Christmas Eve - SERMON

“Across the River from the Capital” from A Northern Nativity.

Painting by William Kurelek

Christmas Eve  December 24, 2025

About two weeks ago, I received a phone call from Wilmer, a Filipino priest at St. Michaels in Vancouver. I was in the middle of attending a book study, and later I called him. He asked me if I could visit a person at a care home. It turned out that I already knew this person. His name was Sam.

Sam served at St. Michaels as a building manager for a long time and just moved to a care home in Abbotsford back then. He came to our church with his nephew maybe once or twice, and then he disappeared. At first, I thought he was asking me to make a pastoral visit around holiday. When two non-native speakers talk on the phone, sometimes, it takes more time to figure things out.

As I was trying to figure out what was going on, to make a confession, part of me wrestled with questions “why me, why now.”  I was already juggling many things, small tasks here and there, year-end responsibilities, preparation for Christmas, and feeling worn down. So when I thought he was asking me to check on him, I had a moment of sigh inwardly, “okay, another thing to do on the piled-up list”.

Then soon later, I learned that Sam was not well and probably dying. I told him I would go to see him and asked him to give my number to Sam’s nephew. A few days later, having noticed that Sam’s nephew didn’t call, I called Wilmer back and asked if he gave my number. He said he did, and Sam’s nephew called me, but I did not get a phone call. They probably got the number wrong and I asked the nephew’s number and called him. Then I went to see Sam right away.

Sam’s nephew and his wife were away for lunch, and they said the staff were aware of my coming. When I entered the room, Sam was on the bed. I barely recognized him. He lay motionless on the bed, breathing shallow, his eyes unfocused, and his mouth wide open. I don’t have much medical knowledge myself, but I could tell he was nearing the end.

It was not the first time when I was with a dying person, but this time, something was different.  I sat next to him and held his hands. There was a silence in the room, silence in my heart. There was a sense of peace, welcoming in the room, as if a voice was inviting me assuring, “it is okay to rest here”.

Before I began the prayer, I said softly, “Sam, everything is going to be okay.” And probably it was not just for him, bur for myself as well. I opened the book of alternative services and prayed the rite for the dying. Then in the middle of the prayer, as I pray psalm 23, I held his hand to let him know that he was not alone and he was not going to be alone.

As I finished the prayer, I marked a cross on his forehead, and I don’t know why, but I gently stroked his head a few times. And I sat with him for a while.

Then Sam’s nephew and his wife came in. They arrived early but they waited for us to finish the prayer. He thanked me and said it would mean so much to Sam, since he was expecting for a priest to come and pray. I told him it meant a lot for me as well, and I would continue to pray for Sam.

The next day, I heard from Wilmer that he passed away. As I reflect on that moment, I felt both deeply humbled and strangely at peace. Humbled by my earlier reluctance by how quickly I had sighed at being asked to serve. But it was a moment of sacred witnessing God being with us and connecting with another human being as they are most vulnerable and stripped from everything they owned or claimed. It helped me to be. Simply be with another being. At the moment, there were no resistance, pretense, any other purpose other than just be together.

During this Advent, I participated in our Advent formation program, “conversation with art”. At the second session, we looked at a Canadian artist, William Kurelek ’s painting, from his book “A Northern Nativity”. In this painting, on the background at the top, majestic city buildings glow from a far, while in the foreground, on the snowy riverbank beneath bare trees, a man lies in a sleeping bag.

Beside him, Mary and the newborn Jesus with no sign of protection, decoration, or glory sitting next to him on the same ground of winter snow. And this little baby Jesus reaches out with his small hand to this person. As if to say, “I see you, I am with you.”

As I think of the meaning of Christmas, the moment when I was with Sam, and the image of baby Jesus on the bare ground touching a homeless man overlapped in my heart. It is on the utterly opposite ends, but in a way, I see a parallel between these two moments. Both reveal God meeting humanity at the threshold between life and death, between heaven and earth.

In one scene, life just entering this world from the mystery of God’s realm. In another scene, life gently returns home to the Father. A birth that is destined to be given up through death to show God’ unconditional love. A death that is guided toward a new life to reveal God’s everlasting love.

At both thresholds, all external possessions do not mean anything. No one, even God cannot help but just exist as pure being. There is no power, no protection, no mask, but just be. Yet, in this moment of merely being, there is such an undeniable power of being, which makes the witness at the scene unguarded, drawn into liminal space. We remember how we are meant to be with one another, and it happens simply by simply gazing, touching, holding.

In this light, it makes sense why the Son of God came to us as a baby. Not in a heroic, overpowering extraordinary figure just as many other mystics describe their version of the appearance of a savior.

Our God did not want to be different from us. Our God wanted to remind us that we are like God. We are beings just as God is being. A being that does not exist as an isolate, abstract entity, but a being that exists through other beings, dancing with each other, fully alive only in relationships with other beings. A being that is hungry for touching, being touched, seeing and being seen.

Jewish philosopher and writer, Emmanuel Levinas wrote about the ethical power of “the face of the other”. In the vulnerable, defenseless bare face of another person lies a commandment deeper than words: “You shall not kill, you shall not harm”, while challenging us to move out of self-centeredness. But in the light of Christ, this commandment echoes even further. As we truly encounter the other’s radical existence, we hear the message imbedded in God’s creation, “You shall love, you shall be with”.

It is not enough not to dominate over others, not to destroy others. We are given responsibility to care, to nourish, so that the other will fully bloom their being as they are loved, and we ourselves will also fully bloom our beings as we love them.

As I wish and pray for each one of you here to see yourself, others, and the world in the light of Christ, I would like to conclude my message with a quote from William Kurelek’s book.

Fr. James