Friday, December 23, 2022

Christmas Eve 2022

Christmas Eve   2022  Memories of Frank and Missy McClain

“How pretty the paper, the lights and the snow/How precious those memories of long long ago”

-John Prine

There was a time in my life when every Christmas my mother would give me the new John Prine album. John grew up in her neighborhood, and just a couple of miles from where I did. John is correct in linking Christmas with memories. Which is, of course, the basis of nearly all Christian liturgy: “do this in remembrance of me,” we say, twice a week, week after week. Christmas is no exception

 

Which explains why every Christmas and Easter I wear this old, well-worn, somewhat tattered white stole. It’s for the memories it carries from long long ago. For it was just before Christmas, the year 2000, when I learned that my first rector and mentor, Frank M. McClain, had died suddenly in Charleston, South Carolina, where he and his wife Missy had retired after his tenure as rector of Christ Church, Winnetka, IL where I was a curate fresh out of seminary. I took a train from Baltimore to Charleston to be with the family at Frank’s funeral. Before going to the church, we stopped at the funeral home for Missy and their three daughters, Rebecca, Mary Lee and Kate, to say their goodbyes before closing the casket. Frank was dressed in the vestments in which he had been ordained a priest. After everyone had had a moment with Frank, Missy suddenly raced back to the casket, nearly dove in, head first. When out she came, like the old table-cloth trick, she pulled out his ordination stole, gently folded it, walked over and presented it to me, saying, “The girls and I want you to have this.” I was overwhelmed to have this precious stole which Frank had worn through decades of parish ministry, a tangible reminder of the man who taught me nearly all I know about parish ministry. I wore it that Christmas when I got back to Ellicott City, and have done so ever since. Just a week to the day before Frank died, two weeks ago, Missy left to join him.

 

An even longer ago memory of Frank was that first Christmas I was a priest, 1983, when Frank scheduled me to celebrate the Holy Eucharist at the late Christmas Eve service in the Church on Sheridan Road. Frank preached what to this day remains my most favorite and perfect Christmas sermon. I asked him for a copy, here is what he said:

 

“Can you remember those days of budding sophistication when you began to doubt Santa Claus? Probably you had been challenged by older, more worldly-wise friends. There was, you recall, one last fleeting moment of wanting to believe, and yet wanting to test reality.

 

“That year for me, as a late developer, I determined not to tell anybody what I “wanted for Christmas” – until I sent the letter up the chimney. (We still had fires and fireplaces in those days.) Believe me, I told no one and I decided to “want” the most outlandish item that no one could imagine – not a chemistry set to make bombs (that came later); - not a Monopoly board (I’m getting one this year from myself with English street names and utilities and railroads). I asked for a motion picture projector and some films, this in the days of silent pictures.

 

“How it ever happened has never been explained, because no one in all honesty knew how it happened. But, there under the tree on Christmas morning was a motion picture projector, with a film of Mickey Mouse, and some jerky, sepia-colored scenes of Venice, San Marco’s, pigeons, gondolas, and all. I’ve never wanted to go to Venice since, needless to say.

 

“It was a day of mixed emotions.

           

“First of all, there was stunned surprise. Was it really true that this wonderful gift was mine? There was, as well, a kind of embarrassment, not knowing what to do with such a great treasure. Embarrassment, too, because it was the height of the depression; I had a fleeting suspicion of what the gift had cost and that it really hadn’t come from the North Pole.

 

“But there was also a welling up of unutterable joy and gratitude, - which appears to have lasted because here that Christmas morning is swirling up out of unconscious memory over a half century later.

 

“Each of you can test that same experience tomorrow. Surprise, embarrassment, or some similar word, joy and gratitude.

 

“The special gift you receive will be a surprise. You will gasp. You will draw in your breath. Ahhh. The diamond like in the DeBeers advertisement, the scarf carefully knitted by a six-year old, the box of bitter chocolate wafers you never expected to see again, a letter of gratitude which arrived this very morning from someone who had found strength and spiritual help at Christ Church who no longer lives here.

 

“Then, is it embarrassment or a sense of unworthiness? Why me” How much effort and skill went into that six-year old’s green and red and orange knitted scarf? How many hours of research and looking went into that out-of-print edition of Emily Dickinson’s poems! Why all this for me?

 

“But finally, joy and gratitude! It is as if those tight bands about the heart (which most of us know) are unloosed. There may even be a tear or two. I hope there will be at least a hug, of genuine, warming, bear-type quality. And a final deep breathing sigh of utter completion. It will be of the kind of fulfillment which allows a new beginning, facing the afternoon of Christmas Day or the twelve months ahead of newly invigorated life.

 

“Christmas, we have often emphasized, has been a time of giving. The letters that come in the mail, stack upon stack of them, tend to underline those words of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” This is recorded in the Book of Acts and not in the Gospels.[i] That of course is true – and yet, never forget it, Christmas is also a time to receive a gift, a wonderful truth.

 

“We will each of us receive some special gift tomorrow from someone who loves us. More wonderful even, we will each of us, singly and together, receive a gift from someone who loves us even more, from God.

 

“In any of our lives there is a manger, now doubtless empty, cold, malodorous, surrounded by beasts – the heartbreaks, tragedies, disappointments of our lives. But it is there that you will find the child, new born, if you will look on him and be open to receive God’s gift.

 

“It can come to you this Christmas, that gift, that birth within you of the Christ Child, when you become aware of and touch, perhaps only fleetingly, the whole and complete person God intended you to be, that God intends you to be. It can happen here, at this present Bethlehem, this Holy Table, when and where you receive tangible evidence, symbols of bread and wine, God’s Body and Blood, God’s Life.

 

“As in receiving any real gift, your response will be astonishment, humility (Why me?), and deep, restorative joy – to which you can only say Gratia, Thank You, Eucharisto, Grace!

 

“Be open tonight to receive that gift, open-handed, offering nothing but your need, your empty manger. Centuries of experience assure you that God’s gift is being offered, God’s Son, born within you. Arise and go out into the world with astonishment, with humility, with joy. Respond in whatever language you may know. Thank You, Eucharisto, Gratia. Your gratitude will show forth – and – a Merry Christmas!”

 

So, that’s why I wear this well-worn, somewhat tattered white stole. And why I re-read Frank’s words every Christmas: for the memories, and to remind me of the gift that makes me who it is God intends for me to be.

 

One other Christmas ritual for me is to end each Christmas proclamation with the immortal words of Charles Dickens’s Tiny Tim Cratchit, God bless us every one! [ii]

   



[i] Acts 20:35

[ii] Tiny Tim Cratchit in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, added by this curate and scribe.


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