Readings for the Feast of the Christ Mass
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church Eureka for the Christmas Eve service on Thursday December 24, 2020. You can view the service here.
O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
Oh, come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!
These words were written by the 19th Episcopal bishop Phillips Brooks, when he served as the rector of Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia. The words were born out of a profound experience he had on his pilgrimage to the Holy Land during the tumultuous year of 1865. Phillips Brooks had just worshipped at the ancient Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, participating in a liturgy that began at 10 PM and ended at 3 AM. (So keep that in mind next time you think our worship services seem a little too long!). After worship, Phillips Brooks went to the outskirts of town, where shepherds were tending their flocks by night just as they had so many centuries ago. Brooks beheld the little town under the starlit sky and began to feel overwhelmed with the hopes and fears of that most challenging year (1865), when the bloody Civil War had finally come to an end on April 9th when Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant (former resident of Humboldt county). Just as the nation was beginning the long process of healing from its most divisive chapter yet, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, just six days after Lee surrendered. As one of the great preachers of the century, Phillips Brooks was called upon to give “adequate expression to the throbbing heart of the nation.”[1] His eulogy for President Lincoln is now considered one of the best. However, most of us today are more familiar with the words of his Christmas carol written that same year, words that emerged from that night in Bethlehem when he felt initially afraid and even terrified for the nation and anxious about his priestly vocation in the midst of such turmoil. He remembered the shepherds in the field centuries ago, who were also initially terrified when they first saw the glory of the Lord shine around them. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid for I bring glad tidings of great joy. I announce the gift of God’s presence among you, tonight, right now.” As Phillips Brooks reflected upon this, he became aware of God’s presence with him there and then as he peered at the stars above, those glorious lights that remain hidden during the day; and in that divine presence, he was able to let go of all his concerns, anxieties, and fears; and to abide deeply in the loving presence of Emmanuel. He described this as a kind of mystical experience that informed the rest of his life and inspired the rest of his ministry: simply being in the presence of God. The lyrics to the Christmas Carol were merely an attempt to express what he had experienced that starlit night in 1865.
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Three years after Phillips Brooks visited the Holy Land, he decided to share his poem of Bethlehem with his church organist Lewis Henry Redner; and he asked him to write a melody for the words. Along with serving as a church organist, Lewis Redner was also a real-estate agent in Philadelphia and very involved with soup kitchens and homeless shelters in the city. Redner was a very busy man and especially busy during the holidays, as many of us tend to be, particularly if you are a music leader in a liturgical church. Merry, David, Paul, Francis, Doug, and the Christ Church Virtual choir know what I’m talking about. So it was on the night before Christmas that Lewis Redner remembered that he had been asked to compose and share a melody with the congregation the next day, based on the rector’s poem. And that night he became overwhelmed with anxiety. His heart started racing; he broke into a cold sweat; and he began chastising himself for procrastinating and for letting all these other tasks overcrowd his schedule. But then he began to pray by simply remembering that he was in the loving presence of God; and he remembered that simply being in God’s presence was not only the true invitation of Christmas but it was the only thing that ever really mattered. He took some deep breaths and his heartbeat began to slow down. He let go of his fears and began to abide in the One who abides with us. He placed all his hopes and fears into God’s almighty hands of love and he fell asleep.
A few hours later, after midnight, Redner says, “a little angel whispered the [melody] in my ears and I roused myself and jotted it down as you have it.” So apparently the melody of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” was written by a little angel.
While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wond’ring love.
And the next day, Phillips Brooks and Lewis Redner introduced the Christmas Carol to the congregation as a children’s hymn, intended to be sung just that one year. They had no idea that the children’s hymn would become an instant hit and Christmas classic among adults around the city, around the country, and around the world.
Where children pure and happy pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.
I love the story of this Christmas Carol, especially this year. During this season of Advent and throughout these last nine months, I’ve found myself often waking up late at night or early in the morning, around 2:30 or 3 AM. Like Phillips Brooks, I begin to feel overwhelmed with my hopes and fears for this country and anxious about my own vocation in the midst of the turmoil. Like Lewis Redner, I think about all the tasks that I had left undone the previous day: the emails I had not sent, the phone calls I didn’t make, the letters I didn’t write. And I start to chastise myself for the things left undone as well as for things I did do, but which could have been done better. I know I’m not alone in this experience, which was shared by Lewis Redner as well as by one of my favorite modern-day Lewis Redner’s Bono, who sings in one of his recent songs, “Sometimes I wake at four in the morning where all the darkness is swarming and it covers me in fear.”
But also like Phillips Brooks and Lewis Redner, I have been learning to enter into that darkness as a time of deep prayer, when I can place all my fears and anxieties into God’s almighty hands of love and simply abide in his presence. That is the great gift of Christmas, God’s presence among us now (always available to us); and consciously receiving that gift is the most excellent use of one’s time (no matter what, even at 4 AM when you feel like you should be sleeping). This Christmas, may we receive the gift of God’s presence right now by simply opening our hearts to Christ. Phillips Brooks understood Bethlehem as a metaphor for the heart that can so easily become overcrowded that it fails to notice and welcome and make room for God when he comes to us in each moment. May we make room for Christ in the mansions of our hearts and thus receive the gift of God’s presence. When we do this, the darkness becomes a place of germination and growth because God gives birth to something beautiful in us, perhaps a friendship or a poem or a melody, whispered into our ears by an angel. But all of that is really icing on the cake (or the extra candy cane in the stocking, so to speak), because the real gift of Christmas is simply the presence of God among us. Just as Phillips Brooks received this gift at the end of that difficult year 1865, may we, at the end of 2020, open our hearts to receive that same gift that is being silently offered to each of us tonight.
How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.
Amen.
[1] Washington Gladden, Phillips Brooks: An Estimation, The North American Review, Feb 1903, Vol 176. No. 555, pp. 257 – 281, 271.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 