A Great Light
(Christmas Eve Reflection and Prayer)
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 24, 2013
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Angels appearing in the sky…shepherds setting aside their daily routine to go and see a newborn baby… a star that moves in the sky…and wisemen who follow it and bring gifts to a child born in a manger…a young woman...a virgin accepting on faith the message of a visiting angel that she will bear a child and her bewildered partner going along with it all.
No gift placed under any tree or inside any stocking on Christmas, no matter how unexpected or hard won, could engender such a sense of magic and surprise… hope and wonder as the story of Jesus’ birth as imagined in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Perhaps this is why, each year, on this night we join with the seers, saints, and sinners of ages past, to retell the Christmas story… It is a story perhaps intentionally hard to believe but one that nonetheless reveals to us an undeniable truth and even miracle…that the birth of an infant, an infant who would grow into the Jesus remembered in the Gospels…or “Good News”, forever changed the world.
Perhaps even more unbelievable…yet no less a truth and miracle is that the same is true of our own birth…whether we’re speaking of our actual physical birth or the ways in which we are reborn throughout our lives…
Indeed, the birth, life, and ministry of Jesus speaks to this truth…of a need to prepare for and celebrate the birth of hope…to be willing to be reborn…to open oneself, to make oneself vulnerable to a change of heart and mind… trusting the promise that when we do so, the world will never be the same. It is a message too easily forgotten in the hyper activity of our commercialized celebrations and too easily dismissed in the face the brutality, suffering, and desperation so prevalent in the world and our own hearts.
And yet…we return as if by invitation, to hear…to imagine and relive…to celebrate… a story with angels, shepherds, and wisemen… and a young couple and the newborn baby. Christmas is indeed an invitation…an invitation to journey to that place within ourselves where the hope and promise of new life and a new way of living can be born again and again and again…that the work of Christmas can begin anew…to heal the wounds of generations…to bind up the broken…to embrace the forgotten, the poor, the sick, the lonely, the imprisoned, the marginalized, and the despised.
It is the promise spoken of by the prophet Isaiah...“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. For unto us a child is born.”[1] And so it is again this night…a great light shines once again and hope is born anew for us...for all people.
Birth, rebirth… miracles as messy and scary as they are joyous and hopeful…This is the reality…the magic…the truth that lives on in the Christmas story…
Let us Pray...
Beloved, Tonight, above the sounds of earth’s lamentations, we turn toward the darkened night sky of our being to seek a star…a star to lead us home…to that place within our hearts and minds we may greet the promise of Emmanuel, “God with us.”… a place free of the tyranny of small mindedness and dulled imagination.
Ease our fears that we might risk the journey and awaken us to a way of living and being unimaginable to the cynics and naysayers in the world and within ourselves…a way of living and being terrifying to the abusers of earthly power…in which we see and treat one another as ourselves and know one another as sacred, precious, and beloved of you, oh God..oh Light that dwells within and beyond each one of us.
We pray this Christmas Eve not only for ourselves, for those gathered here, but for all people… especially those both near and among us as well as far from us whose lives are made much harder and bitter by the tragedy of war, the sting of poverty, prolonged unemployment, illness, bullying, discrimination, and other forms of spiritual and physical violence and oppression. People for whom this night is a reminder of a promise in many ways as yet unfulfilled but for whom we pray by our words and deeds hope might still burn brightly as a star against the dark night sky of the soul’s midwinter.
And we give thanks for this night and all the moments in our lives when time seems to stand still and we are blessed with a glimpse or sense of your abiding presence. May our hearts and minds be open to hear the promise of the Christmas story and may our lives, lived in love, bear witness to the possibility and necessity of its fulfillment.
Amen and Blessed Be
[1] Isaiah 9:2, 6. (The Bible, KJV)
(Christmas Eve Reflection and Prayer)
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 24, 2013
The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Angels appearing in the sky…shepherds setting aside their daily routine to go and see a newborn baby… a star that moves in the sky…and wisemen who follow it and bring gifts to a child born in a manger…a young woman...a virgin accepting on faith the message of a visiting angel that she will bear a child and her bewildered partner going along with it all.
No gift placed under any tree or inside any stocking on Christmas, no matter how unexpected or hard won, could engender such a sense of magic and surprise… hope and wonder as the story of Jesus’ birth as imagined in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Perhaps this is why, each year, on this night we join with the seers, saints, and sinners of ages past, to retell the Christmas story… It is a story perhaps intentionally hard to believe but one that nonetheless reveals to us an undeniable truth and even miracle…that the birth of an infant, an infant who would grow into the Jesus remembered in the Gospels…or “Good News”, forever changed the world.
Perhaps even more unbelievable…yet no less a truth and miracle is that the same is true of our own birth…whether we’re speaking of our actual physical birth or the ways in which we are reborn throughout our lives…
Indeed, the birth, life, and ministry of Jesus speaks to this truth…of a need to prepare for and celebrate the birth of hope…to be willing to be reborn…to open oneself, to make oneself vulnerable to a change of heart and mind… trusting the promise that when we do so, the world will never be the same. It is a message too easily forgotten in the hyper activity of our commercialized celebrations and too easily dismissed in the face the brutality, suffering, and desperation so prevalent in the world and our own hearts.
And yet…we return as if by invitation, to hear…to imagine and relive…to celebrate… a story with angels, shepherds, and wisemen… and a young couple and the newborn baby. Christmas is indeed an invitation…an invitation to journey to that place within ourselves where the hope and promise of new life and a new way of living can be born again and again and again…that the work of Christmas can begin anew…to heal the wounds of generations…to bind up the broken…to embrace the forgotten, the poor, the sick, the lonely, the imprisoned, the marginalized, and the despised.
It is the promise spoken of by the prophet Isaiah...“The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. For unto us a child is born.”[1] And so it is again this night…a great light shines once again and hope is born anew for us...for all people.
Birth, rebirth… miracles as messy and scary as they are joyous and hopeful…This is the reality…the magic…the truth that lives on in the Christmas story…
Let us Pray...
Beloved, Tonight, above the sounds of earth’s lamentations, we turn toward the darkened night sky of our being to seek a star…a star to lead us home…to that place within our hearts and minds we may greet the promise of Emmanuel, “God with us.”… a place free of the tyranny of small mindedness and dulled imagination.
Ease our fears that we might risk the journey and awaken us to a way of living and being unimaginable to the cynics and naysayers in the world and within ourselves…a way of living and being terrifying to the abusers of earthly power…in which we see and treat one another as ourselves and know one another as sacred, precious, and beloved of you, oh God..oh Light that dwells within and beyond each one of us.
We pray this Christmas Eve not only for ourselves, for those gathered here, but for all people… especially those both near and among us as well as far from us whose lives are made much harder and bitter by the tragedy of war, the sting of poverty, prolonged unemployment, illness, bullying, discrimination, and other forms of spiritual and physical violence and oppression. People for whom this night is a reminder of a promise in many ways as yet unfulfilled but for whom we pray by our words and deeds hope might still burn brightly as a star against the dark night sky of the soul’s midwinter.
And we give thanks for this night and all the moments in our lives when time seems to stand still and we are blessed with a glimpse or sense of your abiding presence. May our hearts and minds be open to hear the promise of the Christmas story and may our lives, lived in love, bear witness to the possibility and necessity of its fulfillment.
Amen and Blessed Be
[1] Isaiah 9:2, 6. (The Bible, KJV)
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