Christmas Eve, 2007
Dear Christ Church Family:
I’m sitting at home listening to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, on public radio. What a way to wrap up the calendar year!
And yet, something new has already begun before New Year’s. Advent is the beginning of the church year, and this is my first Advent and first Christmas, as a new Christian.
So there are many new beginnings, even before the end of the year.
The anticipation, the anxiety, and the hope that I have been carrying through Advent, and today, Christmas Eve, are like none other. Their intensity churns the deep, like the Lenten walk to Easter, that I sojourned for the first time this year too. But the flavor and character of Advent and Lent have been like opposite poles, distinctly different, and yet inseparably linked.
The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols harks back to my first Easter Vigil. – A series of readings, alternating with songs to our Lord, remembering His promises and expressing our fears, our hopes, and our praises to Him. – A summary of the walks through faith, being blind and in the dark; hope, seeing signs and wonders; and love, living a new life in Christ’s Light.
From the first lesson, which is from Genesis, about the Fall of Adam, we hear:
for dust thou art, and
unto dust shalt thou return.
This binds the two poles of Advent and Lent, the darkness from the Fall, how cast off we are from God by sin. We hear this again on Ash Wednesday when we walk with Jesus to Calvary, and then to the joy of his Resurrection.
The waiting, the darkness, and the silence of Advent have swept over and surrounded me for several weeks. Where is God? There is a great tension between my internal emptiness and the air which is filled with swarms of prayers, wild with my confusion, to God.
Lord, maybe I don’t know Who you are.
Can you show me your life-giving love?
Can you teach me what forgiveness means?
Can it be that in the darkness and waiting, that I, like Israel, have become impatient and created a golden calf to worship?
God, lift me up from the darkness.
Jesus, save me from the sins of unbelief.
Holy Spirit, melt down those false idols in your refining fire;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
It is a strange dichotomy to be able to give voice to prayer, both alone and together with you on Sundays and Wednesdays, and to have the noise of confusion and doubt, buzzing around in me, at the same time. There is a twinge of Reality that underlies this dichotomy. It is so quiet, I cannot hear it, but can only sense it in brief moments. Brief like the breaths we take between the lines of psalms, when we chant together.
Now after Lesson three, is this carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” …
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming;
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him, still
The dear Christ enters in.
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas Angels
The great glad tidings tell:
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!
What a grace from God it is to have poetry and music to touch and glimpse some of that silent, ever-present, hidden Reality! Before being found by God, I used to say that God, Jesus, and religion, were concepts created by people, and that these concepts inspired artists and musicians. But now, I don’t see or say that anymore. It’s not a merely human-centric world with only human-bred concepts that inspire creativity.
The new world in which I live, and move, and have my being, is one where the direct experience of the Divine sings through our music; no less and no more, whether we are composing it, or singing it together on Sunday.
It is the music and the poetry, and communal celebration of this mysterious Christ Child, that first drew me to the Anglican liturgy and to the Episcopal Church. These celebrations and the Bible, composed with the beauty and rhythm of English, tugged at me.
Every culture, nation, and tribe experiences the Divine through its unique lens, and paints portraits of God’s Love with different temperaments and techniques. If I had grown up in the East, how different would my experiences be? I don’t know. But as this musical Festival that I’m listening to splashes bits of other Christian traditions and national influences into its selections: Orthodox Christianity, Latin, French, German … so too, can I drop in, listen, and celebrate with other brothers and sisters in Christ, in their traditions.
From the opening prayer of the Festival:
let us make this Chapel, dedicated to Mary, his most blessed
Mother, glad with our carols of praise:
But first let us pray for the needs of his whole world; for
peace and goodwill over all the earth; for unity and
brotherhood within the Church he came to build
On my travels this year, I met some complete strangers and also family members, who I treated like strangers before. I prayed morning prayer from the Daily Office with a postulant for holy orders in Reston, VA; I sang songs and cried with my aunt at a charismatic Christian fellowship in Hong Kong; I learned how to pray the Holy Rosary after visiting my great-aunt, who is a Roman Catholic Sister in Hong Kong; I gave thanks to God with a congregation in Berkeley, CA who used the 1928 Prayer Book …
Now that I have seen and participated in other traditions, I see that my “liking” of the Anglican liturgy is very fragile. And I think that here in Advent, I am tasting the corporate darkness that surrounds the Body of Christ. How do I reach out my hands in love to other brothers and sisters who are vastly different? How is it possible that the Body of Christ has so many contradictions in it? What is the holy catholic Church that I believe in, when I pray the Creed with you?
Oh Lord, it hurts me so much when the things I see,
hear, taste, and touch crumble before me!
I am so blind and weak, groping around in the dark.
Where is the Light?
I gasp for your Love, O God.
Lord, save me from Phariseeism;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Maybe as members of the Body of Christ, we share the faith of being blind and in the dark? the hope of seeing signs and wonders? and the love of living a new life in Christ’s Light? I don’t know, but God knows. Meanwhile, I pray for my brothers and sisters in Christ, the ones that I don’t understand, and the ones I celebrate with; namely, you.
Week after week, I come home to you—Christ Church. You are my spiritual home. You are the strangers whom I have grown to love, out of the love and light of Christ that shines out of you. Your generosity, your virtues, your weaknesses, your imperfections, your humanness, your Divinity, your Love.
In the Ninth Lesson, I hear this from St. John:
That was the true light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. He
was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the
world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own
received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave
he power to become the sons of God, even to them that
believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld
his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full
of grace and truth.
Thank you Lord, for the Word made flesh,
Thank you Lord, for dwelling among us at Christ Church,
Thank you Lord, for showing me your Light, week after week.
Please send us Pilgrims who are searching for your Light,
Please guide us to welcome them with your Love,
Please love us into a new life with You;
through Christ our Lord. Amen.
It seems that I have blabbered on, quite a bit, and it’s almost time to spend time with you this evening! Well the last hymn in the Festival is “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing”
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Risen with healing in his wings;
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
So there are many new beginnings, even before the End of the Ages.
I wish you all a safe, fun, and Merry Christmas (& Christmastide), and Happy New Year!
God’s Love and Peace be with you always,
Helena
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