God, we feel so close to you tonight. Our hearts are softly open. May we use this time—this gentle time—to
learn more of you. Amen
In 1897 eight-year-old
Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and received an anonymous response
in the editorial column. The response
was penned by Francis Pharcellus Church, a veteran
newsman who was having his own struggles that year because his wife had died;
and became the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever. As far as I could find, no newspaper
editorial has surpassed it even to today.
As I thought about Christmas
Eve and our own struggles, most of us far, far away from childhood, I found
myself thinking of a very different kind of Christmas quest. It might go something like this—Dear Editor,
I am closer to eighty years old than I am to eight, but I have an important
question nonetheless. Some of my friends
say they don’t need religion anymore.
Others say that Santa Claus has driven Christ right out of
Christmas. Others just seem
confused. While I don’t think that
everything I read is true, I’d still like to know your answer to my
question—“Dear Editor, please tell me the truth; is there a Christ-child?” Signed by a much older Virginia.
Dear Virginia, your friends
are struggling just like you, but they are wrong. They have been affected by doubt in a
doubting age. They only believe what
they can see. They think that if it
can’t be verified by scientific inquiry or explained by complex algorithms, then
it can’t be true. What they don’t
understand is that all of our minds, whether they belong to children or adults
are limited by our humanity. Why in this
very universe in which we live we are tiny, like little bugs, when we are
compared to the vastness we now know exists in the cosmos. We cannot begin to comprehend because our
minds are incapable of that much truth and knowledge. It is not exactly clear to me how this belief
that all things must be understood in order to be accepted as truth got such a
stronghold over many minds.
Yes, Virginia, there is a
Christ-child. Whether he is called the
Christ or not, he exists wherever love and generosity and beauty exist. And it is in this love, generosity and beauty
that we find our higher meanings as human beings. Alas!
How dreary and hopeless the world would be if there was no Christ-child,
if there were no higher meanings. It
would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias, or men or women, or stars or
seas. If there were no Christ-child,
there would be no one to show many of us our own child-like faith. There would be no way for many of us to
understand the higher truth and bring it into our lives to fill our lives with
meaning. Our enjoyment of life would be
limited to what we could see and touch.
The eternal light of childhood and new birth would be extinguished
leaving us as people walking in darkness once more. The ‘silence’ of the great Silent Night has
been replaced with cynicism and territorialism.
Not believe in the
Christ-child! You might as well believe
all those folks who believe that consumerism is big enough and strong enough to
make the Christ-child disappear. To all
those people with bumper stickers pleading with us to “keep Christ in
Christmas” I want to say, “No, take Christ beyond Christmas and into the
world”. Is it not the loss of Christ and
Christ-like love moving in the world that has us doubting the existence of the
Christ-child in the first place? The
most real things in the world are those things which we cannot regiment or
document, we can only feel. And the love
that God showed to us through this Christ-child cannot be doubted when our
heart is open to feeling. Feeling does
not require believing; feeling requires that we stop our human trying and just
let the wonder of love happen. Did you
ever see the love of one for another? Love,
itself, is meaningful—it resides in the portions of our hearts and spirits that
connect us to the sacred in all of creation.
And the tangible expression of that love is lying in a manger waiting to
be born again in our hearts tonight.
No one can conceive of all
the wonders in the universe. You may
take apart an intricate flower, or gaze at magnified images of a million
different snowflakes, but you cannot see what “makes” the flower a flower or a
snowflake a snowflake. An unseen veil
covers the world beyond our knowing and only love can see through that curtain.
This is a veil so fixed that all the
strength of all the strongest men and women in the world cannot break through
it. But, perfect love can push it aside with
no effort at all. Perfect love, oh, perfect love. And, yet, you ask “is perfect love real?” Oh,
Virginia, on this night, once again, perfect love is made plain for us in the
life of Jesus the Christ-child.
No Christ-child! Thank God!
He lives and he lives forever.
Every time we bring our quest back to the quiet stable where love on
earth was born, he lives. Every time we
fight for justice born of this love, he lives.
Every time, we, ourselves, reach beyond our encapsulated lives and touch
a sick and dying world, he lives. A
thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now,
the Christ-child will continue to make glad the hearts of all those who seek
with childlike purity and wholeness of heart.
Merry Christmas, Virginia, Merry Christmas to all. Amen and amen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
No comments:
Post a Comment