just enough for the city: Christmas Eve 2019

12/24

Christmas Eve 2019

Merry Christmas from the West Park family...

Walking up the street towards West Park, I see the glowing farolitos on the steps giving a welcome and invitation to all who pass b to join us for our Christmas Eve celebration. Leila and Dion have decorated the church. A team of volunteers is getting the shared meal together and Andre is rehearsing with John the pianist. Soon it is time for the service to begin. After reading the Christmas story in Luke 2: 1-20, I lead a call and response version of "Mary Had a Baby..."

Bruce Cockburn

Farolitos

Then it is time for my reflection:

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace.

And so it’s here. Christmas Eve at last. The days of hustle and bustle and planning and shopping and light up nights and holiday parties and ….have you noticed Christmas cards have all but disappeared?…all come to an end....and if you’re like me, you’re not quite done yet…but there comes that moment when you just take a breath and let it be…and let it be….

I realized this afternoon that this makes the 25th anniversary of my first Christmas at West Park…and every one of them different…from full churches with choirs to me and my boys and two homeless people to singing carols on the steps of a church locked behind gates to the gates coming down and us all coming back again. And we are still here…

I’m thinking about the holy family tonight. Just where they might be.

There are images on the internet….the artist Banksy, you know the boy with the hammer on the wall on 79th street?

Banksy on the Upper West Side

…has an installation in a hotel in Bethlehem…a traditional manger scene in front of a concrete block wall…the wall has been pierced by a mortar shell leaving a Christmas star shaped hole …he calls it “Scar of Bethlehem…”( https://www.huffpost.com/entry/banksy-scar-of-bethlehem-nativity-christmas_n_5e031970e4b05b08babbc5ad) Then of course there’s the manger scene without Jews, Arabs, Africans or migrants…it of course is completely empty of human beings. Wondering where the holy family is tonight. I think of scenes from my recent travels. And another wall. And in the streets of Juarez tonight people camped out on the side streets in tents. Looking for a room in the inn. Or at least chance to tell their story and seek asylum. And tonight in the Sonora desert, in the most hostile part of the desert where the night winds blow cold, what holy family makes its way seeking shelter? And tonight in New York City, what holy family seeks shelter, in this case, over 65000 people recorded as “homeless” in this city of riches. Where is the holy family tonight?

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace.

You see Christmas always comes in context. A very human context. It is ever so. And we’ve got all the context we could ever need right now. And that is the point and that is what it’s about and why we are here. And this, this congregation here tonight is a holy family too. It’s not a Marvel superhero origin story where Kal El comes down from Krypton to land in Smallville and save us all or Dr. Manhattan strides boldly across the earth. Or Jesus comes down from heaven to fix everything. No. It’s deeper than that . It’s about God…the nameless one, the creator the force of creation the spirt that blows across the waters and through our every breath…it’s about God wanting to get up close and personal with us. To know us in the most intimate of ways. To understand what it is to be us. To be in our midst and in us. Immanuel, God with us. Incarnation, in the flesh. God in us. In the total fragility of a baby in the most vulnerable of circumstances. And in that baby, we see the face of God. And the baby, the human one looks out to see how we welcome such children. In God’s own image we were created…and we celebrate that incarnation tonight….

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Thia is a season of light. From time immemorial people close to the earth celebrate the solstice and the the coming back of the sun. The darkest day is past already…Our Buddhist brothers and sisters celebrate Bodhi day…I have participated in the celebration in Riverside Church with hundreds of monks passing the lotus lights from one to the next until the whole sanctuary glowed. In these days our Jewish brothers and sisters celebrate Hanukah, a celebration of liberation from cultural oppression and dominance, with a light that grows each day as the light should aways grow brighter. Likewise, in the Christian season of Advent, we add a candle each week until we come to tonight and light the Christmas candle, the Christ candle.

A word about light….when I was a kid, we did this ritual like making the whole church dark with only the Christ candle burning. Then as we sang Silent Night, we would dramatically light each other’s candles until the sanctuary glowed. The symbolism was clear. Before Jesus, all the world was dark. And then Jesus comes, and like cousin David in “Merry Christmas from the family,” he “..throws the breaker and the lights come on and we all sang Silent Night, O Holy Night.”….But, well, not really. You see from creation on, the light is always there. Sometimes we can’t even see it, but it’s there. The Biblical narrative is clear, whenever the darkness seems so deep, the

Prophets come to light the way. Eloquent court prophets like Isaiah and working class prophets like Micah and Amos. And sometimes in the form of a teen age girl named Greta who comes from Scandinavia in a boat. The light keeps shining. Keeps on shining.

I think of my friends in Chile tonight. As summer comes on. Feeling their light grow after decades. Seeing a new beginning. And tonight Light is shining here for us too.

So tonight when we light our candles, look into the face of the one who passes it on to you. See the light of the holy one in our midst. And let our light shine back. And take it out back into the street so the light will shine brighter.

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin, mother and child

Holy infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Immanuel. God with us. Incarnate. In humanity. In our very midst. Tonight.

Let us all receive heavenly peace. Tonight

Amen.

Then Andre comes forward to share with us "In the Bleak Midwinter" as only he can.
Then we light our candles and pass them one to another and sing "Joy to the World" . and the service is over. I feel I am home. People who mean so much to me. Andre. And Martin and Soledad and Martin's mom. And my friend and frequent singing partner Rabbi Steve Blane. And Dion and Berik and Leila who did so much work.

We all shared a pot luck meal together and then Dion opened the evening's sharing of music and comedy. Later Mandola Joe will grace us with a dramatic recitation of "'Twas the night before Christmas..." And there will be a very full night.

We've created something good and valuable here. After two years, it begins to feel like this could become a tradition. There are neighbors. And visitors. And tourists from China. Musicians. Comedians. Couples and singles. People from condos and people from SRO's. People with no other place to be and people who'd rather not be any place else because this is community. Despite all, after all, a flame still burns here. And we are home for Christmas...