Christmas Eve 2009
by Rev. Colin Bossen, December 24, 2009
"I never want to blow out the candles," a longtime Society member confessed to me. We were discussing tonight's service. I asked her if she planned to come. "Oh, yes," she replied. "I can't miss the service. I love it when we sing 'Silent Night.' I never want the song to end."
I feel the same way. When the lights are dim and the congregation is joined together in song magic permeates the room. Outside the wind might be whipping. The snow might be blowing. The air might be cold. But inside, if just for the space of a few breaths, all seems right with the world.
We celebrate Christmas, I suspect, so that once a year we might experience a moment of transcendent peace. In such moments we feel a deep connection the world around us. Everything breaths as one. There is a certain stillness in the air. Time stretches. As much might be experienced in a minute as normally can be found in an hour.
We need such experiences. During times of strife and struggle they can provide us with a hope that is greater than our current despair. They remind us that, no matter what is wrong with the present, peace is possible. We have witnessed it, if only in the stillness of the night, with our own eyes.
Without such moments many of us would wither under the weight of the world. The sputtering economy, the constant news of war and terror, the insufferable political debate and all of our personal problems would be too much to bear. The bleak nights would be too dark and too long. Without the memory of past candles, there would be no hope of candles to illuminate the future.
The Christmas story is about is finding light during dark times. In the midst of a brutal empire, in the corner of backwater province ruled by a vicious governor, a Messiah was born. For a moment all seemed right with the world. Against the pitch of night a light shone.
What that light is and how it is understood varies greatly across religious traditions. For Christians the light is the Messiah, come to redeem the Earth. That light has sustained our Christian sisters and brothers across two millennia. It has offered countless people hope in their darkest times. It has suggested that peace is possible.
For most Unitarian Universalists, along with Muslims and Jews, the light is not the light of the divine. It is the wisdom of a great teacher, a wisdom that points to the human hope and possibility that glimmers within each of our hearts.
How we understand the transcendent, the light that shines, is a little different for each of us. I chose to use readings from the non-canonical gospel the Protevangelium of James to remind us that this has always been true. It was even true among the earliest Christians. They composed not four gospels as we find in most Bibles but hundreds. Each told a slightly different story about the light they saw shining across the Earth.
It does not matter that our individual visions of the light are each a bit different. Added up they approximate the same thing. As the poet Kenneth Patchen wrote, "Any person who loves another person, / Wherever in the world, is with us in this room-- / even though there are battlefields." The light of hope transcends divisions. That is part of its power. That is why it is hope. It is stronger than all of our failings.
Like Patchen, I am most likely to see the light that shines as something that comes from within us and that surrounds us. We are as much a part of it as perceiving it. After all, the "furnished room without bath and / six flights up / Is all God!"
We gather each Christmas to remind ourselves of the strength of the light. The light must be strong. We keep celebrating no matter how bitter the winds outside get. Sometimes as the winds grow more bitter the light becomes a little brighter. When we need hope most acutely is when it rears its head. "[The] only good thing to be said for...[the] worst of all possible Christmases...[is] that [they]... most nearly...[resemble] that first Christmas," preached William Sloane Coffin. "That Christmas," as he describes it, "was miserable for everyone involved."
And yet still the despite the misery of it, the story goes, the light somehow cut through the dark so brilliantly that more than two thousand years we still catch glimpses of it. It might be that the light is so bright because we turn to it each year. Stories grow in power over time as they are told and retold. Eventually they weave themselves into the fabric of culture and consciousness. They permeate our beings whether we will them to or not. Told enough times stories can offer us hope in our times of trial.
The same is true with ritual. Repeated enough it forms a body memory that we can call upon when we are despondent. It becomes a source of hope, a sensation that we can call forth, that sustains us long after the ritual has ended. The lights dim. The flame travels from candle to candle. We join together in Silent Night. We don't want the hymn to stop for in that moment all seems right with the world. When the hymn does stop and the fluorescent lights return we can still remember and hold the moment with us until next year. And it can sustain us all year long.
Merry Christmas.