Last year for Christmas Eve I wasn’t working for a church and I wasn’t an intern. I was in an “in-between” kind of place. Have you been in those places? Waiting for work? Or waiting to finish school? Waiting for a relationship to change? Waiting for time to pass and the next thing—whatever the next thing might be—waiting for it to happen?
I saw this as an opportunity. For it’s long talked about (sometimes bemoaned, if I’m honest), as clergy share or seminarians talk and say: “We must plan carefully because from here on out, we’ll always be ‘working’ on each Christmas Eve. It will feel different. So savor each one on which you’re not working now!”
Thus, last December was that kind of opportunity as I waited for my first call congregation. I decided to go to a local church that was having a Christmas Eve service very late at night. I wanted to taste what that late, late kind of Christmas Eve service was like.
It was … okay.
I guess it should be no surprise that folks seemed a bit tired as we neared midnight that Christmas Eve. The Christmas magic was there, and silent night was beautiful, yes. But we may have yawned a few more times than usual.
Of course, I went into it thinking: “Every Christmas Eve after this one will be quite regular and predictable. This will be the outlier, because all the others are going to be a uniform Lutheran celebration, like we’ve known before.”
We have had this whole year now, and now we have this December and we have this Christmas. My waiting last year for a call to a church has become this year, all of us, waiting. And I don’t take our position lightly. I know it’s hard, and frustrating. I know it’s confusing and unsettling too. I feel all of this.
We are (and at least we’re doing it together) in an in-between place of waiting, and hoping, and practicing safety and care as best we can.
And yet, because we are called to love and trust a God who is loving and trustworthy — we can still bless this season with ritual and embrace any opportunity we may sense. Maybe we have quiet time at home, to nestle in, to work on something, to read or pray or call more friends and check on them. We need this as church!
For now, we wait.
I believe we will worship in-person in the months to come, and I believe our safe practices will bene-fit our community to be able to be warmly invited to many Advent and Christmas Eve services in Faith Lutheran’s future.
For now, we wait. So let us call one another to faith and remind each other to wait with hope, and practice peace—all of these, long-practiced elements of the church’s Advent journey. We can wait like this together because of God, who holds us. On Christ the King Sunday we celebrated that our God is a Shepherd-King—one who cares for all the lost and least; and in God’s kingdom we care that way too.
For now, we wait. And even in a long and dark night, the Good Shepherd waits with the fretting sheep. Holds them. Loves them. And talks to them and sings to them too.
Wait. Can you hear it?
Pr. Shaun