Christmas Eve 2012

I just wanted to share a few reflections from our service last night.

Somehow the church always seems too bright when we start Christmas Eve -- we know we're going to candles eventually, but I keep thinking about trying to put the baby to sleep.  On the other hand, we're celebrating the Light of the World, so I want the place ablaze with candles.  And the musicians need light to see the music  and the congregants need light to read and sing...so, light it is. 

I looked out and saw a family who used to be very active in the congregation but who only come on Christmas and Easter and when their daughter is doing Something Big in the service.  The mom's mother tells me that her daughter thinks the music is too depressing,  in minor keys and draggy.  And I realize, as I'm listening to the Christmas music (which one might expect to be upbeat and joyful), that even THAT tends to be in minor keys and less than hand-clappin', toe-tappin' stuff.  Part of it, I know, is to capture the mystery and sense of wonder at Christmas; part of it is also, I think, a reflection of the fact that we live in the not-yet, the time between times.  The Savior of the World has come (Joy to the World!) but there is still great brokenness in the world (Oh ye, beneath life's crushing load, whose forms are bending low...).  Our music often reflects that conflict between joy at the initiation of the promise and longing for the fulfillment, and often lament frees us to praise.  But maybe we ought to be a little more focused on trusting our joy than reflecting our woes.

I looked out and saw our congregation -- native-born and immigrants, folks of a broad ethnic diversity; folks who work with their hands and folks who are strictly white-collar;  some strangers whom we have not seen before, who we may not see again; the new family who have been part of our congregation since the mid-summer; the three folks we baptized the day before; the man who lives on the streets by choice as he battles drug and alcohol addictions; the woman who's overcome nearly fatal depression and her own addictions; the man who struggles with mental health issues; the single mother who's at her wit's end and the folks who are facing their life's end.  There were the young adults home from college and the young man who moves half-way across the country this week to start his adult life.  He's an only child, and though he's been away at school for four years I know that this move will be different for his parents.  I saw the faithful saints who are there every Sunday and the folks who are there under duress and family pressure "just for Christmas, please..."  And together we sang of good news, glad tidings of great joy for all people.  I always emphasize and repeat it:  for ALL people.  

I preached on a Zombie Christmas.  Honest.  I talked about the difference between "making Christmas" according to our somewhat mindless cultural standards and taking the time to accept what Christmas wants to give us; about the difference between being the walking dead, what T.S. Elliot called "the hollow men" and those who are truly alive, even in the struggles of life. Quoted my dear friend Peg, whose mantra these past few weeks has been "Darkness does not win."  Repeated it again at the end of the service to the family who are celebrating their first Christmas since their grandson/nephew died of an overdose last spring; to the woman whose husband is sinking into dementia; to the family who are living on the edge of poverty but whom we were able to help a little so that their daughter could celebrate a modest Christmas. 

The choir sang "Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence" (longing) and "Sing Joy to the World" (hope).  We lit candles to sing Silent Night and made a circle around the sanctuary (a double circle on one side of the sanctuary!) and went out into the night, the luminarias on the front sidewalk still glowing dimly in the cold.  Some went out in hope, some went out with longing; all went out under a blessing.

When I was little, on Christmas Eve, I would look through the narrow strip of sky between my bedroom and the Cain's house next door and would try to find the brightest star in the sky, and wonder if that was the same star that had shone over the stable in Bethlehem.  Last night in Massachusetts the sky was cloudy, and just before midnight a soft snow started falling, muffling the sounds of party-goers leaving the neighborhood for their own homes.  But there was light all around, light infused with love, light reminding me that darkness does not win.  The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it nor overcome it.

Christmas in Real Time

 It occurred to me this morning that all of those Christmas specials you see on tv, all those shows that want to help you decorate, cook, celebrate in a way worthy of a magazine spread seem to take place in some unknown time and place where people have nothing better to do than print their own wrapping paper (with a potato stamp they carved themselves), bake traditional foods from every ethnic heritage (from scratch), knit elaborate sweaters from wool that they shear, card, spin and dye themselves, and then host their nearest and dearest 700 friends for an open house.  Really? 

