William H. Willimon - Christmas Eve Service (December 24, 1991)
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| Preacher | Because this is a university, | 0:06 |
| most of the time | 0:09 | |
| people are here busy, growing up, | 0:11 | |
| becoming adults, becoming mature, big, | 0:15 | |
| but not tonight. | 0:22 | |
| Tonight this Holy Night, Christmas Eve, | 0:25 | |
| everyone feels young. | 0:30 | |
| Tonight everyone is given the ability | 0:34 | |
| to see the world again through five-year-old eyes. | 0:39 | |
| Tonight we come together | 0:45 | |
| over something so small | 0:50 | |
| and fragile and wondrous as a baby. | 0:52 | |
| Tonight surrounded by cyclotrons | 0:57 | |
| and millions of books in the library, | 1:01 | |
| and lasers and macroeconomics and hyperbaric chambers, | 1:04 | |
| this whole great big university world telescopes | 1:12 | |
| on the chapel. | 1:17 | |
| To focus everything in one moment | 1:20 | |
| on a small vulnerable baby, named Jesus. | 1:24 | |
| Emmanuel. | 1:30 | |
| God with us. | 1:32 | |
| Don't you find it interesting | 1:37 | |
| that when the great magnificent Lord of the universe, | 1:41 | |
| the one who hung the stars, | 1:45 | |
| who set the planets whirling in their courses, | 1:47 | |
| that when this great big God chose to come among us, | 1:50 | |
| as our scripture tonight has reminded us, | 1:56 | |
| He choose to come among us, | 1:58 | |
| something so small and vulnerable as a baby. | 2:00 | |
| And when that baby grew up, | 2:07 | |
| as Jesus told His disciples, | 2:10 | |
| you cannot get into my Kingdom, | 2:12 | |
| unless you turn | 2:15 | |
| and become as a little child. | 2:18 | |
| Here is a strange Kingdom, with a very small door. | 2:24 | |
| You can't get in, Jesus says, | 2:31 | |
| if you're all grown up and adult. | 2:32 | |
| You cannot get in unless you can revert, | 2:36 | |
| unless you can turn and become as a little child. | 2:38 | |
| And that's good news, tonight, | 2:42 | |
| because this night has a way of making children of us all. | 2:44 | |
| We turn, we return, we revert | 2:50 | |
| and become as little children. | 2:55 | |
| That's rather amazing feat, | 2:58 | |
| here at a great big, all grown up university. | 3:00 | |
| Now I tell those of you who are young, | 3:05 | |
| that as you grow older, | 3:07 | |
| you are gonna find, most of you, | 3:09 | |
| that your vision gets worse. | 3:13 | |
| The day I became 40, I noticed I couldn't see things | 3:17 | |
| quite so clearly. | 3:20 | |
| I thought it was sort of a psychological reaction. | 3:22 | |
| I went to Doctor Mitchell, over at the Eye Center, | 3:25 | |
| and he says no, this is, we call a geriatric, | 3:27 | |
| in other words, your muscles are getting weak in your eyes. | 3:32 | |
| Your eye is getting rigid. | 3:35 | |
| It can no longer focus. You need glasses. | 3:37 | |
| That's what happens to you, when you get all grown up. | 3:42 | |
| Sometimes you just can't see, | 3:44 | |
| as well as you could see when you were young. | 3:47 | |
| The older we become, the less our eyes are able to focus | 3:52 | |
| on the small and the wondrous | 3:57 | |
| and the delicate. | 4:02 | |
| Remember those of you who are older, | 4:08 | |
| remember the first time you ever looked through a microscope | 4:10 | |
| and that sense of awe at that world which awaited you. | 4:14 | |
| Remember the first time you ever saw a circus | 4:19 | |
| or a Christmas parade. | 4:23 | |
| As we grow up, our eyes become dull, | 4:27 | |
| vision is lost | 4:31 | |
| and some of the edge dulls of our sense of wonder. | 4:35 | |
| But not tonight. | 4:40 | |
| Tonight everybody gets to look at the world | 4:43 | |
| through five-year-old eyes. | 4:45 | |
| Tonight we all at last, | 4:47 | |
| become obedient to Jesus's invitation to turn, | 4:49 | |
| to turn and become as little children | 4:53 | |
| and there by to enter His Kingdom of the small door. | 4:57 | |
| At the heart of this university is the belief | 5:04 | |
| that the only way to get smart, | 5:08 | |
| the only way to become wise is to grow up, | 5:09 | |
