Sermons

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Christmas Eve Dec 24, 2001
11pm Communion Meditation
Pastor Dan Baumgartner

I have to tell you…this is my favorite night of the year, and my favorite worship service. Somehow, even amidst the flurry of families andholiday things, for just these few minutes…it seems that world might actually stop and we might be taken back to that night 2000 years ago. Often I have wondered what it was like that night. Did it feel differently? Was there something…holy, quiet, powerful…in the air? And what was in God’s mind that night?The poet R.S. Thomas wondered the same thing. Listen to this poem, called “The Coming”:

And God held in his hand
A small globe. Look, he said.
The son looked. Far off,
As through water, he saw
A scorched land of fierce
Colour. The light burned
There; crusted buildings
Cast their shadows; a bright
Serpent, a river
Uncoiled itself, radiant
With slime.
On a bare
Hill a bare tree saddened
The sky. Many people
Held out their thin arms
To it, as though waiting
For a vanished April
To return to its crossed Boughs. The son watched
Them. Let me go there, he said.

“And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” -- John 1What went on that night? Something had changed. Something was changing. Something would change. As much as I love Christmas Eve, I always am a little concerned that our celebration might become merely a remembrance of something God did long ago, like some dusty page in a history book…rather than the beginning of something still going on. The Incarnation, God dwelling in one Person, Jesus Christ…was a beginning, so that when we want to know, when we NEED to know what God is like…we look at Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ…past, present, future.

• The same Christ who was born into our world long ago, and has experienced the things we do.
• The same Christ who asked for the Holy Spirit, that we might never be alone.
• The same Christ who was crucified but raised from the dead, that we might not have to fear death.
• The same Christ…who will come again. THAT is what started…so long ago…

“Let me go there,” the poet imagined.“And the Word became flesh…and made his dwelling among us.”As we prepare to share in the Lord’s Supper together, I invite you to sit quietly for a moment, and think: Where has God drawn close to you, where have you felt His presence? . . . And then, Where do you need to know God’s presence? Tonight as we come to this table to share in the Lord’s supper, we experience this God of the past, present and future:

• we share in something Jesus began so long ago, offering himself for our sake
• in Christ today we are forgiven, called and changed by the presence of the Holy Spirit
• and, as Paul says, “we proclaim the Lord’s death…until he comes again.”

Past, present and future…the love of God surrounds you on this night.