CEC News and Father Riley's homily from Christmas Eve service 2019

CEC News:

… Father Riley will lead us in Holy Eucharist January 5 and 19, 2020. Happy New Year!

…Mrs. Jane Barnett will lead us in Morning Prayer January 12 and 26.

…Our annual congregational meeting will be January 19, 2020, following the 10am service.  At the meeting the 2020 budget will be presented and we will be electing the vestry for 2020.  All members in good standing are encouraged to run for a vestry position and serve our congregation.  If you wish to run for a vestry position, please contact Faye Corson, Vestry Secretary, by January 15, 2020, so she may place your name on the ballot.

Father Riley's homily:

CHRISTMAS EVE - A - 19                     LUKE 2. 1-20

I do not know about you but there is something different about Christmas this year. Oh, yes we have heard the familiar Christmas carols that have been playing on the radio and through the intercoms in the retail stores since Halloween.

In addition, we have witnessed the annual Salvation Army volunteers who have been standing outside retail spaces ringing that little bell for the past several weeks. And of course, there are the annual Christmas tree vendors who manage to secure every vacant corner beginning Thanksgiving weekend only to suddenly disappear on Christmas morning.

Moreover, as we have driven through our city streets our eyes have caught those Seasons greetings on banners as well as strings of colored lights and yet there is reluctance among some to say “Merry Christmas,” instead one hears more “Happy Holidays.”

I saw a one-liner that appeared on the TV screen a few weeks ago, I have not seen it repeated, and I cannot recall its source. It has stuck in my mind and I have been pondering its meaning ever since. It read, “Christmas is what you make of it.” When you stop and think about it that is true.

I have decided to use it as a basis for my homily tonight. On this holy night, each year, as Christians we hear the familiar story of our Savior’s birth according to St. Luke. It is so familiar that I am sure many of you can recite it in detail. Countless children’s pageants continue to enact it.

Some of our neighborhood lawns are adorned with the familiar scene. Mary, Joseph and the Christ-child are depicted surrounded by lowly cattle and sheep. And more often than not wise men from the East bearing gifts for the newborn king are there as well long before the 12 days of Christmas have ended with feast of the Epiphany. That is to say, before they should be.

So after having celebrated many a Christmas Eve in church hearing the familiar story what are we to make of it tonight? Is its meaning any different for us this year? What do we make of Christmas?

When I read St. Luke’s account of the birth of our Savior I try to imagine what all of those folk who had come to be registered and who had swelled the ranks of the locals were engaged in when the angel appeared to the shepherds.

Did they not see an unusually brilliant star in the sky that just seemed to hang over the little town of Bethlehem as if pointing to something significant? Did they not notice that there was something different about that night?  No, the local populace and all the visitors were oblivious to Christmas. To them it was just like any other night.

We know, however, from Luke’s Christmas story what the angels made of it - they sang glory to God and announced that God’s peace had come to all. And we know what the shepherds who were the first to receive the good news of the savior’s birth made of it. They did the unthinkable.

They abandoned their watch over their flock and they left them shepherd less to go and see for themselves if what the angel had told them was true. When they had seen him, of whom the angels did sing, and reported to Mary and Joseph what the angels had said concerning the child, they returned, glorying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.

And we know what the Blessed Virgin Mary made of what the shepherds told her about the child that came from the voice of an angel. She treasured all those words and pondered them in her heart. Maybe that is what is different about Christmas this year.

Maybe we have forgotten to treasure the angel’s message and to ponder its meaning in our hearts. Surely we did at on time, but perhaps because of it familiarity we have ceased to treasure it. Christmas indeed is what we make of it.

For if it no longer speaks to us of God’s gift of love, of God’s gift of peace in and through His Son, Jesus Christ, then, it has ceased to be good news. Instead, it has simply become a holiday that brings to an end all the hustle and bustle of trying to find that perfect gift.

All the while ignoring the One that God has given from the very depths of His Love to be the light and life of the world.

To ignore that, then, makes it easy to say “happy holidays” and to share season’s greetings without a second thought as to the real meaning behind Christmas. For then it has become but one night’s celebration and one morning of sharing.

The next day the tree is on the curb, the wrappings in the trash. Our lawns quickly become empty of the Nativity scene, as do our lives without treasuring and pondering the angel’s message in our hearts.

Life continues as if the angels did not sing of God’s glory of the birth of His Son, Jesus who came to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Christmas, then, is no different from any other day, from any other holiday. Sadly, that is what some make of it.

Christ’ coming in the flesh as one of us has made a difference in the life of the world. “The grace of God has appeared, Titus writes, bringing salvation to all…” That is the good news that the angel brought to the shepherds and was confirmed in song by a multitude of the heavenly host. It was such good news, that it moved the shepherds to do the unthinkable.

As Christians, it is important that we never lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas. We never will as long as we treasure the angel’s message “of the good news of a great joy which has come to all people” and ponder it in our hearts, as Mary did.

Christmas is what we make of it, not only in the yearly festival of the birth of God’s only Son, Jesus Christ, but in our living and in our sharing of the Good News, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; and we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son of the Father. “O come, let us adore Him.”

Merry Christmas. AMEN+