Advent is a season of waiting, of anticipation. It is the season of light and shadows, all at once. It is an intentional pause at the threshold before we step into the season of Christmas. We don’t pause simply to be curmudgeonly or to prove a point about how spiritual we are. We pause because we acknowledge that so much of our life is spent in liminal or transitional spaces. We spend so much of our lives waiting—waiting for that family member to return home, awaiting a new birth, awaiting a call from a doctor, waiting for the world to be safe and just and loving. We know the taste of waiting, just as the people of God awaited the arrival of the Messiah.

But on Christmas Eve, we come together to count down the last few hours. Just like when we were kids, faces pinned to the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa’s sleigh. But here, we press our faces to the gently frosted windows of heaven, trying to catch a glimpse of the One who Restores and Heals. This Jesus, who doesn’t fly in a magical sleigh, but who upends our carefully curated notions in favor of building a world that is bursting with hope, peace, joy, and love. This Jesus who calls us on to a life of love is the same one who is born under the eye of an empire committed to money, conquest, and status quo.

So we gather, and we sing the songs we have song for generations, and we hear the story told for over two thousand years. We sing in the darkness broken only by candlelight. We remember that not all darkness is bad for sometimes it is the dark of the womb, preparing to bring forth the life and light of all the world.

CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES

We will gather this Christmas Eve at 4:00pm and at 8:00pm to welcome this Jesus, who has already come and who is coming again.

The services are both the same, we only livestream the 4:00pm service.

CHRISTMAS DAY – No worship service

While there is no worship on Christmas Day, we invite you to download this liturgy so you can worship at home. No matter when you worship, we hope this liturgy helps you create a joyful and gratitude-filled worship experience for this holy season.