Christmas Eve

Christmas is a time for telling stories. Some are ancient stories: stories about shepherds and angels and a baby born in a cow's manger. some of them are stories from our childhood - stories of elves and flying reindeer, of snowmen who come to life under the spell of Christmas magic, and of Santa Claus. Still each season brings new stories, stories that capture for us in a new way some of the miracle of the first story, the Great Story, the story of God's love for us - a love so deep and marvelous that it came alivce one night - it became "Emmanuel," "God with us."

So often the story of Jesus is portrayed as a kind of romantic, sentimental tale - not unlike the decorations and secular stories and carols we hear this time of the year. Christmas is seen as a time of fellowship and fine food, a time to put aside just for a while, the things that divide us, at least until the January first After-Christmas sales. It is forgotten how marvelous and how expensive a gift Christmas really is, that the manger and the cross are made of the same wood; that this small child, this enfleshment of God's love, was sent not just to be a gift, another trinket for us to wear around our necks for a season, but was sent to die for us, to show us what God's love is all about - and so to save us.

That is where Christmas really begins. That is why we tell the story tonight: to celebrate the greatness of the Christmas gift. And to remember the cost. Now, I'd like to share that story with you, even as Jesus often did, through the telling of another story - a kind of parable. The Tale of Barrington Bunny.

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One cold winter night, we were given a gift, you and I. A free gift, with no strings attached. A small baby, a person like you and me, who came to be a gift, and to tell us that we are also gifts, and members of the same family - the family of Our Father. He showed us that is truly a gift. To be human is a gift, because it means that God's own heart can beat within us. We can love as He loves, and we can rejoice in being members - all of us - of the same family. That is truly a great gift. But He also said that it is a costly gift - it will cost us our very lives, all that we are, to be that kind of gift. And then He showed us the truth of that paradox, by loving us totally, and dying for us. And that is what Christmas is really all about.

Let us, then, praise God for that gift. Let us receive it, and through its magic, allow ourselves also be transformed into gifts - gifts to one another. As we receive the bread and the wine, the body and the blood of our Lord, let us become aware of His real presence which transforms us, and makes of us living gifts to one another. Free gifts. With no strings attached. Amen.