Longest Night 2022

Tonight we gather here in this place of refuge, for we are lost, we are lonely, we are afraid.

Tonight we gather, daring to wonder if God has indeed come in Jesus, discerning the rejection we have known, intimate with our failed relationships, holding our heartache in hands of tenderness.

Tonight we gather with neighbors and strangers, a family made one by our brokenness, coming with our hearts full of hope and our pockets filled with doubts.

Tonight we gather just as we are, for God has promised to meet us here and to welcome us for who we are.

Candles on our Advent wreath represent our never-ending need for God's love, God's hope, joy, and peace.

Tonight we reconsider each of the four candles contemplatively.

May God's eternal love surround them.

With our second candle, we remember that loss brings pain only God can redeem.

Refresh, restore, renew us, O God, and lead us into your future.

With our third candle, we remember with gratitude those who reach out to those who experience the darkness of the world and the pain of loss.

Let us remember the ones who show the way and bring life.

And with our fourth candle, we remember the flicker of our faith and the gift of hope which the incarnation offers to us.

Weeping lasts through the night, but joy comes in the morning.

God of compassion, hear our prayer in this Advent season for ourselves and our families who live with the painful memories and realities of loss.

In this season, when anticipation so often becomes anxiety, we seek your comfort, Holy Spirit.

All around us are reminders of the joy that our world and culture tell us we're supposed to be feeling.

You know our hearts, Lord, and you understand.

Give us the strength to grieve as we must.

Help us to receive your healing in the midst of the pain our culture does not want to hear right now.

Lighten our burden.

Give us rest.

Amen.

I invite you to join me in singing as you'd like.

She traveled far and wide to see doctors, magicians, and wisdom teachers, but none could offer any help.

However, during her search, she heard rumors of a holy man who lived high up in the mountains, a man who possessed great powers.

And so she went in search of this great saint, eventually locating his small dwelling in an isolated patch of land high above the city.

Upon meeting him, she related her story through tears.

After she had finished, the old man thought for a moment and then spoke with compassion, saying, I can help you.

But in order for me to do the appropriate spell, you will first need to bring me a handful of mustard seeds from the home of someone who has not suffered the pain of loss.

The woman immediately left that place and traveled throughout the city in search of a home that had not been overshadowed by this pain.

However, she could not find a single place.

Yet as she heard the stories of others' suffering, she slowly began to come to terms with her own, until one day she was able to give her beloved child a proper burial.

I'm going to light the Hanukkah because Hanukkah begins this evening.

And then as these candles are lit, I'm going to invite you, if you'd like, to use one of the candles from the Hanukkah to light a candle in prayer or multiple for you or someone you love, with the same reminder that in God a little light can indeed go a long way.

Laha lit near Shad Nika.

I will cry aloud to God.

I will cry aloud and you will hear me.

In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord.

My hands were stretched out by night and did not tire.

I refused to be comforted.

I think of God.

I am restless.

I ponder and my spirit faints.

You will not let my eyelids close.

I am troubled and I cannot speak.

I consider the days of old.

I remember the years long past.

I commune with my heart in the night.

I ponder and search my mind.

Will the Lord cast me off forever?

Will you no more show your favor?

Has your loving-kindness come to an end forever?

Has your promise failed forevermore?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Have you in your anger withheld your compassion?

And I said, My grief is this: the right hand of the Most High has lost its power.

I will remember the works of the Lord, and call to mind your wonders of old time.

I will meditate on all your acts, and ponder your mighty deeds.

Your way, O God, is holy.

Who is so great a God as our God?

You are the God who works wonders.

You have declared your power among the people.

By your strength you have redeemed your children, the children of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel.

I invite you to join me in the first two verses of Be Still My Soul, as you like, and then afterward I'll open the rail to come for a laying of hands and anointing with oil as you like.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John, glory to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said, Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God.

Trust also in me.

In my Father's house there are many dwelling places.

If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am there you may be also.

And you know the way to the place where I am going.

Thomas said to Jesus, Lord, we do not know where you are going.

How can we know the way?

Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

The gospel of the Lord.

Praise to you, Lord Christ.

Please be seated.

This is a scripture we often read at funerals, and on this day of the year, I hope you hear what Jesus offers us, which is not to solve our problems, but to make room for them.

In my Father's house, there are many rooms.

There are rooms for joy, for hope, for peace and love.

And there are rooms for grief and fear and doubt and anxiety.

God is not threatened by these things.

God makes room for them.

Some of us have grown up in faith traditions that say having doubts, having sorrow, having fear reveals weak faith.

But I think at this time of year it's helpful to remind ourselves that there are parts of the story we don't always know and that God has chosen to make room for.

When my wife had a baby, some muscles on her ribs permanently detached.

There is no reconnecting them.

Doctors are not interested in this.

And so she lives from time to time with this pain from childbirth.

We don't know about Mary.

We do know that giving birth to a child permanently changes a woman's body.

God made room for that.

Mary was not weak.

My wife was not weak.

This part of life God has made room for.

Sometimes I wonder why it took so many years before God became incarnate.

On the one hand, maybe Mary was the first woman who actually said yes.

All the other women said no.

But on a night like tonight, I remember that in the ancient world, child mortality was something like 50%.

The odds of making it to the age of 12 were 50%.

And I wonder.

God makes room for our wonder.

What if God tried and the baby Jesus was still born earlier?

I don't know that faith is about overcoming our obstacles.

I think sometimes faith is about filling our obstacles with God's presence.

God makes room for postpartum depression in Mary, in us.

God makes room in the incarnation for things not always going our way.

After all, if they always went Jesus' way, he wouldn't be like us.

How many jokes did he tell that people didn't laugh at?

How many times did he skin his knee?

And yet our assurance to faith is that even in moments of failure and loss and grief and uncertainty, God was not threatened by these feelings.

God made room for them.

In fact, God treasures these feelings that are a part of life.

These are things we so often forget when we think about victory.

The victory is not that we always win, it is that God is always with us.

And that God, just like a parent treasures the wounds of their children, God treasures our wounds.

And God has told us that God will be present in them.

Sometimes I wish the magic were different.

Sometimes I wish God's magic was about taking away the things I'm afraid of, taking away the grief that I feel.

But as it showed up this morning, the truth is if God took away the grief over loss, then God would take away the love that underlies that.

And I don't want God to take that away.

I just want it to be precious to God.

And tonight we gather knowing that it is.

It is precious to God.

Our pain, our fear, our anxiety, and it is so precious that God will make room for it.

Not just at the moment.

God doesn't just put up with it.

God makes room for it.

Tonight we make room for God making room.

And my prayer for us on this longest night, knowing that God will not resolve our tension, is that we will, in those moments of loss and fear, pain and grief, find God's presence there where it has been all along.

So I invite you to join with me in a creed, especially for this longest night.

So come now, child of Bethlehem, to strengthen us in these days.

May we feel your presence in a way we have never known, not just as one born in the stable long ago and far away, but as one born in our hearts, in our hopes, in our spirits, in our weakness.

You have promised to go before us, into our brokenness, into hospital rooms, into empty houses, into graveyards, into our future held by our God.

And you are here even now waiting for each of us to serve us, to hold us, to comfort us, to live in us, now and forever.

Amen.

All around us are the sights and sounds of Christmas, gentle God, the laughter of parties, the songs of carolers, the shouts of children, the music in every store.

But deep within us we carry our pain, our grief walks with us every step we take.

Loneliness is a shawl we drape over our shoulders on empty nights.

So in this time when every night stretches into eternity, we come to you bringing our gifts.

Not gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but the grief that is the empty space in the closet filled with memories, the loss that is a sore which never heals, the bitterness that tastes like two-day old coffee.

We have come from different backgrounds, from different families, possibly from other faith traditions, but we have all lived in the far country of despair, wandered in the land of shame, built our lives in those neighborhoods peopled by empty dreams.

We have stood on the side of every room we have gone into, hoping against hope that someone would ask us to dance, but find the wall is our only friend.

