<html><body><div>This is part 1 .</div><div><br></div><div>Blessings on mid-week 3 Advent, friends. We have Lessons, Poetry and Hymns on Sunday morning, 4 Advent. This this as a draft for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day homily.</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><div>We're having Lessons, Poetry and Hymns for Advent on Sunday morning - no sermon. Then Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with this as the draft of a sermon.</div><div><br></div><div>I hope you're keeping well. I enjoy your sunset perambulations, Ann, and the "mutated" sunset greetings, Scott! Thanks to both of you!</div><div><br></div><div>Blessing and love,</div><div><br></div><div>Bob</div><div><br></div><div><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF ST. ALBAN, ALBANY <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>CHRISTMAS EVE / DAY 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>ISAIAH 9:2-7 / 62:6-12 <span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>24<sup>th </sup>/ 25<sup>th</sup> DECEMBER, 2017</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>TITUS 2:11-14 / 3:4-7<span style="margin: 0px;"> </span><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>PSALM 96 / 97</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>LUKE 2:1-20</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Seventeen hundred years ago, a saint and scholar of the Christian Church wrote, “Nothing, nothing so awakens the soul and gives it wings … than divine song.” <sup>1</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'>The Song of Holy Love <sup>2</sup> - <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is what this night/day is all about. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is what this night/day tells us is the point of our entire lives.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We’re aware that Christmas <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DOESN’T</u></b> begin at Thanksgiving, or even on the first of December. We believe that Christmas starts now. We’re aware that Christmas is a season which runs until the sun sets on the 6<sup>th</sup> January. But, really, once we come to see what happened that night two thousand years ago, and once we accept and welcome God into our lives; really, this Song of Holy Love should sing in our hearts and show in our lives every day from now on.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Hold on to that thought that what we celebrate right now is The Song of Holy Love.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Somewhere, I read that “For a star to be born, there is one thing that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>MUST</u></b> happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“So collapse. Crumble. This is not your destruction.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>“This is your birth.” <sup>3</sup></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Hold on to this thought also – what to some may seem pointless stress and destruction is actually birth!</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>One of the things with which some people wrestle when it comes to thinking about the Incarnation, the Birth of Jesus as God-present-on-earth, is the science of life. It’s not a matter of science <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>OR</u></b> religion, science <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>OR</u></b> faith. It’s both-and – science <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>AND</u></b> faith – that give us the wonder of what God does for us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder what went through God’s mind in that nano-second before Gabriel and Mary interacted.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder what went through God’s mind as Jesus grew from a blastocyst, through nine months, to a full-term human baby.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder what God thought as Jesus was born from Mary.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder what God thought as, for the first time, a close-up-and-personal picture of life in a poor, human home registered with God. I wonder if it was like what we see when a drone flies over any part of this earth and sends a picture back to a receiving computer. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder what God felt, as Jesus took that first breath; as Jesus struggled to focus new eyes on Mary, and Joseph, and the simple furniture of the carpenter’s house.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s amazing what God set in motion. It’s enough to be amazed at the whirling whole of creation, stars, planets, moons, circling and circling around – or, for that matter, when that explosive bang collapsed gases, compressed the resulting birthed product out and away with unimaginable energy. It’s amazing to imagine the smile on God’s face as God pictured what the barely perceptible particle that has become the earth would look like when Jesus would arrive on it in billions of years.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I wonder.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It’s amazing! <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is what we celebrate tonight/today – the coming home of God on a visit to this one tiny corner of the universe. It’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>SO</u></b> hard to get our minds around this; in fact, that’s why we refer to it as faith. When our understanding of science takes us as far as it can, then our <span style="margin: 0px; color: red;">GRINNING</span> faith takes over, and starts to seek insight into how our science fits into the way we think of God. And here, perhaps, we need to be quiet again in order to take in exactly what it is that we celebrate tonight/today.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>We’ve done this so many times. We’ve seen the lights; we’ve heard the special hymns; yet no matter how many times we’ve done this, each time, each year, there seems to be something new that we discover when we experience it.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>This is how God works, making us more and more aware of the fact that no matter how glorious, how incomprehensible God is, God still comes to us in tangible form, using images and languages that we <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>CAN</u></b> comprehend. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>THIS</u></b> is how God still surprises us.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>I think this is what makes each Christmas celebration a sign of the Song of Holy Love.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>The lyrics of The Song of Holy Love concern intensely personal, intensely practical aspects of life. The words which God sings to us talk about absolutely everything that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DOES</u></b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>COULD</u></b> impact our lives. When God sings, it’s of infinitely more significance than that of the 1980 E.F. Hutton commercial. As actor A.E. Houseman put it back then, everybody listens.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>Would that that were the so with The Song of Holy Love! Back when the first notes and words emerged, there were those who felt that they didn’t need to pay attention, just as there are right now, never mind let The Song become part of their lives.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>There <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><u>WERE</u></b> those who <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight:normal"><u>DID</u></b> listen, but then they put it out of their minds, finding it unimportant, again, just like today.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span>It seemed that when that Song was first formed, it was only those who were attuned to notice and respond to the slightest changes around them who reacted.</span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"> </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0px; line-height: normal;"><span style='margin: 0px; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10pt;'><span style="margin: 0px;"><br></span></span></p></div></div></body></html>