Christmas Eve

December 24, 2019

Glebe-St. James United ChurchReaching – Into Faith, Out to Others

Christmas Eve December 24, 2019Portions of the service printed in bold type are to be said by everyone. Please stand in body or spirit for the portions of the service marked *. For hymns: VU = “Voices United,” MV = “More Voices.” All shared prayers and hymns will be displayed on the screens.

PREPARING OUR HEARTS FOR WORSHIPPastorale from "Le prologue de Jesus" (Trad., arr. Jospeh W. Clokey)All my hearth this night rejoices (Carson P. Cooman)Joy to the World (arr. Carolyn Hamlin)

WELCOME

This is no ordinary place: this is the house of God. This is the place where the prophets cry out for peace and justice and righteousness.

It is the place where God reaches down into the corners of our lives, to offer us the mystery of holy love.

This is no ordinary gathering. This is no ordinary place: this is the house of God.

GIFT OF MUSIC Koppången (Holy Night) (Pereric Moraeus, Jessica Simpson, soprano arr Moraeus and Jansson) Elizabeth Elton, flute Damian McLaughlin, guitar

CANDLE LIGHTING (Adapted from the gospel of John)

After counting the weeks of Advent we have come to Christmas Day. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined.

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[Four coloured candles are lit first, then the white candle, and reading continues.]

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

OPENING PRAYER

We come to Bethlehem and feel the frustration of Mary and Joseph.There was no room for them to stay in the inn.We come to Bethlehem and know the wonder of the shepherds.An angel comes with good news for them.We come to Bethlehem with carols and praise in our hearts for what God has done.We join our praise with the angels; praise for this wonderful happening.We come to Bethlehem and are amazed with the shepherds at what God has done.We will go back into our small corner of the world with joyin our hearts; for we have Good News to proclaim!

*CAROL VU 60 O Come, All Ye Faithful (Verses 1,3,4,5)

READING Isaiah 9:2-7

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.For those who lived in a land of deep shadows — light! sunbursts of light!

You repopulated the nation, you expanded its joy.Oh, they’re so glad in your presence! Festival joy!

The joy of a great celebration, sharing rich gifts and warm greetings.

The abuse of oppressors and cruelty of tyrants — all their whips and cudgels and curses—

Is gone, done away with, a deliverance as surprising and sudden 2

as Gideon’s old victory over Midian.

For a child has been born—for us! the gift of a son—for us!He’ll take over the running of the world.

His names will be: Amazing Counselor, Strong God, Eternal Father, Prince of Wholeness.

His ruling authority will grow, and there’ll be no limits to the wholeness he brings.

He’ll rule from the historic David throne over that promised realm.

He’ll put that kingdom on a firm footing and keep it goingwith fair dealing and right living, beginning now and lasting always.

The zeal of our God will do all this.

HYMN VU 74 What Child is This?

READING Micah 5:2-5a

You, Bethlehem, David’s country, the runt of the litter—from you will come the leader who will shepherd-rule Israel.He’ll be no upstart, no pretender. His family tree is ancient and distinguished.Meanwhile, Israel will be in foster homes until the birth pangs are over and the child is born,And the scattered brothers come back home to the family of Israel.

He will stand tall in his shepherd-rule by God’s strength, centered in the majesty of God-Revealed.And the people will have a good and safe home, for the whole world will hold him in respect— Peacemaker of the world!

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And if some bullying Assyrian shows up, invades and violates our land, don’t worry.We’ll put him in his place, send him packing, and watch his every move.Shepherd-rule will extend as far as needed, to Assyria and all other Nimrod-bullies.Our shepherd-ruler will save us from old or new enemies, from anyone who invades or violates our land.

GIFT OF MUSIC The Echo Carol (Old French Carol Tune, arr. Dr. Alfred Whitehead)

READING Luke 2:11-14

There were shepherds camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep.

Suddenly, God’s angel stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified.

The angel said, “Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide:

A Savior has just been born in David’s town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master.

This is what you’re to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.”

At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God’s praises:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights,Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.

GIFT OF MUSIC Glory to the Newborn King (Spiritual, arr. Robert L. Morris)

READING Luke 2:15-20

As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the shepherds talked it over.

“Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.”

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They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing.

They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child.

All who heard the sheepherders were impressed.

Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself.

The shepherds returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen.

It turned out exactly the way they’d been told!

GIFT OF MUSIC Mary, Did You Know? (Mark Lowry and Buddy Greene, Elizabeth Elton, flute setting by Jack Schrader)

REFLECTION ON SCRIPTURE Jesus: God is With Us

Merry Christmas! We’re happy you’re here with us tonight to worship and celebrate together.