In my world Christmas preparations take place in the midst of preparations for the congregation’s Christmas, trying to make some sort of order in the house (at least keeping a pathway to the door if we need to flee in the middle of the night!), eating on the fly, and trying to shop, wrap, bake, etc. whenever and however I can.  Some years we throw in a funeral or surgery just for fun.

There is a tendency for the cultural representations of “perfect” Christmases to make us feel inadequate in our preparations; to feel disappointed when there is a disagreement at the dinner table or someone isn’t enchanted by the gift we’ve given them.  Since I usually wound up getting scolded by the end of the day as a child (the combination of excitement and sugar being too much for my brother and me to handle) I remember going to bed and thinking, “Christmas should be happy.  I am NOT happy.” 

As I write this I am NOT happy.  I’m in a bit of a snit because Christmas will not be what I had hoped for, and this is what really reminds me that our cultural Christmas will NEVER truly be a celebration of the mystery of God-With-Us.  Oh, they may overlap.  But we don’t want dirty shepherds and stinky stables in our shiny bright, holly jolly Christmas.  We don’t want a young woman, barely more than a girl, giving birth – birth is messy and painful and dangerous.  We certainly don’t want to think about God coming to people sleeping in barns or under highway bridges or in tents by the river.  There is very little room in our Christmas for many of the players at that first Christmas. 

Some of you are old enough to remember “Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol”, an animated version of the Dicken’s classic with a Magoo twist.  One of the songs from that show that has always stuck with me talks about having a Christmas that celebrates “as long as we’re together heart and hand…we’ll have a Christmas far more glorious than grand.”  The prophet Isaiah promises that “The glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.” I wonder if our efforts to make Christmas a grand affair don’t blind us to the glory of God in the very human Jesus, whose flesh was hurt by the things that hurt our flesh, whose heart was broken by the things that break the heart of God.

It’s hard to avoid being sentimental.  And it’s important to remember that people had meaningful, joyous celebrations of Christmas before Handel wrote the Messiah, the mice ate the bellows of Franz Gruber’s organ, Queen Victoria had a tree cut down and hauled into the palace or Hallmark printed a single card.  Our Christmases happen in real time.  They are full of stress, anxiety, disappointment and there are things that just don’t get done.  That’s okay.  Enjoy the cultural Christmas, but don’t let it distract you from the Real Christmas (more than just a candle-light service!) and for heaven’s sake, don’t confuse the two!  The Real Christmas was not about children and sweetness or even "pretty".  It was about the Child, about mystery and wonder and absurdity; about the kind of love that never lets go, that gives Itself; about making the very people we despise, the things we over-look Holy.  And when we think about that kind of love embracing us, when we let it sink into our bones and infuse our lives we will have a Christmas far more glorious than grand. 

Advent Blues...and Purples

I LOVE Advent.  This is difficult because the majority of people in Baptist churches (even lefty-leaning, theologically questionable, touchy-feeling American Baptist Churches like ours) respond to this statement with "What's an Advent?"

Advent is the period of time that begins four Sundays before Christmas (NOT on December 1, unless that happens to be the fourth Sunday before Christmas) and goes through Christmas Eve.  Advent is very old in liturgical traditions -  hence unknown to, and suspected by, the majority of Baptists.  I had never even heard of it until I was in college, and in many congregations it is something "new" that the current pastor, or the one just past, introduced.  The practice of lighting an Advent wreath is pretty generally accepted because it's pretty and it gives us the chance to work the children into the service in another way.  But try to practice Advent as a penitential season; try to avoid singing Christmas carols throughout the month or refuse to put out the pointsettias until December 24, and you will have some mighty unhappy Baptists on your hands.

I have fought this battle nearly every year of my ministry.  I love Advent because for me it is the perfect counterpoint to the craziness of the cultural Christmas.  It is an empty, quiet, restful place in a world of overloaded calendars, bright lights, and chicken fights over the last parking space at the mall.  I love the hymns set to plainsong and sung in minor keys in contrast to chipmunks  and fifty-seven versions of "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree"... Okay... I love the chipmunk song.  But not in church.

