Christmas Reality

The Advent/Christmas season comes again with its good news and its bad news and neither the good or the bad news is fake news.  Both the good news and the bad news happen simultaneously and sometimes seems to be magnified at this time of year. It is a fact.  Good news and bad news are realities in our world all the time.  We can’t cover up the bad news with some kind of sentimental wishy-washy Christmas spirit.  Neither can we cover up the good news with a spirit of despair.  The best we can do, if we are honest, is to accept Charles Dickens’ famous words in A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was an age of wisdom, it was an age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”  It would be hypocritical for us, even in this season of Advent/Christmas, to suggest that this is not true of our time—and it is sheer ignorance if we were to suggest that somehow this wasn’t true in some other time or in some Christmas past.

This reality of “the best of times, the worst of times” has always been.  It is recorded in the Christmas narrative in the gospels according to Matthew and Luke.  There we read of the annunciation to Mary, the struggle and turmoil of Joseph’s acceptance, the birth of Jesus in a smelly stable because there was no room in the inn.  There we have the shepherds hearing and heeding the voices of angels—searching for and finding the child.  There we have the wise people following a star.  There, in that first Christmas, we have a graphic description of the despotic King Herod with all his power, ego, and lunacy—forcing the wise people to depart another way, and causing Joseph and Mary and the babe to flee into Egypt.  There in that story we are told of the massacre of the babies of Bethlehem, and of Rachel weeping for her children who are no more.  The Good News:  Emmanuel—God is with us.  The Bad News:  Herods still reign and Rachels still cry.

"And the angel said to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid, I have good news for you:  there is great joy coming to the whole people,” and I ask:  Where is the good news?  Where is the great joy?  The Good News, the Joy, the Hope is here and it is there—it is always here, always there, in the midst of the bad, the sad, the struggle, and the despair:

“And ye, beneath Life’s crushing load, whose forms are bending low,

who toil along the climbing way with painful steps and slow,

look now! for glad and golden hours come swiftly on the wing.  

O rest beside the weary road, and hear the angels sing!”