Christmas is here, and God is here with us!

For the last four weeks we’ve been celebrating and observing Advent, and now here we are on Christmas Eve, on the verge of the celebration of the arrival of Jesus, our Savior, the light of the world, Immanuel, God with Us.

Each week of Advent we have focused on a different aspect of God’s character:hope, peace, joy, and love.

The Christmas story is a powerful story, filled with hope, peace, joy, and love.

Hope

The book of Luke begins with an account of Jesus’s birth. Luke began his story of Jesus’s life with Zechariah and Elizabeth,

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a priest and his wife, an old childless couple, who receive an angelic message that they will have a son who will be the promised prophet to prepare the way for the coming Messiah.

We know him as John the Baptist.

This message to Zechariah was a bright spark of hope – to the couple who had longed for a child for most of their lives but even more to the people of Israel.

You see, the promise of the Messiah had given the Jews their deepest hope throughout their entire history.

Ever since the days of Adam and Eve, God had been caring for people and making a way to restore them – and us – to Godself.

God had formed a covenant with Abraham, promising the blessing of Christ to all people through Abraham’s family.

God had affirmed the same covenant through the leaders of ancient Israel, and foretold the arrival of the Messiah through many prophets, including Isaiah.

Other prophets delivered similar messages, but there had been hundreds of years of silence before renewed hope burst onto the scene once again in the words delivered to Zechariah.

It was a tangible hope for the priest and his wife that God had heard their prayers, and was answering with a tangible fulfillment of their hopes through a son.

And it was a tangible hope for the nation of Israel that God had not forgotten them. God was still at work, and was on the move again, preparing the way for the long-awaited Messiah.

Hope in Israel was alive again! Hope on earth at its deepest levels was alive again! And hope is still alive for us today.

How is your hope today?

Whether your heart is light or your spirit is deep in despair, let me encourage you that God with Us brings us hope that sparks like a fire.

It flows like water. It grows like a seed. Hope grows and spreads like a living thing. 6

It can dwindle and wane and, yes, even die. But with nurture and care, it can revive and flourish and multiply.

Focusing on gratitude can renew and grow our hope. Recognizing and appreciating the good that God has shown us in the past can increase our hope for all God will do in the future.

Collectively we can all be thankful for the gift of God’s Son, and individually we can remember and pay attention to ways and times that God has shown up in our lives – from the many daily gifts and blessings to the bigger acts of guidance or provision or protection in whatever ways he knew exactly what we needed.

This is a perfect season for sharing this gratitude and hope with those who love and support us, and as we do, hope can multiply its effects.

As we nurture living hope, it can sustain us through our darkest days as we wait for God to move.

Peace

We like to think of it as a peaceful night in Bethlehem on that first Christmas. But it wasn’t for Mary and Joseph.

Mary was giving birth . . . in a stable . . . after a frantic search for lodging in a city that was so crowded there wasn’t a place for a pregnant woman to stay.

It might not have been peaceful for the shepherds either. We tend to picture a calm, still night and a pastoral scene with shepherds resting around a campfire and sheep nestled in for the night beneath clear skies and twinkling stars.

But those sheep might have been restless and trying to wander off. There might have been coyotes howling menacingly nearby – or leopards prowling.

Storms might have threatened overhead, and the men who wandered the hills might have been grumbling about eating the same bland food for the sixth night in a row.

What we do know for sure is that those shepherds were not feeling peace 7

when the angel first showed up. They were terrified. They probably thought they were seeing some kind of ghost – or losing their minds.

It was a common reaction from everyone who ever came face-to-face with an angel in the Bible.

But these guys weren’t even necessarily particularly religious. They undoubtedly believed in God and did their best to follow the laws, but in the social and spiritual order of the day, these guys were at or near the bottom –and they knew it.

They were nowhere near the holiness of those Pharisees. They probably either felt a lot of guilt about not measuring up to what they perceived as God’s standards or they just quit trying.

So when a heavenly being appeared in the sky, they probably thought they were in for it at last.

But you and I know the story. The angel was a messenger of joy and peace. “I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people,” the angel said (Luke 2:10).

“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests,” the chorus of angels sang (Luke 2:14).

God had purposely chosen to let these lowly sheep herders in on the first news of celebration because God’s Son had come for them.

God with Us was here – and he was here for shepherds and outcasts and the downtrodden and those who didn’t measure up.

And to all of them God brought a message of peace.

This was the peace of shalom, a concept deeply ingrained in the understanding of the ancient Jews.

Even more than an absence of fighting, this shalom peace was a fullness of safety, completeness, and wholeness.

