Thursday, December 24^th, 2020
A weekday e-mailer from
Matt Matthews
 
Christmas Eve 2020
 
To Members and Friends of 
First Presbyterian Church
Champaign, Illinois
 
Dear Friends,
 
My Christmas memory follows. But first, two important Christmas Eve announcements (please pay attention, dear readers):
 
1.) Our prerecorded service will be available TODAY at 4 pm at firstpres.live. Please enjoy it at that time or later in the evening whenever you’d like. Would you please consider sharing the link far and wide with everybody on your mailing list, Facebook pages, etc? We all worked hard on it. 
 
2.) Our friends at First United Methodist Church have invited us to an in-person Christmas Eve service beginning at 7 pm at the northeast corner of West Side Park. This brief service will include listening to the carillon at First Methodist and hearing the nativity story from Luke’s gospel. If you feel well, wear your mask, dress warmly, and keep your distance as we gather at the park to bear God’s light to the world! 
 
* * *
 
A Christmas Memory…
 
As soon as I turned sixteen it was my pleasure to drive my grandmother to her Presbyterian church in downtown Newport News. Shipyard cranes stood higher than downtown steeples, and lights over the drydock shone like the conjunction of bright, natal stars. The drive from neighboring Hampton where we lived, took all of fifteen minutes, but downtown Newport News was another world, no longer the vital destination it once was. The Kit Kat Strip Club wasn’t far from her church, which was surrounded by abandoned buildings. 
 
The community exuded social warmth though the cavernous, stone sanctuary felt like a Siberian stable. “Baba” loved showing me off to her friends. I shook a lot of hands on those Christmas eves. I liked being her show-and-tell. She seemed awfully proud of me, but for what I wasn’t sure. I was such an average kid. Each year, I remember Ethel Gildersleeve. I only saw her on Christmases. I thought hers was the coolest name in the world. If Rachel and I had had a daughter, we might have named her after my Baba, Annie. Or, perhaps, after my home state, Virginia. A close third would have been Ethel Gildersleeve.
 
I shouldered next to Baba on a hard pew and we settled down to worship. I don’t remember a single word of those services, though there were a lot of them, but I do remember the candle light, the songs, the rough feel of my grandmother’s bristly coat against my shoulder, the light in her blue eyes, that bowed crowd, the quiet. It was holy, the kind of place at which shepherds or angels might show up any minute. I kept my eyes peeled. 
 
Baba was a complicated woman, and her relationship with my mom, her only daughter, bristled like her winter coat. On those Christmas eves, the relationship was less wrought. I felt a little like her knight getting her to the worship she’d otherwise miss if it weren’t for me and my new driver’s license. Her husband, my Deda, had been dead a decade. I hardly knew him. I hardly knew her, I guess, and I knew nobody except Ethel Gildersleeve in that large congregation filled with friendly people.
 
The counterpoint to this Christmas Eve memory is that of Christmas night at my small home church in Hampton. I don’t remember my parents’ and me attending this evening service when I was a kid because they were too tired on Christmas night. Dad had to go to work early the next day. When I got my license, though, I’d drive across town to Community Presbyterian. 
 
I knew everybody there, and though I had come alone and sat alone among people who had changed my diapers and told me about Jesus, they didn’t allow me to stay alone for long. When we’d come up for communion in family groups, whatever family sat on my row adopted me. I was a Lane, a Bowman, a Schiller, a Stewart in subsequent years. This experience helped define what “communion” and “church” and “family” really was.
 
In some profound ways my whole life’s work has been creating spaces where others can experience church the ways I have. And my whole life I’ve been craning my neck to get a better view of where our Christian journey began, a manger tucked in the sanctuary provided by the slightest stable beneath a silent night filled with stars. 
 
The Psalmist’s song still causes my pulse to race: “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” (Matt Matthews)
 
* * *

Advent Daily Devotion Christmas Eve Hebrews 12:1-12
On this Christmas Eve we reflect on the journey to
Bethlehem. It has been difficult and confusing at times. We
have questioned if we would make it this far and even if God
was with us along the way. As we prepare to meet Jesus face
to face, we give thanks for the great cloud of witnesses that
have guided us to his manger. For whom do you give thanks
this year?
Fairest Lord Jesus, ruler of all nations, we travel with your
family to the stable in Bethlehem, eager to meet you, heavy
with expectation, longing for rest as we prepare for your
inbreaking. Surround us with that great cloud of witnesses that
upholds and instructs us, inspires and spurs us on until that
day when we are all gathered around your heavenly throne in
worship. Amen.
  
* * *
Luke 2           
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

The Shepherds and the Angels

⁸ In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹ Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹ to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah,^[a] the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host,^[b] praising God and saying,
¹⁴ “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”^[c]
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷ When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸ and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹ But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰ The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

* * * 
 
It’s been a very long year. 
 
Much, much love to you all.
  
Matt Matthews
Cell: 864.386.9138
Matt@FirstPres.Church