Christmas Eve
December 24, 2015
All month in Sunday School the Godly Play kids have been talking about how Advent is the time to get ready to enter the mystery of Christmas. During this season people can be so incredibly busy. Shopping and wrapping and cooking and going to parties. We get so busy that sometimes we miss the mystery of Christmas that is all around us, everywhere we go. For most of us, kids and adults alike, the last month of December is less an Advent preparation to enter the mystery and more a Countdown to Christmas. For me it went something like this:
* Advent Week 1, or 24 Days Until Christmas. It was the first Day School Chapel after Thanksgiving break. I was out in the entryway greeting the kids as they came in like I always do. That particular morning, the kids were a little more rambunctious than usual. Maybe they’d eaten too much pumpkin pie, maybe it was the weather, maybe they were just happy to be back with their friends. There was skipping and laughing and singing and even some dancing. As the teachers walked in with their kids, I kept hearing them trying to calm down the kids: “Shh, no skipping/no laughing/no singing/no dancing! This is church. It’s time to settle down and be on our best behavior.”
As I watched the kids turn more serious and walk into church, I started thinking about this mystery that we are preparing ourselves for. “Don’t be afraid!” the angels assured the shepherds. “We bring good news of great joy for all the people!” And the shepherds ran off with haste to see for themselves. I imagine them skipping, laughing, singing and dancing all the way to Bethlehem. And that seems like a pretty great way to get ready to enter the mystery. Maybe just as necessary sometimes as being serious and on our best behavior.
* Advent Week 2, or 18 Days Until Christmas. The next time I thought about the mystery of Christmas, it was because I was missing it. I was reading this enchanting Christmas book to the kids one night before bed. It tells the story we just heard in here tonight in a fairly traditional way. But every page has a scene that pops up and something you can move to unveil another scene underneath. Mary sweeps in her little room in Nazareth and when you pull a lever an an angel appears beside her, arms out in blessing, as Mary says “yes” to God. You can spin a wheel to make the angels fly over the shepherds’ clueless heads. You can open barn doors to reveal the Holy Family, Mary peacefully holding her newborn baby with a beatific smile. There’s even a gold satin ribbon to tie the book closed.
This book is one of those things I imagine myself someday showing my grandchildren. And so I worry about the fragile pages and the moving parts. I stow it carefully away most of the year and bring it out only for Christmas. And I try to protect the precious book from the kids’ curious and too-rough hands and get nervous when they want to turn the pages, touch the pop ups, pull and push and turn the moving pieces. And so as we read, rather than being thrilled that the kids were so engaged in the story and wanted to tell it for themselves, I kept sternly warning them to be careful and repeatedly encouraging them to be super gentle. “Whoops - Don’t pull that so hard!” “Oh no - that one is to turn, not pull!”
Only afterwards did it start me wondering how often we do that with the Christmas story. We bring it out only at the correct season. Treat it as fragile and try to protect it. Regulate what it means and how people should act around it. Try to keep it safely closed with a gold satin ribbon.
* Advent Week 3, or 10 Days Until Christmas. For the first decade or so of our marriage, Holden and I did a good job with Christmas cards. We wrote letters that talked about what our family was up to, chose just the right pictures. We even included handwritten notes at the bottom with many of our cards. But somewhere along the way I got burnt out on Christmas cards. The work of preparing and sending them began to outweigh the fun, and there’s just so much else to do during December. We dropped the letter enclosures a few years back and Holden took over the card creation. Those of you who know Holden will not be surprised to hear that detailed Excel spreadsheets are involved.
And so this year it was only when the box of cards arrived from Shutterfly that I saw them for the first time. Holden had beautifully arranged sweet pictures of the family. But the card proclaimed boldly, “Believe in the magic of Christmas!” I snorted. What does that even mean? It sounded like a cross between a Macy’s ad and the Polar Express theme.
It made me start thinking about what it is that we believe about Christmas. People throughout the ages have fought over the virgin birth, the particulars of the census, the origins of the magi. But what if all that really matters is the God-with-us part: God smack dab in the middle of our lives loving us. God encouraging us to live out that same love in our relationships with the people around us. God inviting us into the mystery.
Maybe next year I’m due to figure out the theme for our Christmas card. Who knows, maybe we’ll even bring back the letter.
* Advent Week 4, or 5 Days Until Christmas. On Sunday night we were gathered here for the pageant. I’d been thinking during the rehearsal about how sanitized the pageant script always seems. “Mary was engaged to be married to Joseph. She loved him very much and they were expecting a baby.” We gloss over the parts that make us feel uncomfortable. And so there is very little real fear from the characters even when angels suddenly loom before them. No one is exhausted despite their long journeys. The stable seems clean and neat without the filth and smell of animals. There is no pain and mess during childbirth, only a smiling doll baby that appears somewhat suddenly and very quietly in the manger.
But during the pageant itself, all of that slipped away from my mind as I watched the kids. I’ve watched most of them growing up over the years. Seen them graduate from little angel to head angel, from sheep to shepherd in those now-familiar costumes. Charlotte Costantino, who provided us with a professional piano prelude at the pageant, began her time at St. Aidan’s as the baby Jesus.
I smiled as the kids muscled through when a few lines were forgotten. I filled in the story for myself when lines were hard to hear. I laughed when one wayward sheep lost interest in her assigned shepherd and returned to her family, who pulled her up onto their laps with hugs and kisses. I watched curiously as a few other sheep spent most of the pageant playfully poking each other trying to make each other laugh. But my favorite pageant moment was when Herod/Sammy ended his angry jealous rant, found his cello and started playing a soulful introduction for our next hymn. This is the mystery of Christmas. Imperfect, surprising, forgiving, arms wide open, welcoming all of us in new ways at every stage of our journey.
* Christmas Eve, or 1 Day Until Christmas
This morning the kids and I were making the house festive to get ready to host my dad, stepmom and nephew for Christmas Eve dinner and church. Setting the table with little nutcracker nameplates, hanging snowflakes from the windows. Then I got a call from my stepmom that my dad had passed out and was in the hospital with an alarmingly low heart rate. (Let me fast forward to assure you that Dad is doing great and will almost certainly get to go home tomorrow.) But as I was driving to the hospital in Columbia to be with him, worried and tearful, I realized something. The mystery of Christmas is about so much more than just joy and hope. It is also about our God coming as a vulnerable baby and experienced pain and suffering and worry and fear and even death. And because of that we can be sure that our God is with us in our darkest moments too. We don’t usually talk about that on Christmas, but it is a very great mystery indeed.
So like I said, it is hard to do Advent right and way too easy to miss the mystery of Christmas. And yet, here we are, coming to the end of our Countdown to Christmas. Despite all the ways we ignore God, all the ways we get too busy to notice this amazing new thing that God has done, all the ways we forget to live into the promise and hope of Christmas, all the ways we aren’t in the slightest bit ready for this baby in the manger, here he is. God is with us, Emmanuel. God has brought about the Glorious Impossible. At the end of the day, we can never really be ready - it always catches us at least a bit by surprise.
So don’t be afraid! I bring you good news of great joy for all the people! On Christmas and for all time the child is born among us who has already begun to change everything. It isn’t too late to skip, laugh, sing, dance or even cry your way to Bethlehem! Amen.
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