This was the peace of restoration with God. It is the peace that settles our souls deeply.

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It is the calm acceptance that “it is well with my soul” no matter what swirls and storms around me.

Because God is with us, this is the peace that is available for us. And it is the peace we celebrate today.

It is also the peace in Advent that keeps us looking forward – when Jesus returns one day, he will heal all that’s been broken and restore God’s complete kingdom of shalom.

Yes, then there will be the absence of war and hatred, but even that type of peace will be an extension of the wholeness that Jesus will establish.

This is the peace that holds us even when the circumstances swirling around us are not those of a silent night.

This is the kind of peace we have access to because God is with us – the peace that transcends understanding because it defies our circumstances and problems and pain.

Even in our darkest nights and fiercest storms, we can draw near to God and find the settling presence of her Spirit.

This is the peace of Christ and the wholeness of shalom that we celebrate with the arrival of Jesus.

Joy

Elizabeth personifies Christmas joy. Mary’s cousin, the mother of John the Baptist, was the first, after all, to receive and experience joy in the arrival of Jesus on earth.

But first there was joy in the miraculous gift of her own son, John the Baptist. And it was all the more joyous because of the pain and shame she had endured.

You remember that Elizabeth and her husband, Zechariah, had never been able to have children, and now they were old, too old.

Their dreams of having kids, or even a single kid, were dead. This was a great loss they would have grieved deeply, especially Elizabeth.

In her culture, she would have borne the blame for this. She was the one called barren, like a desert.

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She was the one considered a failure for not providing a child, especially a son, to carry on the family name.

Elizabeth was stigmatized as a disgrace in a culture that prized children and considered them blessings from God.

And this was a burden she carried inside most of her life.

And then an angel appeared to her husband, telling him the couple would have a son – not just any son, but one who had been prophesied to prepare the way for the Messiah.

Zechariah was in disbelief of the news initially. Elizabeth must have felt joy when she heard –or certainly when she became pregnant soon after.

We know she felt gratitude, but we’re not entirely sure why she spent the first five months of her pregnancy in seclusion.

What’s clear, though, is that when Mary came to visit shortly after her encounter with an angel, joy erupted from Elizabeth.

She proclaimed to Mary, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!” (Luke 1:44–45).

Elizabeth’s joy was contagious, filling Mary and setting her free to overflow with gratitude and praise with her own song.

Joy is like that. It spreads, and it often is present in circumstances that don’t seem all that joyous – especially when its source is Jesus, God with Us.

That kind of joy is deep stuff. But it’s the joy rooted in our Savior, who has come and lived and died and lives again and who will return again someday to complete his ultimate work.

This is the joy that Jesus said “no one will take away” (John 16:22).

Christmas is a season characterized by joy – because Jesus has come. Let’s look for and choose joy no matter what troubles may be swirling around us or what pains may be troubling us inside.

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Let’s rejoice together for the arrival of Jesus and in the knowledge that he is with us, always working to provide and heal in our hearts and lives.

Love

When we talked about love, we talked about Mary and Joseph. In many ways, theirs was a typical love story for its day: a young couple enters into the multistep process of marriage in ancient Israel.

They think they know where their lives are headed –and then an angel shows up, announcing a miraculous pregnancy of the Son of God.

Their world is rocked. Their once quiet lives will never be the same. Will their relationship survive the perceived betrayal?

Mary and Joseph’s was a love story and a life story being written by God himself, and he is love itself.

He knew just how to deliver tangible love to Mary and Joseph in exactly the ways they both needed.

For Mary, this was the support of someone who could fully understand what she was going through.

Elizabeth was just the person as she was experiencing her own miracle pregnancy. And her reception of Mary was like the biggest, warmest hug she could receive.

Elizabeth’s understanding and acceptance served as the tangible arms of God to confirm and reassure Mary that she was not alone.

For Joseph, a supernatural expression of love was needed. In his pain, he had decided to divorce Mary, but God lovingly met his needs by sending an angel to assure Joseph that miraculous events were indeed taking place.

In just the right ways, God lovingly provided what Mary and Joseph needed –and God does the same for us. God is love. God gives love to us freely.

And when we open ourselves to it, God’s love flows through us to others. This is the love that knit the universe together.

It is the love that knit you and me together. And it is the love that entered the world as a helpless human baby –to identify with and be one of us and to willingly lay down his life

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and be killed under the unimaginable burden of the sins of the world –so that we can be restored in love and relationship with God for eternity.

God with Us is love for and within and through us. The love of God is a miraculous, transformative force that changes us and sweeps us into a miraculous story.

