|
|
Minutes of Meetings with God |
 |
|
Bah! Humbug!!! |
||
| Christmas? Bah! Humbug!
That sounds too much like Scrooge and not enough like me. But ... I am not in the mood for Christmas ... at least not the "Jolly Old Saint Nicholas" kind of Christmas that we (including me) tend to gear up for every year. I don't think that it's just my annual case of "holiday blues" kicking in ... although that is part of it. Nope. Too many troublesome and really hard things have been happening to too many people I know and care about for me to get very excited about lights, decorations and giving and getting presents. The stuff that has been going on in the lives of people around me has been the kinds of things that rub my nose in my humanity ... that force me to think about my mortality ... that remind me of the basic uncertainty of my life ... and, that delivers hard lessons about how terribly sad and how deeply painful life can get real fast. What kinds of stuff could bring on such dark thoughts ??? Well , it's stuff that makes a broken leg seem like "no problem". It's folks getting a divorce after a couple of kids and a couple of decades together. It's women facing sexual harassment on the job. It's folks in life or death struggles with heart and lung disorders. It's folks dying from brain tumors and meningitis. It's parents and grandparents living through the sudden and untimely deaths of children and grandchildren. It's ... it's ... it's ... just dark, heavy, hard stuff. And, like I said before, it's not happening to me, but to people around me that I care about. If it's hard for me to watch what these dear people are going through ... then how hard it must be for those who are going through it themselves? Anyway ... the Christmas lights, and so on, really aren't doing much to help me deal with this hovering darkness. The glitter and the anticipation of giving as well as getting gifts aren't doing much to help me make sense out of what I see going on around me. I am needing something more than "merry" and more than eye-catching and cute. Somehow, "Christmas-as-usual" just won't cut it this year ... it seems too superficial ... too much like a futile kind of escapism. I need a Christmas that will speak to my condition ... my mortality ... my uncertainty ... my sadness ... my pain. I think that I need a very Biblical Christmas. And I am beginning to realize that a Biblical Christmas is very different from what I used to think it was. The Biblical Christmas, the first Christmas, like today, was a time of hovering darkness. As bad as our world sometimes seems to be, it is not nearly so bad as that world almost 2000 years ago. Then, most children died before the age of five ... anyone who reached the age of 30 was considered to have lived a very long time. When a person got sick, most often that person died. Political enemies ... Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians, and others ... kept every day life in constant turmoil for everybody (from the rich to the poor) and people were killed for almost no reason at all if it seemed expedient, or just fun. There were no ways to deal with common ailments and injuries that we think almost nothing of today ... folks just suffered day in and day out. Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, described the people of his day as "... them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death ... (Luke 1: 79)." Darkness and the shadow of death were the setting for the Biblical Christmas ... an event that was totally unanticipated by everyone on Earth. Turmoil and upheaval even touched what would be Jesus' most immediate family ... because of her unexpected pregnancy, Joseph had decided to "put Mary away quietly (Matthew 1: 19)" ... he was going to "bail-out" of his relationship with his would-be wife, but changed his mind at the last minute. God arrived on the scene to be the Light in the darkness and the Victor over death ... but God arrived swathed in what the Church used to call "Mystery". God came in the least expected shape and in the most unexpected place. God showed up as a little infant born in what was basically a barn. A homeless child with questionable parentage ... what a puzzling and completely inauspicious beginning to the redemption of all humanity ... God came in the form of new human life to begin totally re-creating everything that is.The Divine One sacrificed the Cosmic trappings of all powerful deity and became Emmanuel ... "God With Us." What a profound lesson in the act of God's coming ... God so loved the world that He gave up everything to be totally with us in our humanity and to be totally for us in his servanthood. Emmanuel taught his first lessons of love by giving others the opportunity to love him ... by arriving in a form that reveals humanity's desperate need for love ... the form of the totally defenseless newborn. Emmanuel taught his first lessons of faith and trust by literally casting himself into the hands of an adolescent girl ... counting on that inexperienced, uncertain human to "do the right thing" in taking care of him. Emmanuel taught his first lessons about seeking and finding "The One Who Loves Us" in the least expected forms and the most unexpected places by leading the shepherds and the Magi to himself. Actions speak ever so much louder than words. The Biblical Christmas, the first Christmas speaks powerfully to the human condition and to my personal condition ... not because of the choral messages of angelic hosts ... not because of the words said by archangels in visions and dreams ... not even because of the virgin birth ... but because of the act of God in coming here to be like you and me! The Biblical Christmas makes it clear, in no uncertain terms, that God is not some distant cosmic entity ... God is up close and personal ... Emmanuel. So God has intimate knowledge and keen understanding of my condition ... my mortality ... my uncertainty ... my sadness ... my pain ... because Emmanuel has in some ultimately puzzling and mysterious way been human like me. Emmanuel is somehow saving me ... wiping the tears from my eyes ... making me a citizen of His Blessed Kingdom. Now, I need to fix a set of Christmas tree lights . |