All I Want For Christmas
(Christmas Eve Reflection and Prayer)
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 24, 2014
By The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Since before Thanksgiving we been reminded in print, on screens, through the airwaves and on store shelves... Christmas is coming! In the weeks leading up to this momentous day, we are bombarded even more than usual by advertisements hoping to make sure the latest, greatest, new and improved, “must have” version of some product makes it onto our Christmas list. It can get rather confusing, which may explain the initial response I often get and give when the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” is asked...”I don’t know.”
“I don’t know” could indicate indecisiveness or the absence of some burning need or desire. But it could also indicate that one hasn’t given the question, “What do I want for Christmas?” any serious thought.
Its not easy to give this question the thought it deserves in the midst of all the holiday advertising, shopping, planning, and parties layered onto already busy lives. Perhaps that’s why on Christmas Eve churches swell with attendees like no other time of the year. Spiritually, “What do I want for Christmas” is an important question, pointing beyond the satisfaction of a material desire to a more profound wondering, “What do I want....even need...from Christmas that I’m not getting out of what its become in our market economy?”
If each of us were to sit back and think for a while and list all the things we value most in our lives, most of us, I bet, would find our list short on material objects. Indeed our lists would likely include at least some of the twelve gifts named in our story this evening: strength, beauty, courage, compassion, hope, joy, talent, imagination, reverence, wisdom, love, faith. These, which our story called, gifts of birth, comprise what I consider an alternative Christmas list.
The gifts on this alternative Christmas list don’t need to be purchased, indeed they don’t even need to be given, for each of us posses them already....they are the “noble inheritance” we received at birth. While these gifts of our birth need not be given to us, they do need to be awakened in us...for our own benefit and in service to others.
At their best, our faith traditions help us awaken to the gift of our being and gifts of our birth through worship, sacred stories, rituals and song. Christmas as the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, serves to remind us of the miracle of both physical and spiritual birth.
But the story doesn’t end there. The baby, whose birth Matthew and Luke wrote about in their respective gospels, grew into a man who would spend his life attempting to awaken anyone who would listen to the presence of the Holy within and among them...to feel their own heart beat as the pulse of the Universe... and recognize the face of God in themselves and the other.
He devoted his life to living the gifts of his birth and attempting to awaken them in others at time when the ways of the world repeatedly and in innumerable ways denied the worth and dignity of most people, much as they do today.
As a celebration of one who would not only recognize the gifts of his own birth but recognize and attempt to bring them out in others, Christmas is a direct challenge to the ways of the world, ways of living and being we get swept up in in pursuit of lesser gifts.
The faith we practice here, Unitarian Universalism, is a faith with roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition and which today affirms, as hymn we sang together, “Each night a child is born is a holy night...A time for singing; A time for wondering; A time for worshipping.” But the story doesn’t end there. To grow spiritually we need to be awakened to and live into the gifts of our birth, something our faith teaches we can’t do alone.
The sacred stories of our faith, stories we retell, cherish and struggle with year after year like the Christmas story and the new ones we discover over time, like the Charlene Costanzo’s “Twelve Gifts of Birth”, help nudge us from our slumber, reminding us of the truth of our noble inheritance, as well as that of our neighbors, no matter how humble our circumstances or worn down our spirits may be.
They provide inspirational examples and sometimes models to counter the ways of the world, ways that diminish or deny the sacred, interdependent web of life of which we are a part. Our sacred stories become the sources we turn to in pursuit of those gifts on our alternative Christmas list.
What do you want for Christmas?
Tonight, looking out at all your faces, having shared in word and song something of the season, and sensing the myriad states of heart and mind, body and spirit present here....All I want for Christmas is for us to be awakened to the gifts of our birth and those of our neighbors. To learn from the stories of old and new the truth of our noble inheritance as human beings that we might spend it lavishly in service to one another and the wider world this season and throughout all the seasons of our lives.
Peace, love and joy to you and yours.
Amen
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 being awakened to the gifts of our birth and 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 Spirit of Life and Love 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 hardship, 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.
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 we give thanks. May our hearts and minds be open to hear the promise of the season and may our lives, awakened and lived in love, bear witness to the possibility of its fulfillment.