As we respond to God’s love, we find our own capacity to love expanding. It’s a little like that scene in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch’s heart keeps growing bigger and bigger –“three sizes that day” – until it bursts the measuring frame.

Perhaps like that transformed Grinch, we too can be bringers and bearers of love in this Christmas season and beyond.

Let’s start with those closest to us – our spouses, our kids, our relatives, the ones we’ve been impatient with in the busyness of the season.

Let’s continue with our friends in this room, in our neighborhoods, at our jobs. And, yes, let’s include the strangers, the people who seem different from us, the enemies, and even the ones who are just plain hard to love.

Love has come into our world in the person of Immanuel, God with Us. Let’s live and spread His love in every way we can.

Jesus

And that brings us to the center of it all the action – Jesus.

Luke’s description is so understated, yet so definitive. The Messiah came into the world in the most humble of ways: human, infant, poor, vulnerable, physically dependent –God with Us as one of us.

A miracle, the greatest of all miracles, yet a quiet miracle. And the miraculous announcements and events surrounding his birth were at first quiet, personal, even controversial in appearance for Mary and Joseph.

Then they were unexpected and localized to lowly outcasts and foreign sages who were on the lookout for such an unexpected disruption of eternity.

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And still in the middle of it all is Jesus. Our Immanuel. Our God with Us.Jesus is the fulfillment of all hope.Jesus is the embodiment of love. Jesus is the source of joy.Jesus is our peace.

Now as we arrive at Christmas, let’s open our hearts to Jesus in worship. Let’s receive his hope, love, joy, and peace.

Tonight on the eve of Christmas, let’s be like those shepherds of long ago. Let’s eagerly go to our Savior and worship – and let us return glorifying and praising God when we find and know and experience that all is as He promised.

THE OFFERING O Holy Night Kiley Hyland, soloist, accompanied by Robert Palmai

*WE OFFER OUR GIFTS TO GOD Christmas Doxology

Praise God, from whom all blessings flowPraise God, all creatures here below.Give thanks to God in love made knownCreator, Word and Spirit, one.This, this is Christ the King whom shepherds guard and angels sing;Haste, haste to bring him laud the babe the son of Mary.

OFFERING PRAYER

It was an incredible journey for Mary and Joseph – but most incredible of all was the gift you gave us of a new born child, Jesus the Christ.

We now bring to the manger our gifts. Use then and use for the betterment of our world.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

PRAYERS OF THE PEOPLE

One: Lord of Christmas13

All: Hear our prayers.

As we journey with the Holy Family to Bethlehem, we pray for all who make forced journeys.

Give them strength to carry on and courage to walk the road ahead. Lord of Christmas…

As we hear the innkeeper say there is no room, we pray for refugees for whom there is no country.

Gather them to yourself and keep them free from harm. Lord of Christmas…

As we contemplate that first Christmas night, we pray for those with nowhere to lay their head.

Comfort them in their need and uphold them in their plight. Lord of Christmas…

As we listen to the cry of the infant king, we pray for children everywhere born into poverty.

Wrap them in your love and uphold them in your tender mercy. Lord of Christmas…

As we remember the fear of the shepherds in the presence of the angels, we pray for all who are afraid to look ahead.

Reassure them with your presence and embolden them to face the future.

Lord of Christmas…

As we recall the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt, we pray for all who flee from danger.

Enfold them in your care and challenge us to offer our protection. Lord of Christmas…

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We pray these prayers and those hidden in the deepest recesses of our hearts that justice may be born in our world.

Because we believe in your promises, we pray the prayer Jesus taught us:

PRAYER OF JESUS

* HYMN VU 59 Joy to the World (Verses 1,2 & 4)

*FINAL BLESSING

May the God of Christmas fill your hearts with all joy and peace in believing!

And may God, the Source of Love, Jesus, the Love come to Earth in Human Form,And the Holy Spirit, Love’s Power, be with you always.

* CAROL VU 67 Silent Night

Thank You for attending service this evening!May you and your family have a peaceful and blessed Christmas.

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Guest Musicians:Leslie Bricker, altoJennifer Grimsey, altoRowan Henderson-Thomson, altoKiley Hyland, sopranoAdam Hynes, tenorDamian McLaughlin, guitarJessica Simpson, sopranoAlexander Vidal, tenor

Readers:Kylie TaggartRuth Burnett-ColeDon RayGeorge LeDrew

Thank you to all those who participated in this evening’s service.

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Glebe-St. James United Church650 Lyon Street South, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 3Z7613-236-0617 www.glebestjames.ca

e-mail: glebestjames.church@bellnet.ca

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