SERMON
How I have longed to hear these words again. How have I longed to read this Gospel of Christmas again here in the church on Christmas Eve—and how have I longed to share it with you.
It is so beautiful. It's so familiar. It is so gratifying.
And that is exactly what we need to hear here this year Christmas 2020.
Yesterday, when I read this Joyous Gospel for Christmas Eve Service, - it felt so wonderful and new. Even if it is the same Gospel year after year: because this past year 2020 has seemed endless! It has indeed been a long challenging year, and finally we are here listening to the wonderful Gospel again. Finally, it is Christmas morning.
Merry Christmas!
How we have all longed-for Christmas, and how anxious we have been: for was it even going to be Christmas this year with all the limitations and necessary precautions? How were we going to celebrate Christmas with limitations, when we usually celebrate Christmas with no limitations at all?
How were we going to be merry in the wake of so many tragic lives lost to the Pandemic here in our neighborhoods and country and all around the world? How would it be Christmas with a world turned upside down and inside out?
You have wanted to sing the old Danish Christmas song:
Indeed, Christmas it is again. And we just listened to the words that make us celebrate Christmas year after year. Words that come to us regardless of our own efforts or struggles> words that are read to us, given to us, sung to us, whispered to us. So, Merry Christmas!
Christmas is given to us with the beautiful simple word and we listen to the story about
- How the world stood still a beautiful winter night,
- how the world began anew with the child in the manger,
- how a mighty emperor of history would count, but where God would tell a quite different story that would count in eternity,
- how the shepherds in the field followed the star and the song of the angels, and found the child, joy, and faith.
We all think that this Christmas 2020 is strange and the sooner we can leave it behind us would be better! 2020 has been strange, challenging, heartbreaking, unprecedented and scary. It has been a call to all of us: an urgent call to humanity and dignity, kindness and compassion.
Just think. Try to think back a year. On Christmas 2019. It seems like awfully long ago! Who of us could have imagined what strange, transformative and scary year we were embarking, when we last celebrated Christmas together?
None of us could have imagined that the year of 2020 would be marked by a world-wide, devastating pandemic, and events that we thought belonged in already written history books of times of something called the Spanish Flue or the Black Death.
Like this it began, one of the many Christmas cards that have been arrived in the pastor’s mailbox in the last few weeks. Because it is quite different this year – but thankfully we still have received a large amount of Christmas cards from near and far, friends and acquaintances, family and loved ones.
And all these cards are marked by what has characterized 2020: Covid19, fear, lock down, isolation, disruption, political division, and change. There are wishes for a merry Christmas and for a good blessed new year, and the wishes are quite fundamental:
• to be able to see each other again without a mask,
• to be able to give warm long hugs
• And give good Danish handshakes
• to be together and live together.
• and that we all will be in good health and same from the Virus.
The desire for a better, healthier and more normal New Year is to be found in all the Christmas cards between lovely pictures of families, dogs, cats, homes and presence.
Because we all miss one other.
We all miss being together, carefree and joyful. And we all hope and pray for a better, brighter, safer tomorrow.
Yes, we today all pray that after the dark strange disheartening days, the light, hope and joy will be set free.
And now it is Christmas! A day and a time to celebrate the light, hope and joy even though it is dark and cold and December.
And it is so good to be here with you from a distance. Together, virtually and spiritually and religiously and humanly, where we are connected by the hopeful beautiful old words about the little child in the manger, the song of the angels, and the eternal promise of peace.
We are reminded of who we are, what matters most, in this strange Christmas season of 2020 and this complicated human life that is ours.
Because we all think this Christmas is strange with restrictions and distance.
We are all affected by the sadness and the fear that has marked the year. We think of all the ones who have lost and are in mourning. We think of all who are sick or have been struggling. We think of all who are isolated and alone tonight. Our thoughts and prayers go to you tonight.
The year has changed a lot.
We have lost and we have been sick: we have worried and we have been economically affected and burdened.
But we have also been taught that in times like this we need to stand together.
We have experienced a year that has reminded us how dependent we are.
We have been forced to a simpler and less social life with limitations, that we are not accustomed to.
Granted it is strange to be here in the church without every bench filled with happy expectant people and the room filled with happy singing voices.
And yet it was Christmas! And I sense that we are celebrating Christmas together. So, sing your hearts out let us be together in faith and hope.
Now it is Christmas- and wherever you are let this message sink into you.
If you are with others, take their hand for a moment or find their gaze, and feel, life, joy, love, and presence.
And if you sit alone, put your hand on your beating heart and think of those you miss, the ones you hold dear, the ones you spend Christmas with, despite distance and isolation — in the heart of shared faith.