Amen and Blessed Be
(Christmas Eve Reflection and Prayer)
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 24, 2014
By The Rev. Craig M. Nowak
Since before Thanksgiving we been reminded in print, on screens, through the airwaves and on store shelves... Christmas is coming! In the weeks leading up to this momentous day, we are bombarded even more than usual by advertisements hoping to make sure the latest, greatest, new and improved, “must have” version of some product makes it onto our Christmas list. It can get rather confusing, which may explain the initial response I often get and give when the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” is asked...”I don’t know.”
“I don’t know” could indicate indecisiveness or the absence of some burning need or desire. But it could also indicate that one hasn’t given the question, “What do I want for Christmas?” any serious thought.
Its not easy to give this question the thought it deserves in the midst of all the holiday advertising, shopping, planning, and parties layered onto already busy lives. Perhaps that’s why on Christmas Eve churches swell with attendees like no other time of the year. Spiritually, “What do I want for Christmas” is an important question, pointing beyond the satisfaction of a material desire to a more profound wondering, “What do I want....even need...from Christmas that I’m not getting out of what its become in our market economy?”
If each of us were to sit back and think for a while and list all the things we value most in our lives, most of us, I bet, would find our list short on material objects. Indeed our lists would likely include at least some of the twelve gifts named in our story this evening: strength, beauty, courage, compassion, hope, joy, talent, imagination, reverence, wisdom, love, faith. These, which our story called, gifts of birth, comprise what I consider an alternative Christmas list.
The gifts on this alternative Christmas list don’t need to be purchased, indeed they don’t even need to be given, for each of us posses them already....they are the “noble inheritance” we received at birth. While these gifts of our birth need not be given to us, they do need to be awakened in us...for our own benefit and in service to others.
At their best, our faith traditions help us awaken to the gift of our being and gifts of our birth through worship, sacred stories, rituals and song. Christmas as the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus, serves to remind us of the miracle of both physical and spiritual birth.
But the story doesn’t end there. The baby, whose birth Matthew and Luke wrote about in their respective gospels, grew into a man who would spend his life attempting to awaken anyone who would listen to the presence of the Holy within and among them...to feel their own heart beat as the pulse of the Universe... and recognize the face of God in themselves and the other.
He devoted his life to living the gifts of his birth and attempting to awaken them in others at time when the ways of the world repeatedly and in innumerable ways denied the worth and dignity of most people, much as they do today.
As a celebration of one who would not only recognize the gifts of his own birth but recognize and attempt to bring them out in others, Christmas is a direct challenge to the ways of the world, ways of living and being we get swept up in in pursuit of lesser gifts.
The faith we practice here, Unitarian Universalism, is a faith with roots in the Judeo-Christian tradition and which today affirms, as hymn we sang together, “Each night a child is born is a holy night...A time for singing; A time for wondering; A time for worshipping.” But the story doesn’t end there. To grow spiritually we need to be awakened to and live into the gifts of our birth, something our faith teaches we can’t do alone.
The sacred stories of our faith, stories we retell, cherish and struggle with year after year like the Christmas story and the new ones we discover over time, like the Charlene Costanzo’s “Twelve Gifts of Birth”, help nudge us from our slumber, reminding us of the truth of our noble inheritance, as well as that of our neighbors, no matter how humble our circumstances or worn down our spirits may be.
They provide inspirational examples and sometimes models to counter the ways of the world, ways that diminish or deny the sacred, interdependent web of life of which we are a part. Our sacred stories become the sources we turn to in pursuit of those gifts on our alternative Christmas list.
What do you want for Christmas?
Tonight, looking out at all your faces, having shared in word and song something of the season, and sensing the myriad states of heart and mind, body and spirit present here....All I want for Christmas is for us to be awakened to the gifts of our birth and those of our neighbors. To learn from the stories of old and new the truth of our noble inheritance as human beings that we might spend it lavishly in service to one another and the wider world this season and throughout all the seasons of our lives.
Peace, love and joy to you and yours.
Amen
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 being awakened to the gifts of our birth and 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 Spirit of Life and Love 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 hardship, 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.
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 we give thanks. May our hearts and minds be open to hear the promise of the season and may our lives, awakened and lived in love, bear witness to the possibility of its fulfillment.
Amen and Blessed Be
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