And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. St. Luke 2:1-20
Grace and peace be unto you in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose birthday we celebrate in this midnight Mass. This is the Christ-Mass, the first Eucharist of Christ’s Nativity, and I will get to this wonderful mystery in a minute.
First, I want to welcome you, because I know you have made great efforts to be here in the middle of the night. The other day one of our faithful, daily worshipers told me how she was arranging for transportation from Brooklyn here and back in the wee hours. This is one sign of the love and devotion that is gathered here tonight.
We do give tickets to our pledging communicants and financial supporters entitling them to enter the church an hour early. This means not only that our regular members have a chance to keep Christmas Eve in their church, but also that we a “critical mass” in the midst leading the responses to the liturgy. But we are just as glad to see those of you who waited patiently out in the dark and cold for the doors to open. I do want to extend a special thanks to the families of our choirboys; they entrust their sons to our Choir School, which means a very special, sometimes arduous, Christmas experience. Whoever you are, you are most welcome, whatever your denomination or faith, even if that be no faith at all. If you are a baptized Christian and would like to receive Holy Communion, I invite and encourage you to do so, and I will have more specific instructions just before the Offertory.
What is Holy Communion? It is the Sacrament, the outward and visible sign of the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the very one whose birthday we celebrate. Holy Communion always takes us to the Sacrifice and Resurrection of Jesus, and makes us present to the event that saves and changes the whole world. Under those forms of bread and wine we receive the crucified and risen Lord who has made himself our life-giving food. Christmas is right there. So even though the angel said, Fear not, to the shepherds over 2000 years ago, the Child of Bethlehem is very much alive, and the millennia are like the blink of an eye. The Good Tidings of great joy are good, fresh news this very night.
Here is the Good News in a nutshell. God so loved the world that He gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all who believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. You and I are very much the objects of that love. Every time one of us receives this great truth from above, the Kingdom of God has gained a new citizen.
How do we receive this truth? We receive it by loving other people as we have been loved by God in Christ; by forgiving and by thinking, speaking and acting in a charitable way towards others, including our enemies. The very night Jesus instituted Holy Communion, the eve of his death on the cross, he said to his disciples that we were to love one another as he has loved us. This is not a sentimental love. It is simply the action, often very costly, that proceeds from good will. It can be very hard to love some people, especially those who are really not lovable or who are in fact our enemies. Yet that is precisely what God has done for us in Christ and what Christ has commanded his followers to do.
Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is the great cautionary tale. Dickens tells the unforgettable story of a rich, hard, cold miser, the immortal Ebenezer Scrooge, who was granted a vision of what he had become and was in danger of being for all eternity. It scared the hell out of him, and not a moment too soon. He learned kindness and generosity, virtues he had long despised along with Christmas (Bah, humbug!) The Kingdom of God broke in on Scrooge, and that is exactly how we receive the truth from above – by having our hearts changed by God’s grace and turning to other people with kindness and generosity.
This midnight homily needs to be short, but not so short that I fail to commend the Gospel of Jesus Christ to each one of you with the wish that you may embrace the Good Tidings. May we all experience the love of God in Christ personally by extending it in love to the very real people we encounter tonight and hereafter.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
