‘God is the distilled essence of love made absolute.’

Reflection for Christmas Eve Midnight Communion Service,

Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 2015.

Sometimes, and I recognise that this may be an occupational hazard,

            I find myself pondering the nature of God.

And late at night, as the world turns beneath

                        and the stars wheel above,

            the veil between my frail understanding

                        and the infinite beyond

            can sometimes begin to lift,

                        and the ineffable other can seem intangibly close.

And so we arrive at my thought for tonight,

            as the day of Christ's coming dawns imperceptibly upon us.

And my thought, this night, is this:

God is the distilled essence of love made absolute.

We use many ways to describe God,

            many ways to try and put human finite words

            around the infinite other,

with the Bible itself offering us many options,

            and Christian history, tradition, and theology

            adding further to our list…

God is father, God is mother, God is Spirit,

            God is justice, righteousness, and peace.

God is our rock and our redeemer,

            God is our ever present help in times of trouble.

God is… God is… God is…

But tonight, as we await the coming of God into the world:

            God is love.

Not love as we might ordinarily understand it,

            not love as between two people,

but the distilled essence of love;

            love that is strong enough to transcend time,

            love that is tender enough to surpass mortality.

God is love.

But this is no unearthly abstraction of love,

            this isn’t just some ethereal force of love

            that permeates the fabric of the universe

            and with which we can intertwine our lives.

This is love made flesh,

            this is love made absolute.

In the baby of Christmas morning

            we meet the God who is all love

            becoming real in human time and earthly place.

In the baby Jesus we meet the God

            who is the distilled essence of love, made absolute.

This is where the otherworldly meets the world,

            this is where blood and water and flesh

            become infinitely more than the sum of their parts.

In that one moment of the birth of the baby to Mary,

            each moment, of each human life, throughout all of human history

                        is transformed by love;

            because this birth is the absolute moment.

If it happens once, it happens eternally.

            If God is made flesh in Jesus Christ,

            then God is made flesh.

And so we gather to greet the Christ-child,

            and we gather to share bread, and wine;

                        we gather to remember broken bodies, and shed blood;

            and we gather to bring our own frail bodies

                        into the presence of the divine.

Our bodies break, they grow old, they fail us and betray us.

            And yet God becomes flesh.

In Christ, the God of love is made absolute,

            and the distilled essence of love

            takes each moment, of each frail human life,

                        from cradle to grave,

            and encompasses it in love that never fails,

                        love that never passes,

                        love that never fades.

So as we come to meet the newborn Christ,

            we bring our own frailty to the manger,

            as we bring our own bodies to the communion table.

And as we share bread and wine, we meet with Christ,

            and we are made whole in love.

A prayer for the longest night

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            we come before you this day,

            when night is longest and day is shortest,

to offer our prayers

            for those whose experience of life

            is more of darkness than it is of light.

We stand with those who live under a long shadow,

            and we join ourselves to those who struggle to see daylight.

And as we pray for others,

            we recognise that we too carry in our souls the burden of darkness.

We know that it can be true for us, as it is for others,

            that the days of brightness imperceptibly shorten

            while the nights of obscurity inexorably lengthen.

And so we pray for those who are bereaved,

            for those who have lost loved ones this year.

We feel within us the shapes of those who have gone from us,

            and we mourn their passing from our lives.

In quiet hope offered in the face of despair,

            we offer to your loving embrace all those whom we can no longer touch.

And we ask that you will give comfort

            where long nights of mourning seem never to come to an end.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

We pray for those who are lonely

            for those who long for touch, for conversation, for friendship, for intimacy.

And we recognise in ourselves the desperate drive for companionship

            that haunts our relationships and stifles our friendships.

We ask that you will draw near to those who draw away,

            and that you will hold all who are alone in your loving embrace.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

We pray for those who are far from home

            for those who have lost country and security

            through war, famine, or the effects of climate change.

We pray for refugees, asylum seekers, economic migrants,

            and all who greet the new day

            in a country that they do not recognise as home.

May they know that you are the God of the exiles and enslaved

            and that your welcome knows no boundaries.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

We pray for those who are lost in memories,

            for those who are trapped in the past

            and unable to engage the present.

We pray also for those whose memories have faded,

            and whose experience of dementia has diminished their capacity to live the day.

For all those who dream of the past,

            we ask for healing of past hurts.

And we offer all that we are

            to your eternal remembering.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

We pray for all that is broken in life,

            for people, for relationships, for bodies, for objects.

And in the face of brokenness

            we pray for healing and wholeness.

May that which is broken find its completeness in you,

            as you bring all things to good

            and redeem all that is damaged.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

And finally we pray into the darkness,

            and we offer the hope of our voices and our hearts

            that however long the night may be, there is a new day dawning.

And we know that as the days have shortened to get us to this place,

            so they will lengthen again to take us somewhere new.

Loving God of the dawn and the sunset,

            may darkness not overwhelm us.

Amen.