CHRISTMAS EVE 2023 – Accompaniment: the Greatest Gift

The Christmas season is full of music – concerts – chorales, choirs, cantatas, symphonies, presentations of Handel’s Messiah. Church choirs spend much time preparing for this night, to joyously add their voices to the choirs of angels; to give glory and praise to God. The Church has a compendium of Christmas carols and music that spans centuries. Churched people generally have beautiful memories of the music of Christmas. At Resurrection in Halifax a shared memory is: O Holy Night, sung by a soloist, supported by an accompanist; and Silent Night sung as a congregation accompanied by candlelight.

Now can you imagine, O Holy Night sung without accompaniment? Or Silent Night, sung without the accompaniment of candlelight?

So too, Handel’s Messiah -and the Hallelujah Chorus, without the symphony orchestra and choir supporting the soloists? Can you imagine celebrating Christmas without the accompaniment of sacred music?

 

Accompaniment, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is defined as something done in support of something else. The classic example is musical accompaniment, music that supports someone who is singing or playing an instrument.

 

Accompaniment is the Greatest Gift, the gift of Christmas; something done in support of something else.

Is this not incarnation? God chose to become human. God chose to set-aside God-self, to accompany humankind by literally entering humanity and physically walking the land with human beings, side-by-side through the messiness of life. This is the wonder and mystery of Christmas – the gift of incarnation- the gift of accompaniment.

 

Circa 1513, German painter and architect, Albrecht Altdorfer, painted The Birth of Christ. His painting has the Holy Family snuggled in beside a crumbling brick wall, with the structure of a wooden beamed house above, empty of walls. Web-gallery describes the scene, the stable in the lower level of the building with the house above in a state, so ruinous, that an additional miracle may be found in its not having collapsed upon the Holy Family. Centuries later, on the First Sunday of Advent 1943, Bonhoeffer writes in a letter from prison to his parents: Altdorf’s ‘Nativity’ is very topical this year, showing the Holy Family and the crib among the ruins of a tumbledown house. However did he come to paint like that, against all tradition, four hundred years ago? Perhaps he meant that Christmas could and should be kept even in such conditions; in any case, that is his message for us.

Because of war with its destruction and chaos, because Bethlehem is within the occupied Palestinian territory, because all roads into Bethlehem are closed; a trend this Christmas has been for nativity scenes to be placed in or covered with rubble, tumbled bricks, chunks of concrete, and broken boards. God is once again born into a place with no room or no access, into extenuating and uncomfortable circumstances, and into a land shadowed in conflict and oppression. This year, Altdorfer’s nativity, like it was for Bonhoeffer in the throws of WWII, is poignantly current.

 

The ELCIC has been and is an accompaniment church with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land. Accompaniment has been the Canadian church hearing and sharing the ELCJH’s story; walking and learning from each other about peace, the practice of faith, the interpretation of scripture, theological reflection from an unexplored perspective; it has been advocating for the return of land and open borders through letters to the Prime Minister. Accompaniment is working with the Anglican Church of Canada on joint declarations and on the ground, supporting schools, hospitals, peace initiatives; it has been delegates attending the ordination of the first Lutheran Palestinian woman minister; it has been raising a month of expenses to pay for the salaries of ELCJH’s school staff who can not work in the war-torn chaos. Accompaniment is holding a people in our heart – our breaking hearts - and not growing weary of praying for peace in Jerusalem.

Accompaniment is remembering a baby born in Bethlehem and holding that Mystery and hope for a people, in a time and place where it is difficult to see the star, to hear the angels, to be excited as the shepherds, to pause at the manger, and to witness Emmanuel, God-with-us. Accompaniment is holding Mystery and hope for those who may not be able to at this time, keeping Mystery and hope alive for today.

 

The gift of incarnation, the gift of accompaniment on God’s part, is astonishing and radically lavish. What love! What grace! Imagine a love so unconditional: that God chose to become human to show humans to what length God will go to love them; to accompany them, to love and accompany us.

Often in Christmas carols, the symbols and lyrics boldly speak of the end of Jesus’ life. An example of accompaniment from the end of the Gospel of Luke is the walk on the road to Emmaus. The disciples have found the tomb empty – Jesus was crucified and laid to rest, and now, is said to have been raised from the dead. Two friends are on the road talking of this mystery, when a stranger on the road joins them. The stranger accompanies the two friends, listens to their incredible story, and speaks words from Moses and the prophets that have direct bearing on the events of the past few days. The stranger – in the breaking of bread- at the end of the walk, is recognized as the Christ. Christ accompanied the two friends, walking with them in their grief, in their quest for understanding, and in their hopes of the fulfilment of the promises of God. Accompaniment addressed and ministered to the broken heart and loneliness of the friends following the death of their teacher; accompaniment made that which was broken, whole. The friends comment on how their hearts were warmed in the stranger’s presence.

 

On Christmas Eve, we hear the angels proclaim, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward all. The First Nation’s Version of the New Testament interprets the angels’ words in a profound way, having the heavenly hosts of Luke 2: 14 give thanks saying, ‘All honour to the One Above Us All, and let peace and good will follow all who walk upon the earth.’ Let peace and good will follow all who walk upon the earth – that certainly sounds like accompaniment, a blessing of the angels who ask for peace and good to follow, as in accompany, all who walk upon the earth.

 

How does this sit with you? The thought, - the blessing of the angels- that peace and good accompany you, accompany communities of faith, and accompany humankind? The nativity story, witnessed and experienced as the Holy Family, with the gift of new life while sheltered in a precarious place in a troubled world, is the gift to be received this night. It is God’s gift of incarnation. God’s accompaniment with us – in all the chaos and trouble of the world. That makes tonight special, it produces that warm feeling we have in your hearts. This gift of incarnation, God’s accompaniment, elicits feeling, elicits a response. Over the coming weeks as we hear stories of Jesus being taken to the Temple by his parents, his baptism, first miracles, the calling of disciples, these stories illustrate that being around Jesus changes people and their lives. God incarnate changes us too; when our hearts are open to receiving that which is around us- like tonight relaxed and joyous in this space.

 

The angels’ blessing in some ways is a prayer that humans will turn around and see the peace and good that are following them, that are right there accompanying them. God is present! This changes everything.

American psychologist and author Rolo May wrote: Joy, rather than happiness, is the goal of life, for joy is the emotion which accompanies our fulfilling our natures as human beings. It is based on the experience of one’s identity as a being of worth and dignity.

 

The feeling that Christmas Eve elicits – our warmed hearts and the joy of being here together – accompanied by sacred music and candlelight… accompanied by Emmanuel; this emotion fulfils our nature as human beings. It is this joy found in the fulness of our nature as human beings that responds, that wants to carry on beyond tonight to birth hope in the rumble and struggle of life around us, to go into a hurting world and bring some form of peace, goodness, and wholeness. Christmas Eve reminds us that accompaniment is the heart of God’s relationship with us, and how it is that we experience God’s unconditional love.  And so it is that our gift to hurting world is accompaniment – the Greatest gift.

 

Merry Christ mass to you, as you

accompany people – where they are- as they search for love, acceptance, welcome, forgiveness, whatever is good and true and beautiful. With joy hold each of these, along with hope and faith, for those whose hearts and circumstances can not witness the miracle of tonight. Continue to accompany the world around you with the peace of Christ. Amen.