—we mostly know the words and timing; we know where to breathe; we know the notes that we struggle to hit. Some of these songs are so familiar we don’t even really have to think about singing them. Our bodies just do it. But sometimes, old, familiar songs can become new in unexpected ways. Maybe a different musician plays it differently than we are accustomed or in a different medium. Or an old, yet newly compelling phrase gets lodged in our heads as an invitation to look at our lives through this lens. Old songs can be refreshed, made new when the unexpected happens. This year, my soul was snared by another line from “O Holy Night” when I read a blog post by the Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. (Bolz-Weber is a writer who writes books and a regular blog, but if you look for her, know that she used profanity regularly and abundantly in her writing.) In this blog post, Nadia Bolz-Weber writes about how “O Holy Night” is speaking to her this year.i She starts by lifting up the phrase: “long lay the world in sin and error pining” and she talks about the word pining, how the lyrics mean that we, in our lives and in the world are “failing gradually from grief, regret, or longing due to sin or error.” This phrase helps us acknowledge that we have messed things up. We see this in our individual lives: when we go astray from our promises; when we treat people badly; when we live out the old unhealthy stories and patterns of our lives or our families over and over again in our relationships; when we make choices that take us off the path of love that God would have us follow to live our best, fullest, most whole-hearted lives. Sometimes these paths away from love become so much easier to trod, like those old familiar songs are easier to sing, and it feels beyond us, even impossible, to get back onto the path of love. We know that we need help. And that’s part of what we celebrate this night. God doesn’t leave us alone to languish in the darkness. As the song says, we were pining “ ‘til he appeared and the soul felt its worth.” In and through the birth of Jesus, God once again claims and names creation as good—taking that old song and making it new again for us. Sometimes it’s so hard to believe that God values us or cares what happens, so God reveals the value God holds for each one us by becoming one of us, and then showing us how to walk the path of love. But it’s an unexpected path often through unsought places, much like the story of the first Christmas shows. A young peasant woman gives birth to God in a town far away from her home, in a place where there are so many people there is no room for her to be in the house with family. The shepherds who are working in the field that night are visited by an angelic host of messengers who terrify them at their appearance. And unexpectedly, even tonight as we celebrate birth, we also talk about death. How God was born as one of us, how that path of love led God to offer God’s-self up to death on a cross, and how even death couldn’t contain God’s love for us—as it bursts forth from the grave in the light of the resurrection. And then, in the new/old song, the music swells and the other voices join in singing: “fall on your knees, and hear the angel voices…” What does it mean to fall on our knees? It’s a posture of supplication asking for help, a posture of relief in finally admitting that we don’t have it all together and we can’t fix this for ourselves or our loved one or for anyone, no matter how hard we might try. It’s a posture of reverence before something so inspiring and overpowering that our legs can no longer support us. It’s a posture of trepidation and maybe a little fear, as we are faced with the challenge and the invitation to sing a new song or to sing anew old, familiar songs in new and different ways. i. You can access Nadia Bolz-Weber’s blog post here: Fall on your knees - The Corners by Nadia Bolz-Weber (substack.com)