This being the MotorCity, let's start with a pair of transportation tidbits. Several years ago, I told you that since the gospel makes nary a mention of camels, I was willing to speculate that the three kings drove to Bethlehem in a Honda. For tradition has it that "they were of one accord." But now I am able to offer an eyewitness report that Santa Claus (or his brother who dresses like him) drives an Audi ... a beige Audi ... a beige Audi wagon ... complete with a cell phone. For I followed Santa south on Southfield (from Lincoln to 13 Mile) at 1:15 on Friday afternoon. Full beard. Full suit. Hat on dashboard. Phone in ear. Going over his list. Checking it twice. So now you know. Mystery solved.

Would that we could have easily solved the one that has consumed our interest here for the last fortnight. Twelve days ago, I found this rectangle of green coreboard on my desk. For those of you who can't quite make it out, it has two hand-fashioned cones ... green cones ... connected to each other by wire. From the wire dangles a suspended ink cartridge. The lettering reads: "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me." So what is it? A cartridge in a pair of trees, of course.

On day four we got four boxes of children's candy marketed under the trade name "Nerds." Attached to each box were several pieces of pipe cleaner which looked like spidery legs. Giving us "four crawling Nerds," don't you see. Sometime on Friday, we got ten Jesuses mounted on an arched coat hanger ... as in "ten lords a-leaping." But my favorite is the one that came last Sunday morning, wrapped in a waterproof Ziplock bag. It was a block of ice in which could be found embedded five playing cards from a poker deck. Face cards. King cards. Get it? ... "five cold kings."

Every day, a different piece of the puzzle. Every day, a different part of the song. Every day, a different greeting in a different location. My office. Janet's office. Front office. Church kitchen. Men's room. Even the outside of my office windows, from which hang eleven Pampers (as in eleven diapers diaping). Did we get faster at solving the puzzles? You betcha. Did we get any closer to identifying the sender? Not a prayer. Until a couple of hours ago, when the mystery was solved. It was the Hook family.

Everybody loves a mystery. More to the point, everybody loves solving a mystery. "How did you do that?" the child asks the magician ... figuring if the magician would just move slower, or let the child get closer, the child could demystify the magic and be "let in" on the secret.

Most mysteries are solvable with observation and information. If we could just see a little more ... or read a little more ... we would "get it." If you play the game Clue long enough, and pay attention carefully enough, it will become obvious that it had to be ... simply had to be ... Colonel Mustard, in the drawing room, with the lead pipe.

And for the mysteries that ordinary methodologies of investigation can't solve, maturity comes to the rescue. Things you don't "get" now, you may "get" later. How many times were you told, as a child, that you were "too young to understand something"?

When I was a little boy, somebody told me about the pleasures of kissing a girl. "Yuk," I said (the word "gross" not having been invented yet). "Yuk, why would anyone want to kiss a girl?" I really didn't know. And no one could have told me in a way that would have made sense to me. More information would not have helped. A lecture by the older boys would not have helped. A book, supplied by my father, would not have helped. I had to grow into the answer. Which I did. Leading to "much gladness of heart" (as the prophet Isaiah once said).

But there are some mysteries that are not solvable with more information or more time. In fact, the more we see ... the more we know ... the longer the "seeing and knowing" goes on ... the deeper the mystery grows. Science is like that. One answer leads to 20 more questions. And 20 answers lead to 200 more questions.

The same being true for human beings. If I know you only in passing, it is easy to go home and tell my wife that I know all there is to know about you. I can characterize, categorize and capsulize you ... all after ten minutes. But if I spend ten hours ... ten days ... or ten years with you, I may have to go home and confess to Kris that I never really knew you at all. Because every time the world turns, the light hits the prism of your being and becomes refracted in wonderfully diverse and surprising ways. Which I do not have to tell Kris, because it is from Kris that I learned it first. That's because love is the ultimate mystery ... followed closely by the personality of the beloved. Ah, Krissy. So much to love. So much to learn.

God's love is like that. As is tonight's story of God's love. You know it. We've told it. There is not a piece of it which is new. Or strange. Or changed. In fact, where details of the story are concerned, there aren't many. And there are not enough speeches to fill a one act play ... even a five minute, one act play. So we take a few liberties and add a few embellishments. We stick in animals that weren't there. We create characters who weren't there. We write lines (sometimes, whole speeches) for the characters who weren't there. Because without them, the story seems too spartan ... too simple ... too severe.

