Co-Lead Minister
“Blessed Are the Peacemakers”
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I love Christmas Eve services. I love the bustle, the expectation, the last-minute scramble for things we forgot to do, the gathering of the saints. And especially, like many of you I suspect, I love lighting the candles and singing Silent Night.
Tonight, as on every Christmas Eve, we’ll light candles at the end of the service, risking the sting of melted wax on our wrists and the smell of singed hair in the air. Sometimes I feel like candles can be a bit of a cliché – they’re on cards and mantle pieces and lovingly lit at every service on Christmas Eve. But this year – they feel like more than a heartwarming tradition. This year it feels like the candles might truthfully capture the mood of our time, in more ways than one.
Events in our world might make us feel like flickering candles: one last news brief, one last lay off, one last medical diagnosis, one last broken relationship, one last death of a loved one might completely blow it out. We seem to be in a 360-degree whirlwind of disconcerting events – locally, nationally and globally.
Our faith might flicker and falter: our faith in humanity, our faith in God, our faith in any sense of our ability to create a safe and stable environment for our children and loved ones risks being snuffed out completely.
On Christmas Eve we so badly want reassurance that God’s will, will be done. Our souls and our hearts rest in the warmth of the candles, the carols, the comfort of sitting shoulder to shoulder with other people of good will. Our rational, worried brains for some moments are allowed to relax, to stop spinning, to silence what cynicism and despair might be clambering to be heard.
And the good news of tonight is that when we wake up on Dec. 26 you can still believe that it’s all true. That hope, peace, joy and love have come into the world. And…they are not fulfilled overnight. And when we leave this space, we are not released from being part of this Christmas miracle.
When I was reflecting on the candles and the state of the world I was reminded of a scene in the movie, The Return of the King, the third of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. A completely inadequate recap: the story, written by R. R. Tolkien during the Second World War, is about a Ring, thee Ring, that carries all the power of the world.
A young hobbit, Frodo Baggins, is given the mission of destroying the Ring, of taking it to Mount Doom and throwing it into the volcanic fire there. As he travels on this nearly soul-destroying pilgrimage there is an epic battle brewing; the forces of evil against good, of darkness against light, are coming to a final confrontation. And as long as the Ring exists, darkness will win out.
As the battle escalates another hobbit is tasked with lighting a beacon in the stronghold of the forces of good to call for aid from other nations. As the beacon flares into life, it is seen by watch keepers miles away who in turn light their beacon, which is then seen by others, and then others, until the light is spread across all the kingdom. The light spreads signaling that help is needed. The light draws the forces of good together to try to turn the battle against evil. (show clip)
When I was telling one of my sons that I was thinking of using this clip in the reflection tonight he said: ‘You know mom, the beacons are a call to war. To an epic battle. I’m not sure that’s what you’re going for on Christmas Eve.’
But I think maybe given the state of things, my intent isn’t far from that. All the Bible passages about the coming of Jesus refer to complete upheavals in power. Where the mighty will be thrown down and the lowest raised up. Where righteousness will be restored and love prevail. With news of her pregnancy Mary sings: “God has shown strength with his arm; has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” (Luke 1:51-53) But we do not rise to the challenge with heavy swords and charging horses. We, the people of the Way of Christ respond as he has called us to, as he has given us witness to – with grace, with mercy, with love.
Tolkien was a deeply religious Catholic and he was clear that Lord of the Rings was a religious work, and we see the parallels with our faith story in the movie. To my son’s point, although the lit beacons were a call to war, in the end the battle was not won through power, but from acts of mercy and redemption. It was not in the end Frodo who saved the day – when tested with retaining ultimate power – he failed. He teetered on the edge of the volcanic fire, holding the ring over the edge, and then snatched it back. He was unable to release it. Frodo was after all, human. It was Gollum, a character already destroyed by the quest for power, who in the end saved creation.
All through the story, when the forces of good had the opportunity to end Gollum, to kill him, they restrained. Over and over again, they gave him another chance. Through their mercy he was alive to the very end, and as he hurled himself towards Frodo, grasping the ring and dancing in glee as he held it, he fell into the fire. And was destroyed, as was the Ring and the entire infrastructure of the evil empire collapses.
Essayist Genny Harrison writes: “Evil collapses under its own gravity because [grace, and we’d say God,] refuses to offer a premature ending…” Sometimes we can feel powerless in the face of the forces I mentioned at the outset, but with each act of grace, each act of kindness, each act of resistance, we can change the course of history. Over time, perhaps after our time. “The change comes with [grace] that looks wasted at the time. With patience that looks irrational. Sometimes the most important moral decision we will ever make will feel powerless when we make them. (Genny Harrison, https://surfnukumoi.substack.com/p/why-tolkien-refused-a-triumphant) (But when you think about it, who ever thought that refraining from drinking bourbon could make a mighty nation rethink some of its policies) The victory will belong to the foolishness of a hope in God, and a trust in the Way of Jesus rather than a trust in the way of power and profit.
The battle is won as evil collapses under its own weight, and as good rises up. In the movie the restless souls of those who had earlier had turned away when called to good, are given a second chance to serve on the side of righteousness. The haunted souls rise from the dead and in the thousands these ghosts of second chance, of grace received, turn the tide of the battle.
What a shift then, to move from the epic battles of Lord of the Rings to the vulnerable sight of a cradle; but that cradle nonetheless inspired the work of Tolkien. When I look to the cradle I hear the words of the apostle John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…And the Word became flesh and lived among us. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:1,3b-5,14) I love that God tries to make God’s intentions simpler for me: “Let me draw a picture for you,” says God: a living 3-dimensional example of what I’m talking about. Let my Word come off the parchment pages and into the world, into a cradle. And so, the Word of God in a baby. And the life and teachings of Jesus.
We hold the beacons of light, the light of Christ, for each other to draw together a world in darkness and despair and light the way for love. We act with mercy and grace, even though in the moment it might appear foolish, like a candle burning in the wind. We “…make the choice to stand in the light; proclaiming the indisputable presence of unquenchable hope.” (Katherine Hawker, for the Evangelical United Church of Christ, 1996, adapted.)
As you light your candle tonight remember that we hold the candles as a call and a promise to the world. A call to solidarity in the resistance to evil and a promise that the light will never be overcome. Look at each other and remember that in the light our yearnings greet the promise of God, and magnificently light up the night.
Thanks be to God. Amen