The Lights of Christmas Shine

Christ Church Charlotte

The Lights of Christmas Shine

December 13, 2023 • Allen Pruitt

There is a moment in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation when Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold plugs in the Christmas lights and he finally gets to see his vision come to life (after his wife fixes the tripped breaker). In that moment of illumination, Clark’s wife and children huddle around him, his parents get teary with pride, and the magic of Christmas feels possible. The whole Griswold family is surrounded by the light of love.

Then… the power goes out across the city. Then… cousin Eddie arrives. Then… Clark’s Christmas bonus turns out to be a subscription to the Jelly of the Month Club.

I wonder if part of the reason that Christmas Vacation has maintained its relevance is because the movie tells the truth. The truth is that in one moment, we see the brilliance of the light shining in the dark night and in the next, we are out at the gutter with cousin Eddie dealing with… lesser things.

When the Gospel of John told us that the light shines in the darkness, he wasn’t just trying to be poetic. John tells the truth. John reminds us that there is darkness. John reminds us that God knows the hidden places where the shadow tries to cover the light. John also reminds us that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

What gutter are you standing near? What moment of brilliance are you worried is about to be cut short by a tripped breaker? In what hidden place are you hoping to see the Light shine? These are the questions we articulate most clearly during the season of Advent, but they are the questions with which we wrestle in every new year too.

God chose to be born, the brightest light even in the howling darkness. That is a miracle. The light of God shines from each of our faces, born in us as much as any manger. That is a miracle.

We’ll lose sight of it. The breaker will trip; the difficult cousin will arrive; our victory will turn to defeat. We’ll lose sight and forget that the light shines out of us and out of our neighbor too. The darkness will crowd in.

God’s light shines still. God’s light shines in the darkness. And the darkness will never overcome it.

That’s not just the magic of Christmas. That is the truth. That is the victory of God.

Hurry Fast

December 18, 2024

It’s hard to wait. Christmas is good at making us wait. Do you remember Alvin and the Chipmunks? Christmas, Christmastime is near Time for toys and time for cheer We’ve been good, but we can’t last Hurry Christmas, hurry fast In a recent CCK chapel, I asked the children if they enjoyed waiting on Santa or if they were ready for him to be here. You can imagine the ferocity with which they answered. “WE’RE READY!” You can also imagine who else was ready for Jesus to be born: Mary! Never mind riding on the back of a donkey; never mind the no place for them in the inn; never mind the particular difficulties of her pregnancy – as far as I can tell, every pregnancy seems like a feat! Long about the thirtieth week, mothers are carrying around the weight of the world! It’s hard to wait. When everything is heavy, when everything is harder than it used to be and harder than it will be. It’s hard to wait. Mary has been waiting for a long time. Just think, it’s not like she felt the baby Jesus kicking as soon as Gabriel disappeared back to heaven. Mary had to wait. And no matter how faithful, she likely wondered, “Was that real? What if it’s not true? What if it IS?” And even after Jesus was born, Mary had to wait to find out, “What does it mean that his kingdom will never end? What if his kingdom never starts?” You might say that for thirty years, Mary waited on the promises of God. I imagine that sometimes she believed, even when God felt far away. I imagine that sometimes she scoffed, even when she had every reason to see that God was living right there under her roof. In CCK chapel, I told the children that if they are having a hard time waiting, they can remember that Mary is waiting with them, that nobody wants Christmas to come sooner than her! I can tell you the same thing. When you are waiting on the promises of God, Mary is waiting with you. When you are counting the candles of Advent, present to the holiness of this season, Mary is waiting with you. When you are counting the minutes, ready to burn the greens and pack up the lights, Mary is right there with you. When you hear the voice of the angel, clear as a bell and when you are sure that the whole thing was a dream, Mary is right there with you. When we were children, we wanted Christmas to come, right this very minute. We’re not much different today. Waiting on the promises of God is not easy. But, like the gifts hidden in the top of the coat closet, those promises WILL arrive… right on time. Hurry fast. Please Christmas, don’t be late! _____ Join us for worship this Christmas. Details and schedule can be found at https://christchurchcharlotte.org/christmas-worship

