Christmas Eve 2024, midnight, Austwick
This is the special hour in our year.
This is the hour when excited children finally give way to sleep, and the secret work of delivering their gifts can begin.
This is the hour when in busy homes full of guests, kitchen preparations finally stop, when what had to be done, is done, and now, the time for overdue rest has come.
For some, this is the hour of anticipation: of what the morning will bring, of what fellowship and conversations will come around the Christmas table.
And for those like us, gathering in tiny village churches or vast cathedrals, this midnight allows us a pause.
Here we share an hour in which we can place all our activity, all the joys and strains of family reunions, all the twists and turns and terrors of life, into the perspective of something as deep as time, as vast as space, as mysterious as grace, and as healing as love.
How odd that the simple birth of a child to an unexceptional couple in an unremarkable place should have proved so pivotal to the world: and made this a special hour in your year, and mine.
How odd – and yet, also, how expected. For we know from our experiences that it is in the most mundane moments we find glory shining: when a door opens to a broad smile of recognition, or when a memorable discussion develops whilst doing the dishes. It is simple things that lift our spirits: like an evergreen tree, familiar carols, cheery laughter, the flicker of candles. [1]
Of course know that the birth of a child, however straightforward, is never that simple, for it is freighted with questions and complicated by expectations: what name will we call her, what clothes shall she first wear? And later, how will this child develop, who will he grow up to emulate?
And so with this child who we contemplate at Christmas: the child to whom we sing, ‘the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight’.
This is the special hour in our year, because this is the hour which invites us to hold this child before us, to contemplate what is in his eyes as he opens them up to us.
This is the hour in which we may offer him the hopes and fears of all our years.
This is the hour in which we may receive from him the unguarded grace and absolute devotion which is all he has to offer us – all he has, however, is everything we need.
Notes
[1] Acknowledging the inspiration for this talk, of Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations, and in particular this passage which draws directly from ‘Christmas Returns’ in that collection.
