The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
Christmas Eve Candlelight Service of Lessons
and Carols
December 24, 2006
First Congregational Church,
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
Scripture:
First Lesson – Isaiah 9:2-7
The people who walked in
darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on
them light has shined. You have
multiplied the nation, you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as
with joy at the harvest, as people exult
when dividing plunder.
For the yoke of their burden, and the bar across their
shoulders, the rod of their oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For all
the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall
be burned as fuel for the fire.
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority
rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful
Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless
peace for the throne of David and his kingdom.
He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from
this time onward and forevermore.
Second Lesson – Micah 4:1-4
In days to come the
mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the
mountains, and shall be raised up above the hills. Peoples shall stream to it, and many nations
shall come and say: ‘Come, let us
go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that we
may learn God’s ways and that we may walk in God’s paths.’
For out of
The Lord shall judge between
many peoples, and shall arbitrate between strong nations far away; they shall
beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war
any more; but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own
fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of
hosts has spoken.
Third Lesson – Luke 2:1-7
In those days a decree went out
from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken
while Quirinius was governor of
Fourth Lesson – Luke 2:8-14
In
that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their
flock by night. Then an angel of the
Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they
were terrified.
But
the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news
of great joy for all the people: to you
is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of
cloth and lying in a manger.’ And
suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising
God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among
those whom he favors!’
Fifth Lesson – Luke 2:15-20
When the angels had left them
and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to
Sixth Lesson – John 1:1-15
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and
without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of
all people. The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God,
whose name was John. He came as a
witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to
testify to the light.
The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world. He
was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did
not know him. He came to what was his
own, and his own people did not accept him.
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to
become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh
or of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and
lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only
son, full of grace and truth.
Christmas Eve Meditation: “Re-Gifting”
Christmas, the season of gift giving. It should be so pleasant, but it’s not always, is it? There’s the pressure of shopping, trying to get the right thing for the right person, and then, if you’re like me, getting exactly the right thing for the right person, giving it to them a day early, only to find that its defective, and having to spend Christmas eve morning standing in line at the iPod® store.
That’ll put you in a religious mood, as in “Oh God, deliver me.”
Gift giving, which
should be so special, can get so complicated. Especially that sticky issue of
who you are supposed to get a gift for. What if someone walks into your house
with a gift for you, and you don’t have one for them?
It’s so awkward to know who to buy for, isn’t it? I wish there were a special computer program, where some genius had worked out a mathematical formula that accurately concludes, based upon clear-cut evidence, whether or not you need to get someone a present. Then that computer could scientifically balance that against the prediction as to whether or not they may show up with a gift for you, and tell you what to do.
So, for example, in the case of, say, an adult aunt, you could factor in the data, such as the fact that she didn’t get you anything last year, but the year before that she did, but this year she’s coming to your house and eating your cooking (so isn’t that gift enough?), but yet has been known to comment about the stinginess of one family member behind another one’s back, making statements like, “It’s not as if they were saving for college when they got new car a month ago,” and yet, has publicly said on other occasions that, “Jesus is the reason for the season.” Well, you’d input all that data, and the computer would pop out the answer as to whether or not to get a gift.
But then, because human behavior is unpredictable, the computer would have a camera system out in your yard, so that if it saw her walking up the driveway with some huge basket of goodies, the computer would immediately adjust its answer by broadcasting an emergency warning throughout your house before she gets to the doorbell, “Emergency. This is not a test. She has a gift. Put the ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ Christmas card down. She’s armed with a massive gift basket. Grab and wrap a box of little soaps shaped like sea shells immediately.” Then you’d be set. Wouldn’t that be a great computer to have? But what if you don’t have any shell shaped guest soaps? What then? Ok, now we get into the ethical dilemma.
Let’s admit it. You do have those soaps; you know you do, because someone already gave them to you. They’re sitting in a drawer. Perhaps they’re even still in the gift bag with the tissue paper to fluff it up. All you have to do is change the tag, add your aunt’s name, and you’ll be done. It’s so easy, isn’t it? Re-gifting. You think you will never go there, until you do.
Re-gifting. It’s the secret shame of the American consumer.
But why should it be? Why not re-gift? Why not take something that perhaps doesn’t work for you, and give it to a person who will enjoy it? Why? Because they won’t. Why won’t they? Because of what it is we choose to re-gift. Admit it. We tend not to re-gift the good stuff.
It’s the other stuff we are tempted to re-gift, the items that someone out of love, picked out for you, but for some reason you have rejected. No, let’s admit that it’s the nasal hair trimmers and Chia® Pets that get re-gifted. And if you didn’t want your kids to enjoy that “My Little Naturalist Hornet Farm,” no other family is going to want it either. That’s what gets re-gifted, right? But nobody re-gifts the diamond ring.
Well, there was one guy who bought his wife this huge
beautiful diamond ring for Christmas. To which his buddy responded, “Wow, that’s
so generous, but I’m surprised. I thought she wanted one of those sporty four-wheel-drive vehicles.”
“She did,” he replied. “But where was I going to find a fake Jeep?”
So that ring, might
get re-gifted one day. But mostly, it’s the gift soaps and the calendars. And
that’s why re-gifting, which could be seen as creative Christmas recycling, has
a bad reputation.
But this Christmas Eve, I want to suggest that from the Christian perspective, this holiday around the birth of Christ is actually all about re-gifting. Every year, we celebrate the same gift, the gift of Christ, and we do it over and over again. And unlike those other re-gifts, this one is of enormous value – because the gift of the Christ child is the gift of love – and love is meant to be the basis of all gifts. Not guilt, not obligation, not payback, not even material need. A real gift comes from the heart of the giver, and finds its joy not in the thing itself, but in the love that is exchanged.
That’s why, when you think of the best gifts you have ever received, they tend to be special because of how they point to a person. So a special drawing that an art critic might not admire is the gift that you have framed in your study, because it reminds you of someone very dear when he was four years old. …or a letter opener you received when you graduated from college reminds you of the special person who cheered you on all that way. …or an old chair that has been in the family for generations becomes yours at a time of grief and loss, yet that chair then is a gift from eternity, yours to give away one day, when you cross that heavenly threshold yourself.
All those gifts are worth re-gifting, of passing along, not because the letter opener is particularly sharp, or the chair is especially comfortable, or the drawing is artistically brilliant, but because all these gifts point to people, and to love. And love is the gift that is always worth re-gifting.
I remember, as a teenager, my mother took a pair of earrings that she often wore, wrapped them in a box and ribbon, and did not give them to me. Instead, with great ceremony, she presented them to my cousin, Susan, on her twentieth birthday. I remember the teenage resentment boiling up inside me, as I wondered how it was my mother loved Susan more than me. After all, I had always thought those earrings were going to be mine when I was twenty.
But when she gave the earrings to Susan, she said, “These are not yours forever. They’re yours at twenty years, but when Lillian turns twenty, you must give them to her. After that, it will be up to the two of you to decide how you go forward from there.”
My mother is long gone, but in her spirit, those earrings have gone back and forth between us several times by now, and at my last special decade, long after my mother has passed into eternity, her niece was able to give me a gift that seemed to come from her from heaven itself.
That’s re-gifting, but there’s nothing cheap about it.
As I wear those earrings now, I know that like all gifts of love, they were not given to me to keep to myself. They are only mine, so that I might give them away.
On Christmas Eve, God re-gifts Jesus to us, in the hope that we might re-gift that love to the world.