A prayer given at Hope College’s Christmas Vespers service, December 2007 in Holland, MI.
God of eternal light,
we gather this evening,
in this storied sanctuary,
old and young,
Family and friends, neighbors and strangers,
where so many have sung before,
not out of tradition,
but out of devotion.
We gather seeking more than refuge from the cold,
we are looking for more than moments of aesthetic beauty,
We have come, if we will be honest, to find ourselves,
awakened to the largest reality of hope.
It is the hope the creation itself is groaning to hear;
the sound of the Word laughing in the world,
The Word that comes to us like Revelation,
as softly as the winter’s first snow,
dressed as tender as child’s flesh,
whose eternal soul is a light so bright
it is the only power
to make the darkness flee.
“This moment,
is still for us the moment of invitation,
for each of us to enter into your large will
where all
things are made new,
where nothing is lost,
as the Son spins a revolution we call grace.”
God, we come tonight in Advent’s pause,
not only to remember, but to worship, in fullness,
the one true light,
who blurred the boundary between heaven and earth
so that we might fix our eyes clearly on him who gives
old and young,
rich and poor,
male and female,
a new vision of hope.
A vision that was born in a “predetermined moment,
A moment in time, but not of time,
A moment not out of time, but in time, what we call history:
Transecting, bisecting the world of time,
A moment in time, but not like a moment of time,
A moment in time, but time was made through that moment:
For without the meaning there is no time,
And that moment of time gave the meaning.”*
The pregnant moment when Mary, who labored for us all,
Gave birth to you, Jesus… Jesus,
the name above all names,
the name that means “God saves.”
At this moment of time,
the world spinning on its axis
tilted toward the Son,
As if to bow down,
As if to touch your crown.
In this moment creation was recreated;
as the source of its life
breathed life
so that all life might be saved.
Little did we know that his
life’s blood,
would give the world a new pulse
as the divine bleeding human
gave humanity back its divinity.
Who knew that 33 years from this moment,
his fading pulse
would quicken ours,
when his last gasp
became our first,
so that we might finally breathe
the clean air of salvation.
And so tonight, we are here because
this moment,
is still for us the moment of invitation,
for each of us to enter into your large will
where all
things are made new,
where nothing is lost,
as the Son spins a revolution we call grace.
In this large grace we dedicate ourselves to live lives of hope,
praying the prayer Jesus
Taught us to say until he returns
with the exhalation of his glory:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
Hallowed by thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done.
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our debts
As we forgive our debtors
And deliver us from evil,
For thine is the Kingdom,
And the glory
And the life everlasting.
Amen.
*This quote was taken from one of the most influential poems in my life, T.S. Elliot’s Choruses from the Rock, in his Collected Poems: 1909-1962, (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), p.167.
(Header image courtesy of Hope College.)