Snapshots from Christmas Eve…

Where better for the rejoicing to begin than at South Tryon Community Church just before noon, where the harmony comes not with a hymn but with ham. The annual holiday feast brings together dozens of volunteers from Myers Park United Methodist and hundreds of neighbors to celebrate together the love of the season. Can a heaping plate of mac and cheese, green beans and all the fixings unite us, at least for one glorious day? Yes, it can! As church member Joy Poe marshals her army of cheerful servers, Sarah is one of the first of the 300 to arrive. She lives in the nearby Brookhill community. While she's ready for a holiday meal, she hungers for something more, something she finds in the crowded community room at her neighborhood church. Sarah comes to the church alone. She has no plans for Christmas Day. As she stands outside, waiting for the blessing to be said and the feast to begin, she tells me, “I just want to get out for a little while and see some people.”

It’s 1 in the afternoon, the sun’s shining, the jazz band’s rocking, and Rev. Shane Page is right on when he says the news we receive at Christmas is unlike the torrent of grim news we get all the other days. “Emmanuel, that’s the news in a nutshell,” the preacher proclaims to a packed Sanctuary. “God with us.” The pastor is going to have to forgive me, for on this afternoon, the message I carry home in my heart comes not just from his words, but from Ryan Deal singing O Holy Night. Good news for sure, poetry even!, on a bright blue afternoon.

Each day at church, we receive a list of who’s in the hospital, and why. On this Christmas Eve, Christmas comes early. The e-mail reads: “There is no one in the hospital at this time.”

It’s 6 in the evening and Christmas Eve suddenly seems like a Christmas morning full of fervor. The crowd pours in for the fourth of the day’s six services, this one featuring children dressed as nativity characters. From all corners they flock: Babies in arms, infants in strollers, little hands holding big hands, families gathering together to worship before returning home for a meal and an evening together. The overflow crowd spills over to the little chapel beside the Sanctuary, and then to Jubilee Hall. Everywhere there is excitement and happiness, except perhaps for the one little girl who left her small doll in the lobby, the sort of little doll that a child clings to for assurance. Christmas is over, but there’s still a gift waiting for at least one little one. The doll’s at the front desk.

Night has come. But rather than ending the day with candlelight Communion in the Sanctuary – worship as pretty as a picture – we end with roasted turkey in the basement of the Youth Building. It’s Christmas Eve, but it’s also Thursday evening in winter, which means the church hosts its homeless neighbors through Room In The Inn. And so, while others sing, worship and head home to share the love of Christ with family, members of the Providence and Foundations Sunday School classes stay to share the love of Christ with a different sort of family. At 8:00 and 11:00 in the evening, our Sanctuary blazes with candles and hope. Downstairs in the Youth Building on Christmas Eve it blazes with a hot meal and a warm blanket.

The pastor is right.

God with us.