Stir Up

December 11, 2024 • The Reverend Elizabeth Walker

My daughter Rosalie is an avid baker, and in this season, she has been busy. Last weekend, when I walked into our kitchen, she looked up quickly, sheepishly pushing the cookies she was decorating to the side. Curious, I moved closer and saw that she was icing tiny cookie angels. She confessed that she was hiding them from me. She said, “I know it’s Advent, so you probably don’t want to see any Christmas cookies yet!” I’m not enough of a curmudgeon to take the joy of cookies away from my girl. In fact, it gave me a swell of pride that she knows the church calendar so well. Because she’s right! Despite our culture making this the season of Christmas carols and Christmas decorations and Christmas cookies, Advent is an entirely different season. It has its own carols, and its own traditions, traditions that point forward to a Christmas that is not here yet. But fortunately for Rosalie, one of the traditional ways to mark this time involves cooking dessert. The Collect prayer for this Sunday, the Third Sunday in Advent, begins, “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us.” This prayer is used on this Sunday every year. The history (or at least the lore that accompanies it) is that this is a collect that began the service on the last Sunday before Advent. In the English church, it served as a reminder for women to go home and “stir up” the ingredients for their Christmas pudding the appropriate five weeks before Christmas, which was understood to be just the right time for culinary perfection. And so that Sunday became Stir Up Sunday. The writers of our prayer book moved the prayer to the middle of Advent, but the name remains. Without Christmas pudding to stir up, we can focus on the real gift of Advent – God’s power – a love and peace that passes all understanding, is among us. I offer this prayer to you in the middle of this season of Advent, because I hope you are letting the excitement of the season build. I pray you can look past the chaos and busy-ness and see the giddiness of anticipation in the children and childlike in your life. I pray you use the opportunity to notice the people around you and remember to know them better. Because in Advent, especially on Stir Up Sunday, it is our time to stir up joy in the world. Our Savior is coming.

The Good Lantern

December 4, 2024 • The Reverend Emily Parker

Tsh Oxenrider published a lovely guidebook in 2020 called Shadow and Light: A Journey into Advent. She reminds us that the word Advent comes from the Latin word adventus,meaning coming or visit. Here in the first week of Advent, the first season of our liturgical year, we are now in a season of anticipation of the light of Christ, of waiting and wondering. Oxenrider wrote that “Advent is also a realization of our daily, ongoing preparation – the work of inviting the Holy Spirit into our lives and making room for Christ to do good work in us.” Most of Shadow and Light is devoted to the four-week journey of Advent as we approach Christmas. The theme for Week One is Expectation, followed by Preparation, Anticipation, and Gratitude. Each entry for each day of each week includes a reflection, a psalm or other Scriptural reading, and a question to contemplate. In the entry for tomorrow, Oxenrider invites us to consider, “When we reflect at daybreak on a small portion of God’s truth, beauty, or goodness, we open ourselves to seeing it unfold in the flesh through a candid comment from a child, a hint of snowfall in the scent of morning air, or the kindness in the smile of our mail carrier. Noticing God helps us keep noticing [God]... But still, we wait with expectation in the shadows. We remember the glimmer of hope and the steady hand that holds the good lantern. God is with us as we wait.” The contemplative question for tomorrow is, “Where have you noticed God today?” This question actually takes me back to last Wednesday at Galilee Ministries of East Charlotte, the day before Thanksgiving. In a short window of time in the morning, we witnessed the sure and steady movement of God through the kindness of strangers feeding strangers. That morning, donated food flowed through our doors from a local parish and from the Missionaries of Charity Sisters, a nearby faith community. Almost as soon as donations came in, they were sent back out into the world into the hands of hungry neighbors. I noticed God in the bright faces and humanity of those bringing food and those taking food home. Last Wednesday morning was just one glimpse, illuminated by the good lantern, into God’s truth, beauty, and goodness brought to life by love in action. In service, Emily+