|
Back to Sermon Archives
December 24, 2005 - Christmas Eve Meditation
Rev. John Auer
Read by Ron Smith
“Bethlehem Explosion: Millennial Glass, Grains,
Gifts and Goals”
I am glad for the chance to say a little something, even from afar. This night
is God’s to say a little something that grows quite big – from afar to our
everyday lives. A little something may go along way. Every little thing
counts. Every person, every through, every word and every action make a
difference. Those have been themes of our worship and preaching this season.
After we hear these words, if anything touches you in such a way you would
testify to – a “Bethlehem explosion” in your life and/or in our world – please
feel free to do so.
This prayer-poem of Madeleine L’Engle, “The Bethlehem explosion,” just slid
right in to the consciousness of our seasonal planning team – as if it had been
long-considered and well-prepared. The poem itself became a “precipitating
factor” for us. Somehow it went, like tonight, to the core of us, reached us
and touched us deeply, moved us and released for us a flood of inspired
imagination. We could only translate a portion of that into our planning and
preaching. But it revealed to us the very practice of the promise we heard in
the poem!
Each of us is a living and loving experiment in the very nature and spirit of
life and of love. We present ourselves as emptily and as transparently as a
plain glass jar. We allow ourselves to be filled, patiently, gratefully, grain
by grain, with the gifts and the goals of life and of love. Then in the midst
of everyday life and work, there occurs some “silent, quietly violent explosion”
– in us, around us, between us, among us, with and through us – even, tonight,
all the above! All human experience is such a supersaturated solution waiting
for such a precipitating factor! Our pattern . . . of living, of loving . . .
changed forever.
These moments of the new and unexpected, even unprecedented, breaking forth in
all the world, are God’s tender and merciful offerings to us – by whatever our
faith tradition or way of attention to God. With awe and wonder, with comfort
and joy, with justice and peace – God with the heavens now coming on earth ,
with Paradise now at hand for us -- God offers us each and all the chance
tonight to reach out! The chance to touch, move, release into all the world our
very own floods of inspired imagination! What a life, what a love this old
world could be!
Everything lies in waiting for us – even as in Bethlehem for Mary and Joseph.
They have said “Yes” to God’s life and love for their own lives and for the life
of the world. Will we stand and speak here with them? Good looks upon all of
the world again this night – as fraught as ever with injustice, oppression,
invasion, occupation, violence and war – and once again God chooses not to bail
out! Rather God chooses to bail right in -- in the least likely, most humble
and vulnerable ways – in the least likely hard cold times and faraway places –
in the midst of the most ravaged and raggedy peoples – God bails in – for
good!! Perhaps just beyond the angels’ songs we hear the cosmic splash of God
cannonballing to earth this night – ending up as a babe in each one of our arms.
God brings all the poet’s “precipitation” – breakthrough, release, new life – to
the full range of our “supersaturated” experience. God brings forth tonight
God’s unconditional love for all of life – from new-born cry to dying sigh and
everything in-between. God becomes flesh of our flesh tonight. God gives new
eyes to see – the heroic in the hopeless, the miraculous in the mundane, the
“once and only” in all the “ongoing.” We never know which snowflake breaks the
branch. A year ago we were beginning, though we did not know it, a winter of
wondering if our branches could take one more flake! Imagine those who have
wondered this year, could they take one more surge of the tsunami? One more
gust of hurricane winds, or inch of hurricane rains? One more tremor in our
ever-breaking, ever-mending heart of an earth? And of course, one more
checkpoint, one more bomb on the ground, one more missile from the sky?
So we are not looking for any easy ways out this cold night in Bethlehem’s
barn. Rather we are looking for more and easier ways in – ways into the
goodness of God, the life and the love of God -- for all of the peoples of God,
all of the children and creatures of God. Each and every last one of us – of
every size, color, shape, place, condition and description of life – we say as
one child what we hold in common with all – We are born, We are born, WE ARE
BORN!
Hallelujah! Amen.
Now after the scripture and song, please feel free to speak out “good news” of
new life from where you are standing! And let the people say, “Thank you, Child
Jesus!”
top of page
Archives
|