In a season when so many people don't have enough hours in a day to get their lists checked off, their cards mailed, their presents wrapped, we have all the time in the world.

To remember the loss that has stolen the joy of the season, to grieve over a job, a dream, a loved one we have lost, to sit in the shadows of our homes too weary to turn on the lights, to wander the streets lit by decorations on all the houses, but not by the light of the world.

Our fear of the future, our remembrance of the past, our pain which is difficult to bear and harder to release, our emptiness which cannot be filled with platitudes, our hands which cannot hold the ones we wish to embrace, all make this a season of long nights.

So be with us in our loneliness, in our longing, in our loss, in our lives.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

The peace of the Lord be always with you.

Remembering that this table is the table of the Lord, not that of the church.

It is made ready for those who have been here often and those who have not been for a long time or ever before.

You who have tried to follow and you who have failed come, not because I or the church invite you.

It is Christ, and He invites you to meet Him here, remembering His and our own longest nights.

And also, Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks unto the Lord our God.

It is right to give God thanks and praise.

When there was only chaos, you whispered of your hopes, God of every moment.

And light shattered the shadows, water raced down the valleys.

Creatures beyond imagination grazed in the abundant fields.

You created all which is beautiful for those shaped in your image.

But loneliness became our companion.

Grief wrapped its arms around us, fear sang its carols to us, and our dreams turned to nightmares.

And so that we would know you are with us in these moments, these days, these lives, you became one of us.

Jesus walking among us, reminding us of your promises to us, not only in the songs of the angels, but in the quiet whispers of hope which are low abide to us in the night.

You are not only holy God of hope, you know the pain we have felt.

You have mingled your tears with ours.

You have wept at the graveside of a loved one.

The angelic chorus told of your glory and wonder, yet Jesus came to let us know of your compassion.

He could have remained safe in the cradle of grace, but became as poor as we often feel.

He could have clothed himself in holiness, but knew the humility of wondering where his next meal might come from, whether or not he had a place to sleep at night.

He could have trampled death and sin into the dust, but let them have their way with him, so we might find the path to life that is whole and complete, where promises are fulfilled, where hope is the bed where we can rest our wearied souls.

We believe we will find acceptance because Jesus was rejected.

We trust we know new life because Jesus experienced our death.

We look to that day when all weeping is done, when pain and loss is behind us, and we are welcomed into that kingdom called eternity.

At the beginning of his own longest night, our Lord took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to his friends, and even his betrayer, saying, Take, eat.

This bread is my body.

Whenever you eat bread, remember me.

At the end of his last meal, Jesus took the cup of wine, blessed it, shared it with his friends and even his betrayer, saying, Drink this all of you.

This wine is my blood poured out for you all.

Whenever you drink wine, remember me.

The angelic chorus told of your glory and wonder, as your spirit moved upon the waters of creation, filling them with life beyond imagination.

May it move upon the gifts of this table, and make the nourishment for our longest night.

And now, as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are bold to pray.

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory for ever and ever.

Amen.

Christ our Passover grieves with us.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

The presence of God and the people of God.

Feed on him in your hearts with faith, and know you are never alone.

And I invite you to the rail to receive nourishment for your longest night.

If you'd like to receive bread, put your hands out.

You can either dip the bread or drink directly from the cup or skip either and receive a blessing by crossing your arms.

Let's pray together.

Eternal God, for whom we wait, you have fed us with the bread of eternal life.

Keep us ever watchful, that we may be ready to stand beside the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

In your silence may the word dwell in your heart.

In your brokenness, may the bread of life heal you.

In your pain, may the one who can heal you touch your soul.

In your longest night, may you find Christ truly present with you.

Amen.

Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful.

For thou art not so.

For those whom thou thinks thou dost overthrow, die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

And rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, much pleasure.

Then from thee much more must flow, and soonest our best men with thee to go.

Rest of their bones and souls delivery.

Art slave to fate, chance kings and desperate men, and dost with poison war and sickness dwell, and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well, and better than thy stroke, why swell'st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally, and death shall be no more.

Death thou shalt died.