Pastor’s note:
After the Christmas Eve Service, people asked if I could share the poems that we used for reflection. They are all below.
A word of thanks as well – the idea for the worship format and a number of the poems themselves came from our Director of Music and a service he designed for a congregation he served earlier. (P.S. Dec. 28 is his 80th Birthday!)
1. People of Ceaseless Hope by Walter Burghardt
[We] must be women and men of ceaseless hope…
Every human act,
every Christian act,
is an act of hope.
But that means [we] must be women and men of the present,
[we] must live this moment –
really live it,
not just endure it –
because this very moment,
for all its imperfection and frustration,
BECAUSE of its imperfection and frustration,
is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities,
is pregnant with the future,
is pregnant with love,
is pregnant with Christ.
2. First Coming by Madeleine L’Engle
God did not wait till the world was ready,
till…the nations were at peace.
God came when the heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.
God did not wait for the perfect time.
God came when the need was deep and great.
God dined with sinners in all their grime,
turned water into wine.
God did not wait ‘til hearts were pure.
In joy God came to a tarnished world of sin and doubt.
To a world like ours of anguished shame
God came, and god’s light would not go out.
God came to a world which did not mesh,
to heal its tangles, shield its scorn.
In the mystery of Word made Flesh
the Maker of the stars was born.
We cannot wait ‘til the world is sane
to raise our songs with joyful voice,
for to share our grief, to touch our pain,
God came with Love: Rejoice! Rejoice!
3. Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter, 1993 by Jane Kenyon
On the domed ceiling
God is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:
“We’re descended from Cain.
Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well
Where the fearful and rash alike
Must come for water?”
God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her
The mind of Christ,
Cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.
4. Che Jesus, Anonymous, Argentina (alt. WGL)
They told me that you came back
to be born every Christmas.
Man, you’re crazy! . . .
[but maybe] with this stubborn gesture
of coming back every Christmas
you are trying to tell us something:
That the revolution that all proclaim
begins first of all in each one’s heart.
That it doesn’t mean only changing structures
but changing selfishness for love.
That we have to stop being wolves
and return to being brothers and sisters.
That we will need to work seriously
for individual conversion,
AND social change,
THAT will give to all the possibility
of having bread,
education,
freedom,
and dignity.
That you have a message
that’s called the Gospel,
and a Church,
and that’s us –
A Church that wants to be servant of all,
a Church that knows that
because God became human one Christmas
there’s no other way to love God
but to love all people.
If that’s the way it is, Jesus,
come to my house this Christmas,
Come to my country,
Come to the world.
But, first of all, come to my heart.
5. Annunciation by Marie Howe
Even if I don’t see it again —
nor ever feel it
I know it is —
and that
if once it hailed me
it ever does —
And so it is myself
I want to turn in that direction..
not as towards a place,
but it was a tilting
within myself,
as one turns a mirror
to flash the light
to where it isn’t
— I was blinded like that —
and swam in what shone at me
only able to endure it
by being no one
and so specifically myself
I thought I’d die
from being loved like that.
