The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
December 24, 2008

Christmas Eve – 2008
Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-10

God is like a bat. You just never know when God’s going to drop in for a visit, and when he does he’s hard to get hold of. That, at least, is the way it seems to Jane Kenyon:


I was reading about rationalism,
the kind of thing we do up north
in early winter, where the sun
leaves work for the day at 4:15.

Maybe the world is intelligible
to the rational mind;
and maybe we light the lamps at dusk
for nothing....

Then I heard wings overhead.

The cats and I chased the bat
in circles – living room, kitchen,
pantry, kitchen, living room....
At every turn it evaded us

like the identity of the third person
in the Trinity: the one
who spoke through the prophets,
the one who astounded Mary
by suddenly coming near.

– Jane Kenyon, “The Bat,” 1986


I know what she means. Once, in the middle of the night, standing on the bed in my undershorts, I tried to corral a bat with a tennis racket It’s hard to capture either a bat or God that way – by frontal assault. More often, like Mary, you just have to be still where you are and wait until you hear wings overhead and sense him coming near.

That, it seems to me, is the way it happened on Christmas Eve ninety-four years ago during the war to end all wars, the one that was to make the world safe for democracy, the war that was to guarantee peace.

On this night in 1914, British troops were huddled deep in their trenches in Belgium within shouting distance of their German enemies, who were hunkered down in their own trenches. An informal truce was declared, and the war was suspended in that location for the observance of Christmas. Suspended, as it turned out, for the observance of Christ’s mass, suspended for the observance not only of Jesus’ birth, but to the observance of that meal Jesus hosted for us all in that upper room on the night before he died, and of his prayer for us that night.

As rendered by the remarkable 2005 film “Joyeux Noel,” the French were there as well, and this is how it happened:

The German troops began the festivities that night by placing small Christmas trees, decorated with lighted candles, on the rims of their trenches. A German soldier took out his harmonica and began to play “Silent Night.” Then, from the British side, a bagpipe picked up in accompaniment.

Now a harmonica and a bagpipe are not my preferences for Christmas Eve, but under the circumstances, they had an absolutely holy effect. Someone began to sing, then another, and another: “Stille nacht, heilige nacht. Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”

And as the night grew ever more silent and holy, as the soldiers recalled those silent and holy nights of more peaceful Christmases, from somewhere in the trenches, in a tune and language common to them all, came an invitation to prayer: “Venite adoramus, venite adoramus, venite adoramus, Dominum!”

Was it with the voice of reason or of grace that someone suggested a truce for the night? Or was it the voice of madness. In any case, in response, the lieutenants – Scottish, French, and German, enemies sworn to fight either to victory or to death – cautiously made their way to the middle of the fifty yards of “No Man’s Land” for a meeting. One brought a bottle of wine and three tin cups. Drinks were shared all around while they talked it over. “The war won’t be won or lost tonight,” one said. “What harm would it do to take a break for Christmas?” offered another.

In time, they agreed and shook hands. The troops then began to leave the trenches, abandoning their defenses, and the men gathered around their officers. Was it reason or grace that led them there? Or was it madness?

At first, they circled each other like hounds who have only just met and who want to play, but don’t want to be bitten. Then they shared bread and chocolate as they had them. They shared pictures of wives and girl friends. They sang. They told jokes. They played with the cat all the soldiers knew and claimed as their own, the stray who went by “Nestor” on the French side but by “Felix” on the German side, the cat who crossed borders with impunity and begged equally well in all three languages. The French troops discovered that the German lieutenant spoke French fluently, because his wife was French. They learned that the German officer and his wife had spent their honeymoon in Paris, not far from the French lieutenant’s home. A Brit wrote a letter to a friend in Germany, and asked a German soldier to post it for him when he got a chance. Others exchanged invitations to visit each other after the war. They shared whiskey straight from their bottles, no tin cups needed.

A priest, a Scottish stretcher-bearer and chaplain, fashioned an altar and a pulpit from war materials lying around, and as the soldiers from the three warring countries gathered around God’s table, the priest spoke to them not in English or French or German, but in a language as common to them all as were the carols they sang, the language of God’s Church. “In nomine Patrii, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” he began. And with one voice they said, “Amen.” “Dominus vobiscum,” he continued. And all responded as one: “Et cum spiritu tuo.” “Oremus,” the priest then invited: “Let us pray.” It was, as the priest later told his unhappy bishop, the most important mass of his life, as he did his best to share the Gospel with them all, to share the good news of Jesus, and of his dream and prayer for peace and good will to all.

Later, in the early light of Christmas Day, they played a soccer match, it is said. And the Germans won 3-2, it is said. But after all, the British and French insisted, one of the German players had once been on a real football team. In the singing and in the games, in the chocolates and in the photographs from home, and in Jesus’ meal, they came to know each other as persons, as brothers in Christ, as companions and friends. And, of course, at that particular location on that particular day, the war simply fell apart. For how, the next day, could one shoot the one he had come to know as friend?

