The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on Christmas Eve, 1985. The title is, A Psalm for Christmas Eve. 

I want to tell you a very homely little story. Last month, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, Oral Roberts University had a pre-enrollment conference for prospective students from around the country, and we decided to send Kathy, our teenage daughter. She's 16, a junior in high school this year.

She's done a lot of traveling with us, but this was far and away the biggest trip that she's ever made by herself. She had to change planes in Memphis and then make connections in Tulsa and, of course, reverse the whole process on the way home. And as I drove her to the airport, she was full of what-if questions.

What if I missed a plane in Memphis? what if I get to Tulsa and there's nobody there what if they've lost my registration what if my baggage doesn't show up what if they don't get me back to the airport on time on Sunday and I did my best to reassure her I told her about talking to flight attendants and other airline personnel I told her there'd probably be an agent to meet her in Memphis and point her to the right gate for her connecting flight. I said that the university had already contacted me and assured me they'd meet her and take care of her at that end.

I told her how to reverse the charges on a telephone call. And just in case, I gave her my Visa gold card. well as we waited for her boarding call at Dulles I asked her how you feeling Kath and she said very excited and a little scared so was her daddy as I watched her walk toward the plane I couldn't help remembering another day, another beginning, her first day in kindergarten.

It just wasn't possible that my little girl was going off to a university weekend, halfway across the country at that. Well, on Friday evening she called to say that she'd gotten there, everything was fine, people had met her, no problem. But on Sunday, you may recall this, the first blizzard of the season paralyzed the Midwest.

And in the middle of the afternoon, we got a second telephone call from a very distraught young lady saying that she was at the airport, her ride had already left, her flight had been canceled, and all the other flights were overbooked. The only thing available was a connection through Chicago that would get her into Baltimore about 10 p.m. I said, you get back into line and you get on that flight. And she said, I'm afraid they've already lost it.

I said, get back in line and I'll see what I can do. So I called Republic Airlines. I got the number of the Republic desk in Tulsa I called them and I said somewhere in your line is a 16 year old girl she looks like she's 25 but she's 16 and she is very scared she's traveling alone and I'd appreciate any help you can give me in getting her on a plane to Baltimore or to National or to Dulles they said we're very busy please leave it to us I heard nothing for another hour so I called back again and they said sure enough they'd gotten her on to a United flight first class mind you and she was en route to Chicago Now, the only problem was that the storm was moving eastward.

And so her plane ended up circling Chicago for four hours and was finally diverted to Omaha. that all worked out Kathy spent the night in a fine Ramada Inn in Omaha and she came home the next day without further incident now I didn't have it quite as easy as that I didn't get a whole lot of sleep Sunday night kept having these visions, you know, of the plane running out of fuel, and Omaha being all socked in, there being no airports to land in. You know what the headlines would say, daughter of Episcopal minister, you know.

Karen was asleep. But there I was. I mean, isn't that great confidence in the Lord?

You know, I've done a fair amount of traveling myself, and I've been stranded in Nairobi, Bombay, Quito, Tanzania. Never troubled me a bit. Makes a difference when it's your child, doesn't it?

Is there any one of you here who wouldn't gladly change places with your son or daughter if you knew that they were in trouble or if they'd had an accident or they'd gotten sick or they'd had their hearts broken? That's what it means to be a parent, isn't it? We'd shield them from life's hurts if we could.

The problem is that so often we can't. Our hearts break when their hearts break, yet we've got to live their own lives and discover who they are and what they are and they've got to make their own mistakes and live with them. They've got to take what life deals. We joy in their successes and we sorrow in their disappointments.

And I wonder if you've ever thought about what Christmas means from the point of view of God the Father. From before the foundation of the world, His greatest delight was in His Son. From before there was anything else, God the Father was loving God the Son, and God the Son was loving God the Father.

There was an eternal love affair going on. In fact, St. Augustine suggests that the reason God created the universe was that from all eternity the love affair between the Father and the Son was so intense that they wanted someone to share it with. It was overflowing.

And so God made a world and He peopled it with human beings created in His own image. men and women and boys and girls who could love and be loved. People that He could love and who could respond in some small measure to that love.

And before He ever created us, God saw our rebellion, our anarchy, and the devastation that would follow it. He saw the plight that we'd get ourselves into. He saw what we'd do to the world that he made and to each other, and he saw the way we'd spurn his love.

He saw the arms race. Can you imagine that? If you were God and you saw the arms race, would you have created it all?

He saw the centuries of tyranny, the hatred, the strife, the pain, the racism, the neglect, the abuse, the hoarding on the part of the haves while the have-nots go hungry, the selfishness, the greed, the enslavement to sin and death. He saw all of that. And He said, I love you.

And God saw that the only way that we'd finally really believe in that love and be changed by it was for Him to come in person. And to accept every form of mistreatment and abuse and go on loving us. Right through Bethlehem to a cross on Calvary.

That's what you need to remember this night. We celebrate the birth of the baby because of the faithfulness of the man that he grew up to be. A man who lived among us and for us and who died for us and at our hands.

And then he rose again so that the people who walked in darkness could see a great light. God sent his son, not with a first class ticket, but to a very poor carpenter's family. Not to a Ramada inn, but to a stable out back, to a manger in a cow shed.

And definitely not with a Visa gold card, but to a cross made of wood, to a crown of thorns and to nails driven into His flesh. God loved you enough to send His very best, His Son, so that you could look Him in the face and see what God is like. A Christian is one who bets his life that God is going to turn out to be like Jesus.

God sent His Son so that you and I could know Him. And in knowing Him, receive life eternal. We celebrate the birth because of the life, the death, the resurrection, and the promise of life eternal to those who would put their trust in Him.

a friend of mine by the name of Joe Bailey wrote a poem he calls it a psalm for Christmas Eve and he put it this way praise God for Christmas praise Him for the incarnation for the word made flesh I will not sing of shepherds watching flocks on frosty night or angel choristers. I will not sing of stable bear in Bethlehem or lowing oxen, wise men trailing distant star with gold and frankincense and myrrh. Tonight, I will sing praise to the Father who stood on heaven's threshold and said farewell to his Son as He stepped across the stars to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

And I will sing praise to the infinite eternal Son who became most finite, a baby who would one day be executed for my crimes. Praise Him in the heavens. Praise Him in the stable.

praise him in my heart Merry Christmas