The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Debi and I sit together each day through December and read our Christmas Cards.

We get a bunch and we take none of them for granted, we end up talking about the cards we get and the odd ways that some people enter our lives and stick around.

We enjoy the beauty of the cards, the wishes expressed, the pictures that are sent, the letters full of catching up news and we enjoy Kevin’s Christmas Card each year.

Kevin was a classmate in seminary who graduated and went into social work. We only hear from him in December and for years his card would come with the simple signature, “Kevin”.

As the years have passed he has become positively verbose as he has expanded to “Merry Christmas, Kevin.”

It is a card that makes me smile each December.

No wasted words from our friend Kevin.

And Kevin is much like St. Mark, brief and to the point.

Marks’s gospel is not the first place that we usually go when we are looking for the story of Christmas, and I will admit, as I was setting up our Advent and Christmas worship themes I worried about tonight and what Mark could possibly contribute to our understanding of this story that we know so well.

It isn’t that Mark has nothing important to say to us about our readiness and our preparations and about the immediate impact of Christ in our lives and our relationships, in fact Mark does a great job of pointing us toward the active sacredness of doing things together, walking together, holding hands and holding hearts, with one another through years and decades and lifetimes. Mark has brought us through December in our worship this year, but I wasn’t at all sure of how helpful he would be on this night.

After all, Luke is the Christmas default position, Luke is the easy place to go for the true meaning of Christmas, even Linus knew that, Luke has the story of the angels and shepherds.

And if we want a different angle we could go to Matthew and find the harder edges of the story, Matthew tells the story from Joseph’s perspective, and here we find the star led and star crossed pilgrimage of the Magi.

And if that is not enough for us, we can always read John and have our souls lifted into places we can barely describe with his poetic images of the eternal word becoming flesh and of a single, brave light shining in the darkness.

On this night of dreams, past and future dreams which have the power to inspire and empower us, Mark is the nasally, narrating voice of the pragmatist.

On this night of comfort and joy where hopes and fears are met in silent love, Mark is almost annoying as he challenges us to get up and do something, to respond with actions that are immediate and urgent.

And, most significantly, on this night of cherished traditions, on this night when we sing and say things that have been sung and said for centuries, Mark is the one who points us to changes, new experiences, new expressions of faith, new relationships, new realities.

So I worried about inviting Mark in on Christmas Eve, until this week when a couple of things helped me to understand that people like Mark and Kevin often bring to us, with love, exactly what we need.

Kevin wrote “Merry Christmas” and Mark wrote The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

The first thing that happened was a couple came to speak with me about Church Membership and, after they left, I thought about their story, for I have known them as good friends for a long time, and I thought about the twists and turns of life and I was reminded of how our paths to God are each unique and sacred and yet we overlap each other and touch each other in so many wonderful and holy ways.

But I didn’t wonder, as I would have years ago, why they didn’t make the decision sooner, for I have learned that God doesn’t bring people to worship and to serve with each other and to milestones of faith on our schedule or even in response to our programs and plans and dreams.

We want to invite and encourage people to be here, by all means, but ultimately it is God’s call.

And I mean that literally, not figuratively, it is God’s call.

God has called each of us to this place, to this night. And that reality is not altered by our knowing it or not, or whether we want to admit it or not, God has worked through someone to put us together tonight, and it is another beginning, another moment from which, when we leave, we either follow God, and the wonderful and holy plans he has for our lives, more closely or we will veer off as we usually do and follow our own fairly shallow and self-serving plans.

God has called us together tonight.

For some of us the call has come because we have an itch in our souls that we just can’t seem to scratch; and for some of us we may know someone who has come to this place and we have been impressed by the joy in their lives; for some of us we have tried a bunch of other scratching posts along the way and this is one more exploration; and for some of us, well we only itch when evergreens and lilies are in season, because we are afraid of what faith might be like in common times of the year; but whatever the individual circumstances of our souls may be, the reality is that we are all here tonight because God – working as always through imperfect men and women and unlikely circumstances and flawed and lovely traditions and habits – God has called us here. And so this night becomes, by the grace of God, a night of change, every year a new beginning, for each one of us and for all of us together.

All of the roads that we have traveled up until tonight have combined to create this moment of a new beginning.

It’s not that we have never heard the story before, I don’t think there were any surprises in it, were there?

But we have never heard it at this precise age, nor have we heard it with our parents or children or spouses or friends at this precise age. And if you don’t think that is important, think back a year and remember those who have died and those who have been born, those who have suffered through a divorce or a lost job, those who have been married or those who have just begun a new career adventure.

You and I, and we together, are not the same people we were a year ago, we have never been surrounded by issues of health and finance – whether they are good or bad – exactly as we are tonight.

You see Mark had it right, this is The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And if the one couple I spoke with reminded me that our stories are all continually changing, including our willingness to respond to God’s invitation to service, another conversation – concerning the decorations in our home, at the Open House last week – reminded me that change will always move things around.

I was asked about a new decoration, the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, Paul Quevedo, our former student pastor gave it to us and we had to find a spot for it.

Well, someone noticed.

And it got me thinking about my habit of finding new spots for things each year in order to remind myself that every Christmas stands alone. You can blend all of the old Christmas memories together into a composite and you can make some patchwork designs out of what you think the Christmas dreams down the road will be like, but this one, this Christmas of 2006 is different and you can either embrace the differences and the changes or you can ignore them, pretend they aren’t there and find out that you have forfeited some remarkable blessings that God has in store for you this Christmas.

That’s what Mark was writing about, not just at the start of his gospel, but at the end of it, it was still just the beginning.

And every time we come around to Christmas God begins again.

And that is true for us as families.

And that is true for us a congregation.

And that is true for us as a nation.

So what are the changes, the new beginnings, in you and your family this year?

What do you have to move, in your head and in your heart, in order to make a new start, in order to embrace a change?

Are we helping God with the process of shaping and molding and leading us, or are we in the way of what God wants to do – and what God will do, with us or without us? Are we desperately clinging to the very things that God wants to change?

In a few minutes we will light our candles.

And as we do, the room will change, faces in the shadows will become clear as we sing of that Silent Night.

And as we blow out the candles and as we leave for our celebrations, we will choose whether we simply resume all of the sadness and despair and fears and burdens of our lives, or whether we begin the new things, the new joys, the new relationships, the new lives that God is calling us to tonight.

Here is a poem I was sent this week which reminds us of the ways in which we begin everything anew on this night and I want it in our heads and in our hearts as we hold our candles and light this room and I want it to go with us as we light our homes and families and workplaces and communities and world, I want it to go with us as we decide whether to begin or to merely resume:

I will light candles this Christmas.

Candles of joy, despite all sadness,

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch.

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace of tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,

Candles of love to inspire all my living,

Candles that will burn all the year long.

I will light candles this Christmas.

The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.