And their superiors behind the lines? Well, they thought it madness, of course. When they heard about it, they were furious. “Fraternization with the enemy,” they all called it in the war rooms in Berlin and Paris and London. “How can you fight a war unless soldiers see each other as enemies?” they fumed. And the soldiers from every country were disciplined and redeployed to different units with more stomach for hostility. Even the religious superiors fumed. Removing his priest from his assignment on the front, the Scottish bishop told his priest that he was disappointed in him, that civilization itself depended upon their killing the Hun, and that the priest’s behavior on that silent night was unacceptable in a war as holy as the war to end all wars.

It was all Jesus’ fault, of course. Jesus had planted the seed with his life and death, and with his dream in that upper room on the night he prayed for us, his prayer that we might be one as he and the Father are one.

For what is the mass of Christ, the meal we share tonight, if not fraternization with ones we might call enemy, if not for Jesus? What is Christ’s mass, Christmas, if not an outward and visible sign of that inward and spiritual grace of our unity with God and each other which crosses all borders like a cat begging for food? What is the mass of Christ, the mass of the One who comes among us as Lord, if not a vision of an end to enmity, a way of tearing down the walls of hostility that divide us, a meal whose purpose is to make friends and companions of those who partake?

The men on the front must have heard wings overhead, for how could the rational mind have recognized Christ’s presence on that particular night in Belgium? And how could the rational mind have ever beheld the Incarnation in the first place? Only the poet in us, with an eye for the sacred and an ear for the Spirit, can divine it.

On the domed ceiling God
is thinking:
I made them my joy,
and everything else I created
I made to bless them.
But see what they do!
I know their hearts
and arguments:

“We’re descended from
Cain. Evil is nothing new,
so what does it matter now
if we shell the infirmary,
and the well where the fearful
and rash alike must
come for water?”

God thinks Mary into being.
Suspended at the apogee
of the golden dome,
she curls in a brown pod,
and inside her the mind
of Christ, cloaked in blood,
lodges and begins to grow.

– Jane Kenyon, “Mosaic of the Nativity: Serbia, Winter 1993”


And he was born, Jesus was. And then he grew. “He grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men,” St. Luke tells us. And although, in time, rational men abandoned him – “After all, it’s better that one man die than that the whole nation perish,” the voice of reason argued in the councils of power – although rational men abandoned him, God did not abandon him. He continued to grow in favor with God, and when, on the Cross, he gave up his own life for his friends, for those who loved him and for those who loved him not, God raised him to new life.

The rational mind reasons that it cannot be so, and that we light the lamps at dusk for nothing. But if it is not so, how are we to explain the courage of the apostles who followed him after Calvary? How are we to explain the millions who follow him still? And how are we to explain that Christmas Eve ninety-four years ago?

We must be “rescued into reality,” another poet, Luci Shaw, insists. We must be rescued into the fulness of God’s gift at Christmas, God’s gift at Christ’s mass. We must be rescued into recognizing grace when hope comes among us. We must be “rescued into the reality” of the Incarnation, God’s presence among us still, into the reality of how God’s presence is not limited to the baby in the manger in Bethlehem, but persists all the way to this holy night.

We must be rescued into this reality, Shaw says, because sometimes, with us...

It is as if infancy
were the whole of Incarnation.

One time of the year
the new-born child
is everywhere,
planted in madonnas' arms,
hay mows, stables,
in palaces or farms,
or quaintly, under snowed gables,
gothic angular or baroque plump,
naked or elaborately swathed,
encircled by Della Robbia wreaths,
garnished with whimsical
partridges and pears,
drummers and drums,
lit by oversize stars,
partnered with lambs,
peace doves, sugar plums,
bells, plastic camels in sets of three
as if these were what we need
for eternity.

But Jesus the Man is not to be seen.
We are too weary, these days,
of beards and sandalled feet.

Yet if we celebrate, let it be
that He
has invaded our lives with purpose,
striding over our picturesque traditions,
our shallow sentiment,
overturning our cash registers,
wielding His peace like a sword,
rescuing us into reality,
demanding much more
than the milk and the softness
and the mother warmth
of the baby in the storefront creche,

(only the Man would ask
all, each of us)
reaching out
always, urgently, with strong
effective love

(only the Man would give
His life and live
again for love of us).

O come, let us adore Him –
Christ – THE LORD.

– Luci Shaw, from Polishing the Petoskey Stone (1990)


The Incarnation cannot end with Jesus’ birth, or even with his death. If that were so, then how are we to account for this meal tonight, and for our presence here? How are we to explain our fraternization tonight with those who, were it not for God, we might call enemies?

“You who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ,” St. Paul proclaims. “For Christ himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” If all that is needed to understand the world is the rational mind, then how are we to explain the Christmas hope we share tonight – our faith that it was “his purpose to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of us to God through the cross. He came and preached peace to those who were far away and peace to those who were near, [so that] through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit?”

No, something more than the rational part of us is needed to account for the hope we find in this meal tonight. So let us light our lamps as we fraternize around his table. Come, let us adore him. And let us listen for wings overhead as if our life depends on it, which it does.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.