“Then Peal The Bells More Loud And Deep”

December 24, 2014: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard. Amen.

There’s a fun calendar that Church Publishing sends to every Episcopal church, and each month has a cartoon – a cartoon geared to parish offices and clergy. The December one last year was of a couple sitting in church on Christmas Eve singing “O Come All Ye Faithful” and one saying to the other “It’s always the same – ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’ and ‘Jesus Christ is Risen Today.’ Maybe if there were more variety in the hymns we’d come more often.”

The thing is…the songs are indeed familiar on this night – and so is the story, and yet we return to hear it and sing it over and over again…why? Why is it that it never seems to get old? I mean, if it did – you wouldn’t be here now, right? What is it about this story? Why do we tell it over and over again?

I think it is because we are a people who walk in darkness, and in this story – we see a great light.

Now, on nights like this, when the winds are swirling and the rain is coming down, we can often get power outages. When the lights go out – what is the first thing most of us do…look for a source of light (a bit easier now with cell phones, right?). We immediately search for something to light the way, to help us see, to bring light into our world.

The darkness Isaiah speaks of continues to this day, doesn’t it? And not because of power outages. This year has been especially difficult for everyone around the world – beheadings, kidnappings, war, racial divides, executions… it would seem that there is very little good news – or at least it is only bad news that gets media attention. Either way, the words of the prophet Isaiah ring true today as then.

It seems the world has always walked in darkness – or perhaps that darkness has always existed. So, is that why we love to hear the story? Is that the good news?

Well, in some ways, yes. We love to hear about the light that comes into the world – heralded by angels, and marked by a star – because it brings comfort to us. But, this is not a story about the end of darkness…darkness has been, and always will be, with us. It is not about an end, but about a beginning – a birth.

And there is something more going on too.

I think in many ways it is really the outright craziness of the whole thing that makes us – compels us – to hear it every year. I mean, think about it…God loves us enough to choose to be born – but more than that – in a world of darkness, chooses to break through it right to a place of poverty, to an unmarried teen. It is ironic, isn’t it? We so often think of God’s light shining down – light from light…but this light, Jesus, was born in one of the dark corners of the world – a seemingly impossible thing.

Where would Jesus be born today? Would it be in a prison cell, or a hospital? Perhaps to another poor mother in the streets of the city or the hills of Appalachia. Or maybe this new manger would be a cardboard box under a bridge, or the home of one who is so very lonely at this time of year? It changes everything, doesn’t it? It changes, or it should change, the way we perceive these very places, and the people who are there, because it is for them most of all that God came into the world in the form of this little baby. Light is not to illuminate a light filled room, but to illuminate what is left in darkness. And this light, this child, this God incarnate, is born anew tonight and always.

Yes – Jesus is being born tonight – and we won’t find him beautifully gift wrapped under the tree. We will find him in those manger places – the places no one wants to go. We will find him there because that is where the light – his light – is most needed. And we find him here, as we do every time we gather here.

Christmas is more than a story, more than a favorite carol or hymn, more than candles in our churches…it is about what all of that represents – light and life that is stronger than darkness and death. It is as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow expressed so beautifully in his 1864 poem “I heard the bells on Christmas day,” which most of us know as something set to music. Now, many know this, but in case you do not, this was a poem born not of joy, but of deep loss. His wife Fanny had been killed a few years earlier when her dress caught fire. His son, who insisted on enlisting in the Civil War had been severely injured just a year before. And on that Christmas Day in 1864, he penned his poem when there was not yet an end in sight of the Civil War. It is a work that expresses the horror of war, and the power of this night, of this child, in ways that most preachers can only hope to do. I want to share it with you:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old, familiar carols play,

And wild and sweet

The words repeat