But most of my congregation want Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World all month long.  I try to convince them that Advent will help us prepare for Christmas and that Christmas is a season and not a day and we WILL sing ALL of the Christmas songs in the hymnal in CHRISTMAS...but most of them won't be there for the Sundays of Christmas.  They will take off the Sunday between Christmas and New Year because, after all they were already in church twice this week, and there's company coming (or they're traveling) and the week after New Year's we may already be celebrating Epiphany.  So they do miss singing those songs.

I saw an opinion piece in a professional magazine a while back that argued that pastors should just forget about Advent.  If people are not regular church goers, they're coming to church for Christmas this time of year.  If we don't give them Christmas they'll be disappointed and won't return.  They'll go to the mall or a restaurant where they know they will find it (at least they'll find the Christmas they think they want).  For pastors there's always a fine balancing line between giving people what they want and what you believe God wants they to hear.

This past Sunday the gospel quoted a passage from Isaiah 40, a passage that we often see in its original setting and in the gospels in reference to John the Baptizer:

A voice is crying out:  
"Clear the Lord's way in the desert!
Make a level highway in the wilderness for our God!
Every valley will be raised up,
 and every mountain and hill will be flattened.
Uneven ground will become level, and rough terrain a valley plain.
The Lord's glory will appear, and all humanity will see it together; 
the Lord's mouth has commanded it." (Isaiah 40:3-5, Common English Bible)

It occurs to me that this passage has a powerful message.  It is not "just" in the Incarnation (that's theological talk for "Christmas") that God's glory is revealed, but in our preparations that the glory of the Lord is revealed to all humanity, to all flesh.

Yet I wonder,  how much of our Christmas celebration (even in the Church) is about festivities rather than faith?  How much of it is about glitz rather than joy?  I'm always a little confused by those home decorating shows that talk about deciding what your Christmas "theme" will be.  The theme is Christmas:  what more do you want? The really important question is how do your preparations make room for the glory of the Lord?  How do they invite ALL flesh to experience it, to see it?

It's not so much that "They" are trying to steal "Our" Christmas (don't get me started on that little bit of hysterical paranoia) as much as it is that we have decided we can hand over the mystery of Incarnation to merchants and party planners without losing or at least diminishing the extraordinary scandal of God-with-us, God-as-one-of-us.

It is a grave mistake to confuse any of the pagan practices we've adopted (lights, trees) or European traditions that developed (carols) or were "re-purposed" (in most of Christian history gifts were given on Epiphany in imitation of the Magi or on the feast of the generous St. Nicholas, NOT at Christmas) with the celebration of the Incarnation.  And quite honestly, I personally don't have a problem with letting our winter holiday carry all the trappings of a "traditional", i.e., 200 year old, Christmas celebration even if the people celebrating haven't got a clue about what sparked the party.  Most Christians don't really think about that either.

It's about the Baby and more.  It's about the flesh.  It's about Word made flesh, and how we treat the flesh of others around us, flesh made holy by the One who is Holy.  It's about God's refusal to overpower us but to come to us in our own greatest vulnerability.  How does insisting strangers wish me "Merry Christmas" reflect that truth?

For me, Advent helps me remember that perspective, helps me think about the real reason that Christmas is worth celebrating.  And this year Advent has helped me understand that I don't always need to get my own way.  So this year we are singing Christmas songs all through Advent, though I'm choosing them carefully and framing them in a particular context.    We are using them transitionally and prayerfully, and I'm trying to pick those that reflect the whole story of Incarnation (and maybe even a hint of penitence),  like one of my favorites from childhood:

Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown 
When Thou camest to earth for me,
But in Bethlehem's home there was found no room, for thy holy nativity.  
O Come to my heart, Lord Jesus:  There is room in my heart for Thee.

Thou camest, O Lord, with the living word That should set Thy people free,
But with mocking scorn and with crown of thorn They bore Thee to Calvary.
O come to my heart, Lord Jesus:  There is room in my heart for Thee!