Do you remember when you couldn’t wait for Christmas?  And the days seemed to drag by more slowly as your anticipation grew?  I can remember my siblings and I encouraging our mother to consider December 23 Christmas Eve Eve …and therefore a holiday when we might expect to open a gift.  Just one.

Between childhood and adulthood, something changes.  Children have nothing to do but anticipate.  Adults have everything to do to fulfill the anticipation of the children.  While adults panic as the days pass by and the to-do list get longer instead of shorter, children just can’t wait.

I’ve been watching the internet based social networking site called Facebook the past few days.  Members of Facebook can post a “status update,” that says what they are thinking or doing at any given moment.  It’s a great way to stay in touch, especially with people you don’t often see.  This past week, I noticed that fewer people have status updates, and they didn’t appear online as often – likely because they are so busy.  But a day or so ago, little by little the updates began to appear.  The cards are mailed.  The shopping is done.  The packages are wrapped.  The parents have arrived.  A lot of my Facebook friends are clergy, so the completion of Christmas Eve sermons was a popular status update this week.  As time moved toward this day, we all managed, somehow, to be ready – no matter how much or how little we’ve accomplished.  Here we are.  It is time.  It is Christmas, now.

Our measurement of time is literally fractured by the event that we celebrate this night.  There is the time before the birth of Christ …called BC or BCE.  And the time after the birth of Christ; called AD or CE.

However we understand this thing that happened that we celebrate at Christmas, it had something to do with eternity entering into human time, space and history.

It seemed as if nothing was happening and everything was changing.
And it sometimes seems as though everything happened and nothing changed.

The words from Titus capture this sense of “now and not yet” that is part of Christmas.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to us all…training us to live lives that are self controlled, upright and godly, while we wait…”

Salvation is here.  But we have not yet lived fully into the hope and glory of our Great God and Savior.

Christmas comes to us as now…and invites us to respond faithfully to the “not yet.”

The British poet U.A.  Fanthorpe captures the unremarkable circumstances surrounding the birth of Jesus in her poem BC:AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened.  Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

A long time ago, the opening of presents on Christmas morning stopped being the fulfillment of Christmas anticipation for me.  Sometime in the past decades of my life, Christmas Eve worship became the fulfillment of the anticipation.

Though there is a great deal of sentiment around Christmas Eve worship, it is not just sentiment that makes this night special.  It is truly the hallowing of the time we spend here, engaged in the worship of Christmas eve, that brings the “now” of God’s gift of love into the “not yet” of our lives.

It is the hearing of the story…those familiar words “in those days a decree went out.”
It is the light of the candles, illumining the darkness.
It is the music.

Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, in their book, What the Bible Really Says About Christmas, describe the gospel story of Jesus’ birth as parabolic overture to the whole gospel.

The birth story we hear tonight is “an opening that serves as summary, synthesis, metaphor, or symbol of the whole.”  We are most familiar, of course, with overture as a musical composition.

Borg and Crossan name three themes that are woven into this overture:  Light, fulfillment and Joy.  As we experience the wonderful music prepared and planned by Rev. Carol Ann Bradley and the choirs of the church this night…notice how these themes are woven into the lyrics and the music.

It is the magic and the genius of this music, carefully and correctly chosen by Carol Ann, that tonight, as in all the other years, brings the now of the Good News of the Gospel into the not yet of our lives…so that we leave here with hope that the themes of light, fulfillment and joy might play through our lives the rest of the year.

Let us thank Carol Ann for the work she has done through her ministry here to teach us all how to sing, play, listen to and participate in this overture so that it shapes our lives.

Carol Ann, we hope that we have learned well the songs that you have taught us, and we will try to sing them faithfully into the future.

The birth stories are the overture to the life of Christ…and they become for us again, and again, like a great symphonic overture, an invitation to enter into a transcendent experience.

This worship plays for us the overture to this great story:  God has come into the world, in the midst of ordinary people doing ordinary things.  Even though our own world is busy with its kingdoms and its power and its principalities; Even while Wall Street is stagnant; credit markets are frozen, there are wars and rumors of wars, economic indicators are slipping, while we are mourning a great loss, fearing a great loss, experiencing a great loss, we still might, one Christmas, sing the songs and hear the prayers and see the candles and realize that it is all an overture…and what lies before us is in fact, all of eternity.

If Christmas Eve is the overture to God’s inbreaking; for people who follow Christ, we have the rest of the year to play out the story; to keep hearing the rest of the gospel week after week; to offer, in the words of Titus, lives that are self-controlled, upright and godly.

This great manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ is the symphony of the universe, and it is ours to sing.

We are in it.
It has come to us.  Ordinary people that we are.

And just like the characters in Luke’s story, we ourselves might, really truly this night, walk haphazard by candlelight straight into the kingdom of heaven.