A Messy Christmas & A Merry Christmas

Christmas has always been messy (from the first one till now).  I don’t know why we have “decorated” it in such a way as to cover up that messiness.  But, that’s what we do year after year, and often times with great success.  We’ve convinced ourselves that what is “real” (the messiness in our own lives, the lives of others, and the brokenness of our world) becomes “unreal” at Christmas time.  In doing so, we do an injustice to what is at the very heart of the season.

Howard Thurman, in “The Mood of Christmas,” writes:  “The symbol of Christmas—what is it?  It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding.  It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live.  It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life.  It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”

The clouds are heavy with foreboding in my world and yours. A worldwide pandemic exists. The cries of life are sounding.  We walk a crooked path over rough places.  Our hearts are tired and sad.  Our hopes are diminished.  The promise of tomorrow seems dismal.  Hate seems sturdier than love, wrong more confident than right,  evil more permanent than good.  To ignore this reality or to pretend it does not exist, makes the very message of Christmas meaningless.  It is the very “messiness of life” that gives Christmas meaning.  

A Promise Made--A Promise Kept

 We made the promise last January.  We would, we told Cher, finish the Quilt Book for her.   Cher had started it years ago in a loose-leaf notebook.  It contained her quilt designs and quilt photos.  She tried to finish the book last January, but could not.  That’s when we made the promise.

With the help of Paul, Rachel, and especially Luke (who pulled it all together for us), the promise made a year ago, has now been kept.  “Cherie’s Quilt Book:  All Things Bright and Beautiful” has been published.

Our promise made and kept reminds me of the Advent Promise, something I experienced, “breaking forth from the bud”, several years ago when we attended an Annual Christmas Concert at an Interfaith Center with our son, Paul, and his wife, Helen.

Hundreds of people were lined up waiting for the doors to open.  Hundreds of people filed into the auditorium filling every available seat.  “Three cheeks to a chair,” someone announced, so “everyone can have a place to sit” and the audience responded with laughter and three cheeks to a chair (COVID-19 was not a threat then). An orchestra of at least 40, a Children’s Choir of over 30, and an Adult Choir of nearly 100 were seated before us.  Above their heads a banner proclaimed:  “All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  

I looked at the program and noted the names representing many different nationalities and cultures:  Youstra, Scimonelli, Kim, Javadov, Onukwugna, Cueves, Ndekwu, and Williams.  I looked at the audience and saw the same wondrous thing.  There were people of many colors, ages and appearances.  Some in the audience were young, some were old, and some in-between.  What a mixture—people, some not so well off, others well-to-do (you can always tell)—all together in one place. This is God’s Promise, I thought, coming to fruition, “a friendly world of friendly folk beneath a friendly sky.”  This is the Promise of Advent (Emmanuel:  God with us), even now breaking forth from the bud.  

You see, only if Emmanuel is “born anew in us” can the Advent Promise be fulfilled—“All Faiths, All Ages, All Races, All Sexes.”  Only if Love becomes the norm, can the myriad pieces of humanity (colors, shapes, sizes—religions, lifestyles, politics, philosophies) be sewn together into a quilt.  The Promise was made—the Promise is kept (when we learn how to love one another in spite of our differences).

“Joy to the world! (we sang together that night) the Lord has come:  Let earth receive her King. Let every heart prepare him room, And heav’n and nature sing…”

Advent: If It Doesn't Happen Now--It Didn't Happen Then...

 I like the way Eugene Peterson speaks of Mary's annunciation in The Message: "You're beautiful with God's beauty. Beautiful inside and out!" We have to hear that before we can hear God say anything else. God loves us for what we are, who we are, and where we are. Don't ever doubt that!

Advent is about preparing, waiting, hoping, expecting, and praying that somehow God will come in some new way, not just to us personally, but to all people everywhere.  It is a time to look for a burning bush in the desert of life, for a pillar of cloud in the day, a pillar of fire in the darkness, a dream, or perhaps an annunciation.  Because God came once upon a time must mean that God can and will come now.  But how, when, where?  Will I be able to discern that coming?  Will I have eyes to see, ears to hear, mind to receive, and the sense to perceive such a coming?   How is God going to come this Advent?  How will Christ be born anew in me, in you, and in the world this Christmas?

Will some Gabriel come with an annunciation?  Does God have some special message for us?  Will we hear it  as Mary did or dream a dream as Joseph did?  Why not?  If it happened then it can happen now.   Now don’t get all disturbed, I doubt that God is going to announce that you are pregnant with child.  But God might very well announce that you are pregnant with love and that you have some special loving to do.  God might say you are pregnant with a word of hope you need to deliver to someone who is in doubt, pain, or crippled by difficulty.  God might say to me, “Hal, at 78-years-old, I’m not done with you.  I want your life to be wider and deeper than it is now.  I want you to see more, to learn more, to be more.  You have yet to become all that I mean for you to be.”  If it doesn’t happen now—it didn’t happen then!

Do you expect anything new to happen within you this Advent?  Do you anticipate God coming to you with an annunciation?  We’ve made the annunciations in the Christmas story so spiritual, religious, other-worldly, and angelic that most think it only happened then and will never happen again. If you don’t expect it to happen, don’t worry, it won’t happen.  Expect to hear, expect to dream some special dream—and maybe, just maybe—you will.  If it doesn’t happen now—it didn’t happen then!