Midnight Communion - The Hills are alive to the sound of music.
Luke 2, 1-15
And so at this late hour we gather, a people filled with excitement as we stand on the threshold of Christmas. In a few hours, we will share gifts, party, eat, drink and be merry. And yet, we think back to a night two millenia ago which is the source of our festivities.
It is not that it was an idyllic night. Fear stalked the streets of Palestine. Occupying, often cruel, soldiers were on the streets. Anger was in the air. And to make matters worse if such could be possible, people were on the move as Rome was carrying out an enrollment for taxation purposes. People had had to be on the move including a heavily pregnant teenager named Mary travelling the ninety miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem from whence her man Joseph’s family had come.
Meanwhile out in the fields were a group of shepherds. These were men of low social standing whose work kept them on the margins of society, men whose inability to observe the requirements of the law, left them as outsiders with regards to Israel’s religious life.
It was a night that seemed to offer so little - and yet it was to be the night in which the hopes and fears of all the years would be gloriously met.
Luke tells of angels appearing to these shepherds with a message that a Saviour had been born. We know nothing of the initial reaction of the shepherds other than that they were afraid. No wonder. For this was a night in which they were to be taken beyond their normal experience of life. And for most of us there is something distinctly terrifying about the unfamiliar.
Over in the village of Bethlehem, in a crowded house Mary will have been experiencing her last contractions with all the fear of a first time mother. But then, the child is born - and the world can never be the same again. In a moment, that first Noel has changed the world. Nothing can be the same. This moment has divided history into a Before and an After. Suddenly a world that is brutish is opened up to the possibilities of the wonder of Divine redeeming love.
Back in the fields the hills are well and truly alive to the sound of music. There is a joy amongst the angelic host for god has transgressed the boundary between Heaven and Earth. And for what? The answer is for love. For in the child of Bethlehem, divine love is invading the world and all the darknesses of hatred, real as they are, cannot put out the light of divine love. And that love fills Planet Earth with boundless possibilities.
But what of those shepherds. Together this motley crew f rejects, decide to go into Bethlehem to see that about which they have been told. And so they go to the house which would have been very much a peasant house with the infant in a manger for the guest room (not an inn as we know it) was full.
When the shepherds returned to the Hills, they returned praising God. They had seen a sign of God’s greatness and contrary to so much that they experienced, they were not excluded from it. For God had entered into their world and ours, not with mighty status but as a peasant child. God had become as one of them. And I guess that the hills never looked quite so mundane to them again.
And what of us? On this night, we recall that it is for us and out of love for us that God has become a child. This is the night when we feel around us the touch of God’s passionate love. Unlike those shepherds, we know something of how the Christ child’s life will pan out. We know something of the beauty of his life and we know that ultimately he will show to us the full extent of the courage of Divine love in his going to the torture and ultimately death on the cross of Calvary.
This is not to say that the story which began that first Christmas is complete. Around us we see all too well the shadow side of life.
We see it in;
- those who are prepared to kill others even in the name of God
-those who hurt so much at their sense of grievance, rejection or loss of purpose that they pour alcohol and drugs down their throats to escape their pains
- those who crave love but as they seek it in the wrong places, only descend further down a ladder of losing self worth
- those who find no lasting meaning in life and who desperately seek some satisfaction in unending consumerism.
Yet at Christmas, there is a message of hope. For in Christmas, the God who is at the heart of the being of the universe and even of our own being, sends to us an unequivocal message that simply says;
“I love you like crazy”
And that love is made manifest in a manger. Its final fulfilment is yet to come. But come it will. For the day will come when God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. The day is coming when the Kingdom of justice, mercy and peace that Christ proclaimed, will be a reality.
This night, look up! Catch the vision. For truly, the Hills are alive with the sound of music. The times, they are a changing.’
Celebrate! Rejoice and sing! Christ has come!
Bideford Methodist Church Midnight Communion December 24th 2006
And so at this late hour we gather, a people filled with excitement as we stand on the threshold of Christmas. In a few hours, we will share gifts, party, eat, drink and be merry. And yet, we think back to a night two millenia ago which is the source of our festivities.
It is not that it was an idyllic night. Fear stalked the streets of Palestine. Occupying, often cruel, soldiers were on the streets. Anger was in the air. And to make matters worse if such could be possible, people were on the move as Rome was carrying out an enrollment for taxation purposes. People had had to be on the move including a heavily pregnant teenager named Mary travelling the ninety miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem from whence her man Joseph’s family had come.
Meanwhile out in the fields were a group of shepherds. These were men of low social standing whose work kept them on the margins of society, men whose inability to observe the requirements of the law, left them as outsiders with regards to Israel’s religious life.
It was a night that seemed to offer so little - and yet it was to be the night in which the hopes and fears of all the years would be gloriously met.
Luke tells of angels appearing to these shepherds with a message that a Saviour had been born. We know nothing of the initial reaction of the shepherds other than that they were afraid. No wonder. For this was a night in which they were to be taken beyond their normal experience of life. And for most of us there is something distinctly terrifying about the unfamiliar.
Over in the village of Bethlehem, in a crowded house Mary will have been experiencing her last contractions with all the fear of a first time mother. But then, the child is born - and the world can never be the same again. In a moment, that first Noel has changed the world. Nothing can be the same. This moment has divided history into a Before and an After. Suddenly a world that is brutish is opened up to the possibilities of the wonder of Divine redeeming love.
Back in the fields the hills are well and truly alive to the sound of music. There is a joy amongst the angelic host for god has transgressed the boundary between Heaven and Earth. And for what? The answer is for love. For in the child of Bethlehem, divine love is invading the world and all the darknesses of hatred, real as they are, cannot put out the light of divine love. And that love fills Planet Earth with boundless possibilities.
But what of those shepherds. Together this motley crew f rejects, decide to go into Bethlehem to see that about which they have been told. And so they go to the house which would have been very much a peasant house with the infant in a manger for the guest room (not an inn as we know it) was full.
When the shepherds returned to the Hills, they returned praising God. They had seen a sign of God’s greatness and contrary to so much that they experienced, they were not excluded from it. For God had entered into their world and ours, not with mighty status but as a peasant child. God had become as one of them. And I guess that the hills never looked quite so mundane to them again.
And what of us? On this night, we recall that it is for us and out of love for us that God has become a child. This is the night when we feel around us the touch of God’s passionate love. Unlike those shepherds, we know something of how the Christ child’s life will pan out. We know something of the beauty of his life and we know that ultimately he will show to us the full extent of the courage of Divine love in his going to the torture and ultimately death on the cross of Calvary.
This is not to say that the story which began that first Christmas is complete. Around us we see all too well the shadow side of life.
We see it in;
- those who are prepared to kill others even in the name of God
-those who hurt so much at their sense of grievance, rejection or loss of purpose that they pour alcohol and drugs down their throats to escape their pains
- those who crave love but as they seek it in the wrong places, only descend further down a ladder of losing self worth
- those who find no lasting meaning in life and who desperately seek some satisfaction in unending consumerism.
Yet at Christmas, there is a message of hope. For in Christmas, the God who is at the heart of the being of the universe and even of our own being, sends to us an unequivocal message that simply says;
“I love you like crazy”
And that love is made manifest in a manger. Its final fulfilment is yet to come. But come it will. For the day will come when God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. The day is coming when the Kingdom of justice, mercy and peace that Christ proclaimed, will be a reality.
This night, look up! Catch the vision. For truly, the Hills are alive with the sound of music. The times, they are a changing.’
Celebrate! Rejoice and sing! Christ has come!
Bideford Methodist Church Midnight Communion December 24th 2006
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