In my village an outdoor carol event is held each year at 7pm on Christmas Eve. Carols, Bible readings and a large crib are organised by the 4 local congregations and a clergy or congregation member gives a very short address. Although laid on by the churches it is very much a village event and many people come to our shopping precinct each year, bringing excited children, grannies who feel able to brave the cold, and.even the odd friendly dog. We are of course delighted to see so many non-church folk coming along and sometimes analyse why they turn out at such a busy, cold time of year.
Could it be tradition? The anonymity of an outdoor event where they won’t have to actually enter a church building? The fact it is described as a village event? Something to do on a night when excited children are notoriously difficult to settle to sleep?
Sometimes I wonder if it is on this most special of nights that some people, who never enter a church building, actually wonder whether there might be something in this ” God came to earth as a tiny baby” stuff? Something to actually give you shivers down the spine just as the children get so excited about Father Christmas coming?
This is a most Holy Night – not that we know the date that the Incarnation really happened, but happen it did – and the world will never be the same again because of it. I don’t have the right language to describe it but I turn to my Charles Wesley hymns for some of his magnificent descriptive language of a Holy Mystery that certainly brings shivers down my spine.
Let earth and Heaven combine,
Angels and men agree,
To praise in songs divine
The incarnate deity,
Our God contracted to a span,
Incomprehensibly made man.
He laid his glory by,
He wrapped him in our clay,
Unmarked by human eye,
The latent Godhead lay,
Infant of days he here became,
And bore the mild Immanuel’s name.
Unsearchable the love
That has the Saviour brought,
The grace is far above,
Or men or angels’ thought.
Suffice for us that God we know,
Our God is manifest below.
Made perfect first in Love,
And sanctified by grace,
We shall from earth remove,
And see his glorious face,
His love shall then be fully showed,
And man shall all be lost in God
Thank you Lord for the most precious gift of Jesus – a gift we can only accept and treasure until we see him face to face.