Crying Preacher

“The little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.”

But what a blubbering preacher! Honestly, I had no idea I’d cry throughout my first ever Christmas Eve sermon. Yeah, the ancient story was so beautiful again, the carols familiar, but powerful, and the mood-lighting set. It makes sense, I guess. The whole evening is designed to be moving–I designed it to be moving.

It started when I mentioned “awful old Imogene Herdman” crying as she played her role of Mary in the Best Worse Christmas Pageant Ever. I used this story to begin my sermon. “In the candlelight her face was all shiny with tears and she didn’t even bother to wipe them away. She just sat there–awful old Imogene–in her crooked-ey veil, crying… as if she had just caught onto the idea of God, and the wonder of Christmas.” Maybe I had just caught onto the wonder of Christmas?

Maybe it was because growing up, my church never held Christmas Eve services, and the first church I pastored didn’t either. Usually by Christmas Eve, we were already far, far away from the churches we pastored, returned to the homes of our birth for family holiday time. This whole Christmas Eve church-thing is still pretty new for me.

Christmas 2014 did bring a lot of other new things for our family: our first Christmas in Iowa, our first Christmas Eve as pastors together (we’ve worshiped a part the last few years), our first Christmas with a newborn (only Spring babies thus far for the Stanleys).

It was also our first Christmas Eve to worship in a packed sanctuary. It was almost overwhelming as familiar and new faces, visiting family and returning church members, all worshipped together. I’ve heard several pastoral colleagues over the years lament the “Christmas Eve Worship-only attendees.” The trade slang for these attendees is “Chreasters” (Christmas-Easter only), but don’t tell anyone I told you. These lamenters seem to dread the full, Christmas Eve sanctuary, a depressing reminder of all the people they wished would be there year round, Sunday after Sunday. I get it, I guess. Who wouldn’t love a full church every Sunday? But the presence of these people, the new and returning faces, the first time visitors and the annual family attenders…it was all such an honor. Of all things they could do on this overly-commercialized, tradition-steeped, most holy of nights, they chose to worship with us!

The honor of this calling is often overwhelming: to stand in front of a couple in love and join them together in holy marriage, bless their babies, sit beside them as they die, speak for God in the midst of their grief, and lead families in their tradition of family worship on Christmas Eve. What an honor to have a front-row seat on these private, holy moments!

It’s not the first time I cried during a sermon, and I’m sure it’s far from the last, but it was the first time I couldn’t stop. The further in I got, the more the tears flowed. I guess it was all these things, joining together as one on this holy night. The privilege to speak a word of God to these beautiful people of God, the beauty of this story of Jesus entering the world as a baby as our little baby asleep in the second pew as the Christmas lights twinkled, how incredibly blessed I am to serve this church in this place, with Marti and my family–it all makes me cry, I suppose. And I pray the tears keep on flowing.