December 24, 1997

Tonight is a night of mystery, and miracle, and majesty.

You can sense it in the air. You can feel it among the people around you. The candlelight, the music, the stories all produce a sense of holiness in this time we share together.

There is something very powerful about Christmas Eve.

The great cellist Pablo Casals in his autobiography recalls the first time he went to church on Christmas Eve. He was five years old. He writes about walking to church in a small village in Spain, hand-in-hand with his father, who happened to be the church organist.

As he walked along, young Pablo shivered, not because the night was chilly, but because it was all so mysterious. Listen to his words:

Later in his life, Casals remembered that first Christmas Eve experience. He remembered that time when a shiver ran the length of his backbone and it had nothing to do with the chill of the air. It was a time when it wasn't "he" that was singing, but his "heart" that was singing. A time of being grabbed by something that went beyond words, but not beyond the soul's ability to comprehend.

There is something powerful about Christmas Eve.

About the birth of Christ.

Now I know that some people worry that Christmas has been overtaken by the secular world. And its surely true that Christ's nativity has become a multi-billion dollar industry. But that's not really a new thing. Entrepreneurs have always been able to see a good thing and exploit it for profit.

Why, William Everett, a Congressman from Massachusetts in the late 1800s, told the story of an English church that needed new hymnals. They lacked the money to pay for the books, so they were excited to learn that a large company, a maker of patent medicines, would furnish hymn books to churches at a penny a piece if the books could just carry a little advertising. The congregation saw no harm in making that small concession, so they ordered the books. Joyfully, the new hymnals arrived at the church just in the nick of time for Christmas. And on Christmas Eve, the pastor asked the congregation to stand and sing hymn number 138. The organ started playing and the people started singing, and in just a few seconds they were shocked to find themselves crooning:

From the tax collections in Bethlehem of Judea two thousand years ago, to the busy malls of West Knoxville today, commercialism has mercilessly cast its immense shadow over Christmas.

And so has secularism.

Two Christmases ago, I traveled with a church youth group to LaSallette Shrine, a Catholic monastery in Attleboro, Massachusetts. LaSallette has one of the largest displays of Christmas lights in the whole country spread out over acres and acres of a beautiful campus. Each section represents a different Biblical theme, and the displays are so wonderfully done, its hard not to be moved by the spirit of Christmas.

That visit was probably the twentieth or so time I've taken a youth group to LaSallette Shrine, and over the years, we developed a special tradition. After going off in small groups to explore the many displays, we always met back at an exquisitely decorated walkway that leads steeply up to a statue of Jesus on the Cross. The idea is to go up the hundred or so stairs on your knees, pausing on each one to offer a prayer. Believe me when I say that it hurts to go that far on your knees!

Well, on this holy night three years ago, we were about halfway up the stairs, offering our solemn thoughts as we went. Suddenly, a little girl went bounding by us, her mother in hot pusuit.

"Kathy," the mother whispered, "you're supposed to go up the stairs slowly and stop on each one and say a prayer."

And with that, the little girl paused and became quiet. Her face took on an angelic expression as she looked toward heaven and folded her hands and said out loud, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America..."

Yes, its impossible to keep secularism from invading Christmas.

And yet, the light still shines!

And people's souls are still touched by the power of God.

You see, Christmas is not something that depends upon human beings. Its not something we are responsible for. There's nothing we can do to create or maintain it. Christmas is not in the hands of people.

Christmas is in the hands of God.

For Christmas is about God coming to us, and touching the very depths of our souls.

There is a story about an old man and his wife going to sleep in the upstairs bedroom of their ancient house on Christmas Eve. It was snowing outside, and the cold north wind was howling. They tried to put the storm out of their minds as they lay in the bed, but the husband thought he heard a sound at the window. It was a very faint tapping sound.

Slowly, he rose from the big four-posted bed, put on his slippers, and hobbled to the window. Pulling the curtain aside, he looked out. There was nothing to see but the dim outline of the barn across the way and the mounting drifts of white snow on the ground.

He was about to turn away when he heard it again. A very slight tapping sound...and it was close by...just outside the window. Then he spotted a tiny form there on the outside sill, huddled in the corner, all pulled up in a ball, brown feathers coated with wet snow. Suddenly, wings fluttered, shaking the snow away, and the wings made a tapping sound against the windowpane.

It was a sparrow.

The old man could tell that the little bird was in rough shape. It was shivering in the cold and all puffed up the way birds get when they are not well. Despite its best efforts to shake off the snow, the little wing beats of the sparrow became less and less frequent and the snow accumulated more and more on its fragile feathered body.

The sparrow was close to death.

The old man thought to himself, "Why, just across the way is the barn. The door is even part way open. And inside, the animals give off enough heat to stave off the cold of the blizzard. There is hay inside to make a nest...and already dozens of other birds that have found their way to safety in the barn. If I could just let him know how to get there!"

Anxiously, the man considered opening the window to scoop the sparrow inside, but as soon as his hand moved toward the latch the little creature startled and almost fell from his precarious perch. If it fell into the bushes below, or if it flew off into the night, it would almost surely die.

There had to be a way he could connect with the sparrow, some way he could communicate to the little bird that safety was just a few hundred yards away.

But there, in that moment, the old man realized a great and sobering truth. The only way he could ever get through to lead the beautiful little sparrow to safety and to life...

...was to become a sparrow himself.

The blessed hope of Christmas, dear friends, is that God became incarnate as a human being, coming to dwell in our world, in our lives, in our problems, in our hopes, in our fears, in our humanity.

And that special feeling you feel tonight, on Christmas Eve - is the power of His proximity to you.

It is a night of mystery, miracle, and majesty.

Christ is born.

God Himself is tapping on the window of your soul.