People's Prayers: Prayers of the People: Christmas Eve and Christmas Day '24 RCL Yr C

For Tuesday, December 24 and Wednesday December 25, 2024, Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7, Psalm 96,

Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14 (15-20)

HOLY ONE, in distress they sought you, they pressed out a whispered prayer…as an expectant mother writhes in labor…we too were expectant, we writhed in labor…No victories have we won on earth, neither do the inhabitants of the world fall. Your dead shall live; their corpses shall rise. Awake and sing for joy you who dwell in the dust! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth shall release these long dead. [Isaiah 26: 16-17a, 18b-19]

Sing to God, sing praises to her name…HOLY is her name, rejoice before her! …God you provided in your goodness for the oppressed. The AUTHOR OF LIFE gave the word; the women who proclaim the good news are a great army. [Psalm 68:4-5, 10b-11]

Now we do not want you to be ignorant…about those who have fallen asleep…For since we believe that Jesus died and rose, even they who sleep, will God by Jesus, bring with him…Jesus himself…will descend from heaven, and the dean in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive who are left...will…meet Jesus in the air…we will be with Jesus forever. [1 Thess 13-14, 16b-17a]

And immediately there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly array, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among peoples whom God favors!” [Luke 2:13-14]

For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.

[from The Nicene Creed, US Book of Common Prayer, p. 358]

The time is now, because of and in spite of days of darkness, worry, fear, and anguish, to remember how to feel the Excitement, the Joy, the Wonder, the Thrill of Christmas AGAIN! Jesus, our Christ, is born today! It’s time again to re-awaken the Spirit within, remember the Reason it begins, open to a new spiritual start, a fresh opportunity. It's time ~ NOW ~ to push into the unknown, even if painfully, frighteningly, but with great anticipation to experience our own rebirth, again, as a New Creation in Christ.

We each carry the fertile seed, the Divine Spark within us ~ Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Jew, Atheist, Agnostic, Oblivious, Naughty, or Nice. We each choose how the Spark drives us ~ we tend, nurture, anticipate or ignore, abuse, or perhaps deny that innermost part of ourselves. But now, what was is gone. As with infants, we move into new light, new sound, uncertainty, anxiety, and every day is a new beginning. Even if we have tried before, distraction, disinterest, life circumstances may have stopped our momentum. Yet we, too, are called as part of the Good Tidings of Great Joy that is Christ the Lord!

We are the Reason he was born to us. We are the shepherds in the field called to see and wonder and listen and allow ourselves to be transfixed and transformed as if for the first time. Let the Joy and Peace of now begin with me and let me, with you, carry Christ forward into this Day, into our everyday lives every day, into all the Earth we inhabit. The Great Light in the Darkness has come!

It's time! Hallelujah!

LET US, GOD’S PEOPLE, PRAY

Leader: ~ O Holy Jesus, God’s True Light, You come at last, filled with grace and truth. Let our joy be unbounded for the arrival of our Glorious Child, One in Being with God and the Holy Spirit, who redeems and claims us for the work of Heaven on Earth.