O Come All Ye Faithful - Joyful And Triumphant!

5 - The Songs That Shape Us

December 24, 2015 Christmas Eve Dr. Edwin Gray Hurley

Isaiah 9:2,6-7 Titus 2:11-14 Luke 2:1-20

You’ve heard the expression, “The train has already left the station.” This Christmas Eve, as we are gathered here, the train has already left the station, and it is stopping in Bethlehem. So come one, come all, joyful and triumphant! “Come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem.”

Whoever you are, wherever you come from, whatever is going on in your life tonight, “O come, all ye faithful, O Come all ye who would be faithful, O Come all ye who are curious, seeking, wondering as you wander, - Can it be? Has God really come in this way- a manger in an animal stall – for me? Has he who was refused a decent home the night of his birth really come to live at home in us, and to bring us finally home forever? Come ye, come ye to Bethlehem, come and see and hear and wonder and believe.

“O come all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant, O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem Come and behold him, born the King of angels! O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, O come let us adore him, Christ the Lord!”

I grew up in a house my parents built in El Dorado, Arkansas in 1957. It was a nice ranch style middle class 3 bedroom, 2 bath house, near the end of a dead end street, on an acre of land. Behind our property lay the railroad tracks of the Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi Rail Road, that ran north to Little Rock and south to New Orleans. The other side of that rail road was definitely, “across the tracks,” Reeds Junk Yard, tiny run down little frame houses of oil field workers.

Every night as I lay in my bed, about to fall asleep, having said my prayers with my parents, I would hear the whistle of the oncoming train as it went through the crossing a few blocks away, then soon the rumble of steel-on-steel as it roared through behind our house, making the walls shake. Sometimes I was scared, and pulled the sheet up over my head for protection. Other times I was excited with the sense of power rumbling through just behind my house.

During the day we would sneak under the barbed wire fence and play along the tracks. We’d stand near, probably too near, and feel the wind sweep powerfully through as the train passed. We’d count the number of engines, sometimes 3, and freight cars, sometimes 100, as 2 they passed. We’d put pennies and nickels on the track and let the wheels flatten them. I wondered if that was where the phrase, “It’s not worth a plugged nickel” came from.

Toy electric trains were the rage when I was in grade school in the 1960’s. Lots of my friends had one. Some had really fancy ones. Jimbo Matheny had one over at his grandfather’s- his grandfather, Mr. Clark Barton, owned the oil company – Lion Oil. Jimbo’s train was multi- level, and multi trains, that circled the whole room, and went up high near the ceiling. Jimbo’s trains came complete with a whole village of houses and shops and churches and schools and draw bridges through which the trains passed. I did not have a toy train. I wanted a train like Jimbo had.

Christmas morning my train finally arrived. But it was not like Jimbo’s. Mine was one circle of track about four feet by five feet, on a piece of raw four by eight foot plywood that would slide beneath my bed. That Christmas I was glad and I was sad. I was glad to finally have a train. But I was sad because it was no match for Jimbo’s. In Sunday School we learned the 10th Commandment is about coveting, and the Bible says, “Don’t!”

We can get overly excited about the getting side of Christmas, and disappointed when the gifts we are given are not the gifts of our dreams. All the more reason to focus more on the giving than the getting.

This Christmas the train has already left the station. So much has already been prepared. The gifts are wrapped and under our trees. The food has been purchased and is being prepared in our kitchens. Some are receiving many gifts, some few. But no matter, families have gathered, friends have come, Christmas is here, and far more than a toy train is being offered.

At the heart of it all is love, the love God has for us, the love God gives to us. The train that rolls into our house, into our hearts, that is Emmanuel; God with us; Jesus, the Savior.

At the heart of Christmas is love, the love given from one person to another, husbands with wives, mothers and fathers with children, children with parents and grandparents, human love where God mixes and mingles right down here in the messy dung-filled straw, animals and all. Right here God is with us. Martin Luther put it with profound simplicity.

“Look upon baby Jesus. All subsequent chatter of learned theologians is but a series of footnotes on the primal baby talk.”

So tonight we come, to hear the story. To sing the carols. To connect and reconnect. To let go of fears and grab onto hopes. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” Tonight recognize that whatever has been going on in our lives, we are not alone. We have not been alone. We will not be alone. A Friend has been present. One we maybe have not welcomed as we should. But one who has loved us from before we took our first breath, and will never let us go.

We sense a world full of fear all around us, terrorism, racism, mean-spirited trash talk, immigrants, immigrants – like – well like Jesus and his family, with no place to lay their heads, 3

Back in 1967 there were a few fearful problems going on then too. Dr. Martin Luther King noted in a Christmas Sermon, preached at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and broadcast internationally,

“This Christmas season finds us a rather bewildered human race. We have neither peace within nor peace without. Everywhere paralyzing fears harrow people by day and haunt them by night. Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities. And yet, my friends, the Christmas hope for peace and good will toward all men can no longer be dismissed as a kind of pious dream of some utopian…

All life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality.

Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from limitless smoldering. Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such.”i

Tonight, the train has left the station, and rolled up to this manger - this train of grace. You and I are invited onto this train, to make the journey, to stop in this sacred place, to worship, to adore. Then go out and share; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Gifts this Child brings, to receive it then to spread it in word and actions.

Tonight, the gift of a toy train is no match for the gift of love from on high. It has been many years since I heard the trains running through the night behind my house. I am grateful that all through those years this Christmas gift - this Savior who is Christ the Lord - has been running through me, living through me, working through me, sometimes, oftentimes in spite of me, assuring me that I am not alone in this vast universe, and giving me grace to live better and more for him and for others.

The train has already left the station. Won’t you - get onboard?

On Thanksgiving morning, just after brunch at Gayle’s brother Chuck’s house in Nashville, with the family all around in the den, Gayle’s Dad, Winfield Dunn, who is 88 years old, suddenly said, “I want to take just a minute and impose on each one of you while I thank God for all of the blessings that I feel.” I close with his spontaneous prayer, which, thanks to the miracle of iPhone, I captured.

“Dear God, We marvel at your majesty, your creativity, your love for us, and the world in which we have existed. We are so grateful, each of us to one degree or another. Some of us have some doubts. But I think in the final analysis we would all agree that you are the greatest force in existence. Thank you for all that you have given me and I thank you for each of those here, and I ask you to bless 4

us one and all and also make us ever mindful of the sacrifice that gave us the opportunity to live, and live on. In Jesus’ name I thank you. Amen.”

i Martin Luther King, “A Christmas Sermon on Peace (1967)”