In another time, that seems so long ago, an early December morning at one of Washington's busiest railway stations something wondrous and unexpected happened.
Outside, there was frosty winter weather with a cool wind, so people were wearing coats and scarves and mittens, as they rushed by. The air was thick with bustle and business, and people whizzed past each other to reach their train, their appointment, their meeting and their plan.
A man wearing worn clothes and a baseball cap found his violin in the middle of that train station and began playing. He placed his violin box in front of him on the cold cement floor in the hope that someone liked the music.
Before long, the most beautiful music poured into the bustle. He played some of the great classical music ever written. Thousands of busy people walked by the 45 minutes it lasted, but only small coins came into the violin box, - and few had time to stop.
This morning, people were too busy to hear the beauty. Few people noticed him. Most were indifferent, busy and did not discover that before their very eyes and into their very ears, the world's most beautiful violin music was played and shared. When he stopped, no one noticed, no one clapped, no one praised him.
No one knew it was the world-famous violin player Joshua Bell who played that morning. He was used to playing in Concerts Hall, but today it was free. Nor did anyone know that he was playing on a real Stradivarius, which was about $20 million. Worth.
This Christmas Eve morning we are not too busy to listen and hear the beauty.
This morning we are not in such a hurry that we do not take the time to listen, to appreciate, to believe and to hope.
The rush of time- the business and bustle of our time and age- has allowed us to travel by bus, train and plane, and has let fathers and mothers rush to work and come home late; have let families only get the last bits of time at the end of the used day – that kind of time and bustle was halted for a while in 2020.
This Christmas, this year and this Christmas Eve morning, the bustle of time has had to give way to more time and more simplicity.
Many families have spent more time together this year- many parents have worked from home at the living room table instead of tackling rush hour on the freeway: children have been virtually schooled at home: the dogs have been so happy about all the lovely walks; the gardens have been maintained and the houses cleaned. Time has been different, and times have hard and rough. But also, more simple and less stressed for many.
I think this Christmas we will be better at listening to the tones of beauty and sense the peace of the Christmas gospel.
We sing about that in the old beloved Christmas hymn "Beauty is all around”
Beauty is all around us, glory is above us,
Lovely is earth and the mighty skies,
Singing we pass along
Pilgrims upon our way
Through pleasant lands to Paradise.
Ages are coming
Time forever shall recede,
Children shall follow
where parents passed,
Never the heavenly tone
Glorious and pure shall cease
The pilgrim son of souls shall last.
First to the shepherds
Sweetly sang the angels
Sang it at midnight, the song of morn
Peace onto all on earth
Joyful mankind shall be
Today is Christ, our Savior, born!”
It has been Christmas again!
And the angel whispers again to us: "Fear not. Fear not!"
This "fear not" speaks loudly and deeply to us this Christmas, at the end of a year in which we have been afraid and shaken.
A fear that has resulted in kind consideration, where we have tried to stand together with distance to limit the Virus, but where we have also feared losing our freedom, our courage to be and to live.
The angel's "Fear Not" it is an invitation to us to live in faith, in hope, and in love—even and especially when life seems scary and frail.
To live in faith of and hope to God.
To live in love< loving God and our neighbor.
To try to lessen the fear that has shaken us, so that we show consideration, care, kindness and humanity, and together try to reduce the Virus that is among us. Maybe that means we are not having Christmas together as we would like to, but it does not keep us from celebrating Christmas together in faith and in hope.
The "Fear Not" of Christmas sounds this year in the light of a year that has just been filled with fear and unrest, with sickness and worries, and with much division, - and we are still longing and waiting for darkness to let go, so joy can be set free among us and between us.
Today we celebrate that we think that the light is always stronger than darkness.
Today we celebrate that we believe that hope is always stronger than despair.
Today we celebrate that love is always stronger than hate and division.
Today we believe.
We believe in all the good, that can be between us. All the good there has been between us; and all the good that will come between us.
Today, we believe that God looks at us with loving eyes: with the loving trusting gaze of the child, with the warm gaze of the shepherds, with the sparkling gaze of the wise men, and with the loving caring eyes of Joseph and Mary.
As the poet Benny Andersen so beautifully says:
Live while you are living and do not be envious
But wish the living all the best in life
A hand can be clenched as well as be opened
Use it for caressing and not for hitting
Tomorrow may be yet another day Where nothing is quite the same as before."
Let us say it loud and happy to those we are in the room with, the ones we are related to, the ones we miss, the ones we love, the ones we are worried about, and those who are in our heart:
Merry Christmas