| to become adult and mature and big and independent | 5:12 | |
| and liberated and self-sufficient. | 5:15 | |
| At the heart of the Christian faith is the story | 5:21 | |
| that the only way to get wise is to become small, | 5:26 | |
| to turn, to return to vulnerability, the openness, | 5:29 | |
| the naivety of childhood, in short, | 5:34 | |
| to revert. | 5:39 | |
| As the babe at Bethlehem so often has a way of reminding us, | 5:42 | |
| none of us are as big and grown up and independent, | 5:47 | |
| and liberated and self-sufficient, as we like to think. | 5:53 | |
| We're all much more needy, dependent, small, vulnerable, | 5:57 | |
| than we admit, on the day of our graduation. | 6:01 | |
| We are children. | 6:04 | |
| Some anonymous author said it well, | 6:11 | |
| only half I think in humor. | 6:14 | |
| "Life is tough. | 6:18 | |
| "It takes almost all of your time. | 6:20 | |
| "All of your weekends. | 6:23 | |
| "And what do you get in the end of it? | 6:25 | |
| "A watch, a pat on the back from the boss? | 6:28 | |
| "I think that the life cycle is all backward. | 6:33 | |
| "You should have to die first, | 6:37 | |
| "get that unpleasantness out of the way, | 6:40 | |
| "and then you should live 20 years in an old age home. | 6:42 | |
| "You get kicked out | 6:46 | |
| "when you are to young to be there any more. | 6:47 | |
| "You get a gold watch and then you go to work. | 6:50 | |
| "You work for 40 years | 6:53 | |
| "until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. | 6:54 | |
| "So you go to collage. | 6:59 | |
| "You party until you are ready now for high school. | 7:01 | |
| (laughter) | 7:03 | |
| "You go to grade school. You do nothing but play. | 7:05 | |
| "You become a little kid. You have no responsibilities. | 7:07 | |
| "Then you become a little baby. You go back into the womb. | 7:13 | |
| "You spend your last nine months floating | 7:17 | |
| "and you finish up as a gleam in somebody's eye." | 7:21 | |
| (laughter) | 7:24 | |
| For me the highlight of this service, | 7:28 | |
| during this Christmas Eve communion, | 7:30 | |
| is when we are all singing | 7:32 | |
| and at some point in the communion, | 7:37 | |
| there comes that point | 7:38 | |
| when we're singing maybe, "Away in a Manger" | 7:41 | |
| and for the first time in the evening, | 7:46 | |
| you can hear the children's voices over the adult voices. | 7:48 | |
| That's a special moment. | 7:54 | |
| Now there are probably musically better, | 7:57 | |
| more sophisticated hymns sung in this chapel, | 8:00 | |
| but at that moment there is nothing more right | 8:04 | |
| about the fact that we should be here | 8:08 | |
| and that the children should be leading us in this song. | 8:10 | |
| It's wonderful. | 8:14 | |
| And how appropriate that that should be sung | 8:17 | |
| at the moment when all of us are coming forward | 8:19 | |
| with our hands open and empty, | 8:22 | |
| ready to receive the body and blood of Christ. | 8:25 | |
| Ready to be fed, needy, dependent, | 8:28 | |
| just like little children, we have turned, | 8:31 | |
| we have returned, we have become as a child. | 8:34 | |
| And that basic childlike, open, receptive posture, | 8:38 | |
| Jesus says, is the only way you can get into His Kingdom. | 8:41 | |
| I used to teach Worship over at the Divinity School | 8:47 | |
| and while we were studying the theology of holy communion, | 8:50 | |
| the Eucharist, someone would always say, | 8:54 | |
| "Now how old should children be, | 8:56 | |
| before they are allowed to come to communion?" | 8:58 | |
| "Don't you think that they, they ought to be old enough?" | 9:03 | |
| "They ought to wait until they know what it really means." | 9:06 | |
| Fortunately I learned to answer, | 9:12 | |
| the body and blood of Jesus, | 9:17 | |
| should be served only to the young, | 9:21 | |
| because you can just never be to small | 9:28 | |
| to know what all this really means. | 9:32 | |
| Tonight, tonight, this Holy Night, little ones, | 9:38 | |
| even the most disastrously adult of us, | 9:44 | |
| has the good sense to know, | 9:48 | |
| here, this is what it really means. | 9:51 | |
| Amen. | 10:00 |