Where will you be for Christmas? We pose that inquiry to one another time and again, in this busy season of holiday abundance; many of us trying to carve out moments for visits with family and loved ones; making merriment over baked hams and sugary pies; attempting to keep our little ones entertained with gadgets and gizmos, so we don’t pull our hair out in frustration with them before New Year’s. But we all have some place to be for Christmas, don’t we?
Frederick Buechner, author and minister, recounts a moment he heard in a sermon at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York in the winter of 1953. The legendary preacher, Dr. George Buttrick, remarked to his congregation, “On the previous Sunday, as he was leaving the church to go back to the apartment where he lived, he happened to overhear somebody out on the steps asking somebody else, ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’”
Buechner goes on, “I can almost see Buttrick with his glasses glittering in the lectern light as he peered out at all those people listening to him in that large, dim sanctuary and asked it again — ‘Are you going home for Christmas?’ — and asked it in some sort of way that brought tears to my eyes and made it almost unnecessary for him to move on to his answer to the question, which was that home, finally, is the manger in Bethlehem, the place where at midnight even the oxen kneel.”
On December 24th our congregation will gather in our own large, dimly-lit Sanctuary to bear witness to the Christ Child, the God-With-Us, who has come to make his home among us. Together, we invite you to join us for Christmas Eve Worship. Our service times are at 4:30 p.m., 8:30 p.m., and 11:00 p.m.
Who’s to say you won’t discover a home right here, in the midst of a great many of us who not only call this church home, but open our hearts and doors to those still searching for a place to be.
