Worshipping as a stranger on Christmas Day
Congregations at Christmas are inevitably an eclectic mixture of regulars and visitors. In terms of numbers they\’re always up on a regular Sunday but in terms of familiar faces they may well be down. It makes it all the more important that we \’sell ourselves\’ well, that we present a friendly face, that the music and the liturgy are the best we can manage – because it may be the first or only time some of the people present experience us as a church. And perhaps they’ll carry away some of that experience and save it up for a future need. But looking at it from the other perspective, what is it like to worship in a strange church, amongst strangers, at Christmas? A lot of us do go away for Christmas and it is an odd feeling to walk into a different building, to see no one at all that you know, to be greeted by a stranger, to be presented with unfamiliar liturgy – because Common Worship really isn\’t THAT common, people manage to make it quite idiosyncratic. It\’s not the same, of course, as being with the family of your own church, it can\’t have the same warmth, the same familiarity, the same comfortableness. But maybe it has something else. An awareness of the aloneness of Mary and Joseph, arriving in a strange town, having no comfortable home, no friendly smiles, and facing at the end of it a threat so severe they had to leave the country.
The Junior Choir have singing lessons in church on a Sunday after the service and, for reasons which will no doubt become apparent at one of their concerts, they\’re learning \’Consider yourself at home\’ from \’Oliver\’. Visitors might be taken aback – it\’s not quite what you expect to hear in a church. And yet, if you think about it, might not \”Consider yourself at home, consider yourself part of the family\” be precisely the message we want to put across as a church community? At Christmas, as always, we want strangers coming in to feel part of the family at HPC, to ‘consider themselves at home’ indeed. Maybe they should sing it as an anthem one Sunday!
Events in December
In amongst the school carol services don\’t miss the lunchtime recital on Wednesday 3rd, Schubertiad II, part of the series of Schubert concerts performed by Paul Robinson and James Sherlock, on Thursday 4th, the Literary Hour on Wednesday 17th (more about that on page 10) the Junior choir concert on 18th at 6.30pm (these short concerts, generally only lasting about half an hour, are a delightful opportunity to hear the Junior Choir show off their talent). So lots to keep you busy before we even start thinking about Christmas itself…..
Christmas at HPC
You\’ll find details of a number of things further on in this issue: the times of the Christmas Services, a short guide to the Children\’s Crib Service, PO Box HPC where you can leave your cards for friends to pick up and, because Christmas begins on 25th (whatever the secular world thinks, for us it does) details of our services up to Epiphany.
Looking for a sermon I went to the website and chose one by Father Stephen preached last year at Midnight Mass, which considers the impact of the Christmas story. Christmas sermons don\’t as a general rule get into the magazine, they\’re overtaken by the new year by the time we do the January magazine. But of course you can read them all on the website, new and old; if you scroll down the sermons page you\’ll find a large selection from previous years. I had to make a choice which meant leaving out lots of equally valuable contributions, for instance Jan Rushton\’s explanation of Gaudete Sunday (Advent 3 with its pink candle) but I will include this final paragraph from Father Jim Walter\’s Christmas Day sermon in 2009. He had apparently just pulled a cracker with the vicar and had read out the joke (you have to read the whole sermon really)
\”I hope there will be laughter in your homes today, because Christmas is the day when God laughs at himself and what he is prepared to do in his reckless love for these funny human beings he has created. And maybe God sometimes laughs at us too, at our churchy seriousness and piety. So this Christmas, let\’s laugh with God and call to mind the words of the mystic Meister Eckhart:“When God laughs at the soul and the soul laughs back at God, the Holy Trinity is born. When the Father laughs at the Son and the Son laughs back at the Father, that laughter gives pleasure, that pleasure gives joy, that joy gives love, and that love is the Holy Spirit”.Laughter, pleasure, joy and love be with you all this Christmas.\”
December
Judy East