Being a guest priest and preacher on Christmas Eve

It is a joy to be with you on Christmas Eve, this most joyful of our festival nights. And I am grateful to you for inviting me into your church home. So often we think of Christmas as a family time, a comfortable, slippers-on time. Even the intruder who comes down the chimney is not a stranger but a welcome and familiar figure.

So to be invited into the family Christmas is something special. It can be a big step in a relationship. Of course, the family thing can create some extra loneliness, too, for those marking the holiday alone, for those grieving, or angry, or stubbornly unloved.

That first Christmas, though, that was hardly a private affair. First of all, it wasn’t even celebrated at home. Mary and Joseph were called away by the government to present themselves, to be accounted for, to give an account of themselves. They dared not disobey the summons, not when it came with the name of the Emperor attached. Not even when they didn’t know where it would lead, what to expect when they got there. Not even if it would leave them temporarily homeless, banished to a foreign land, to wait out the wrath of those given or grasping temporal power, Herod and his henchmen.

As you can tell, already there was a lot to be uneasy about, when they finally arrived in the birthplace of David, Joseph’s forefather. And now Bethlehem was bustling, and there was no room for newcomers. They had to make do among the animals, and how private was that, do you think? How many times in the night were they disturbed by someone just stopping in to check on their donkey or their ox? Not to mention the shepherds, wild and out of their minds with fear and the songs of angels.

No, that was no picture-postcard Christmas. The holy family did not spend it relaxing at home, nor even in safety. And yet, this might just be the moment when God invites us home for Christmas, takes the next step in our relationship.

When I think about Christmas in the abstract, the snowscapes and the fireplace, that’s one thing; but the actual, individual, real-time Christmases I remember the most were not those picture postcard affairs, and they always involve the unexpected inclusion of others.

There was the time that my mum was in the hospital. She was supposed to come home on day release, but that didn’t work out, so we packed up everything from under the tree, stockings and all, Christmas dinners plated and packaged into a cooler on top of a hot water bottle, and took it all with us to share on the hospital ward, with the nurses in their party hats, those who worked the Christmas shift for us and to save our mother.

There was the time when we were living 13,000 miles away from family, literally on the other side of the world, and were invited to make a new family with others dislocated and far from home. The quilted stockings that one of them made for our children are still part of our Christmas traditions a quarter century later, long after her memory became blessed.

Then there was the pageant. So far from home and familiar things, our neighbours missed the ritual of dressing the children up and acting out the Christmas story – so we did it ourselves. Only, when the holy couple knocked on the door of our apartment, so tired and footsore from their journey, seeking just some room at the inn, my husband, who was playing the innkeeper, flung the door wide open and announced, “Sure, come on in – there’s loads of room!”

So maybe it wasn’t the line we were expecting, but I think that he was onto something. This is God’s line, at Christmas and always. This is God inviting us to take the next step in our relationship, God stepping into the world, into our home, humble as a guest, holy as a child, and breaking us open to receive the love of God made manifest.

This is the message of Christmas, isn’t it – not so much the drawing in and closing down, the drawing of the curtains against the dark and cold, as it is the opening up; the labour of effacing little by little the things that come between us and keep us from seeing the glory of God incarnate in our neighbours, from realizing the strength and endurance of God’s love, the capacity and tenacity of God’s mercy. When the very heavens are opened for angels to sing to shepherds on the earth, how can we be short of room for one another, friend and stranger, lover and lost, family and fallen alike? And not for one day, but year after year and for millennia.

When Jesus was born among the homeless, the homespun, the animal, and the oppressed, angels sang. When the shepherds told of it, peace on earth and all, all those who heard it were rightly amazed. When his mother wrapped the child in cloth and wonder, treasuring his fingerprints and the furrow of his brow, her heart overflowed like deep waters.

 And when he, Jesus, the Son of God born of Mary, opened his mouth and cried out, and when he opened his eyes to see her, it was as though Creation itself had been made anew: Let there be light.