Yet we keep coming back to places like this, on nights like this, to hear it and sing it ... over and over again. Because deep within us, we can't abide any thought that it might not be true ... or that God's gift might have every other name in the world on it but ours. As Peter Gomes once said: "What interests the populace is the mystery of the manger. But what interests the philosophers is the legacy of the mystery." Why does it last and grow? Why can't we let it go? Or why can't it let us go? Even the skeptic finds it hard to resist the magnetism of the manger on Christmas Eve. Or as George Santayana once said: "I believe that there is no God and that the Virgin Mary is his mother."

So what is the message? Is it that love comes down ... that God breaks in ... that light trumps the dark ... that holy things and common things can meet somewhere out back and coexist? It's all of that and more. It's that the world is an acceptable place for deity to do business ... and that human beings are acceptable creatures for deity to do business with. For if Easter is about the next life, then Christmas is about this one ... and that we shouldn't be in all that big a hurry to get from one to the other.

For if God can live here, so can we. Albeit differently than we have done so far. Because we've got a baby to take care of now. Whose name is Love. And it would be shame to drop it or walk away from it ... having seen what it looks like ... and having felt what it feels like.

Which is why Christmas, which begins with a visitation (God's), is ultimately about a transformation (ours). Peter Gomes returns to ask: "Have you ever noticed that most secular stories about Christmas are conversion stories?" Either somebody's heart is changed, or somebody's outlook is changed. We love reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol because, at the end, Ebenezer Scrooge finds that he need not be as cold and cruel as he was. And we love watching Frank Capra's It's A Wonderful Life because, at the end, George Bailey finds that his view of the world need not be as cold and cruel as it was. Leading Scrooge to come home to the Cratchit's and George Bailey to climb down from the bridge. And in a world that resigns itself to the mantra "The way things are is the way things are always going to be," we'll light a candle in any place ... on any night ... to any suggestion that the world (and we) could be different.

Earlier this morning (along about 11:35), one of you came into my office to tell me about your psychiatrist ... your highly-credentialed and widely-acclaimed psychiatrist ... your highly-credentialed and widely-acclaimed Jewish psychiatrist. And you told me that in your most recent session, the subject of church had come up ... this church ... our church. To which your Jewish psychiatrist said:

Ah yes, that church. I went to a funeral at that church recently. And I couldn't get over it. It was an incredible experience. The preaching. The music. The way everybody treated the family ... treated each other ... treated the outsiders. In fact, I came back and said to my administrative assistant: "You know, if it wasn't for that Jesus thing, I'd join that church in a minute."

I ask you, my friends, could it be ... I mean, could it possibly be ... that if it wasn't for "that Jesus thing," he might never have heard what he heard, saw what he saw, or felt what he felt on one of the sadder Saturdays of his (or anybody's) life?

Christmas Eve, 2000. My 60th, personally. My 36th, professionally. Colder than most. Whiter than most. Busier than most. Yet softer and sweeter than most ... even though Julie got here late and Lauren got here early.

Julie is my 26-year-old daughter who got stranded for an extra day in Newark. But at the darkest hour (when what seemed like her last, best hope as a "stand-by" had gone by), Kris (my wife of 34-1/2 years) went on the Web and got her out. And Mesaba, flying out of White Plains, got her home. Whereupon we all went to see Lauren Elyse ... my nephew's first ... taken a few weeks short of her due date by a C-section on Friday (because of some conditions that were threatening the well-being of her mother). For at 1:01 Friday afternoon, Lauren Elyse became the first birth on the Ritter side in 26 years. Which I know because Julie ... my Julie ... was the last. In between, far too many people have died. But we've reversed the flow now. Or somebody has. Praise God.

Soon this night will be spent ... you will be gone ... and I will be home. It will be time to relax ... repair ... relish ... and remember. Along with a little soup and bread ... or, more to the point, a little bisque and baguette. But I suspect that when I finally kill the lights, bank the fire and wend my way to bed, it will occur to me that I have been loved by two beside me ... .you around me ... and the Lord above me.

Which is a mystery I can't explain. But which is the mystery that explains me.