I missed Christmas this year. I didn't get snowed in, and December 25th rolled around the same as it always does, but something was missing for me. There was no Christmas story, no angels, no good tidings of great joy.
We packed so much into Christmas that Christmas was missed. After last year, in which I led worship two days in a row (and changed the altar cloths from Advent Blue to Festival White) and woke up at 3am to take a friend to the airport, something was missing. I missed the children's sermon with the bubble soap on the hay, I missed the shepherds and the angels and the songs and the candles and the silent night... I missed leading worship.
I missed inviting people to come look at the manger with me to see the complete absurdity of God. I think I missed the absurdity of God this year. I didn't want to go to a church where someone would undo the mystery for me, telling me this is the only way that made sense for God to come to us... I didn't want to go and hear about how Baby Jesus never cried or soiled himself...
I wanted to sit in the background and listen to Mary rock Jesus to sleep. I wanted to watch as Joseph turned his head so that people wouldn't see him tearing up as he watched his son scream his way into existence. I wanted to watch as the shepherds looked around, wondering to whom the angels were speaking and why God wouldn't choose someone better. I wanted to preach... not because I could do it better than someone else, and not because there weren't a million great sermons preached on December 24th and 25th... and not because me preaching makes Christmas any more real than what it ever has been...
I wanted to preach because it's part of me; it's part of how God gets through my thick skull to remind me that there is something more important in the world than me, and every time I think I have a handle on it, it slips through my fingers.
It's really easy for us to become the center of our own worlds and to fashion God a place to fit into that world. God never really fits into the places we would make, and chooses to come to the places we would never send God. Forsaking the purple robes and crushing the powers that be, God comes as an infant, laying on animal drool. God comes through childbirth... through beauty and pain intertwined. Likely on the lowest floor of the inkeeper's house, the whole family was woken by Mary's screams as she delivered God-with-us. This story is best read to children, whose imaginations can handle a God this big. The Nativity doesn't just invite us to be the birth of our Lord, it invites us to imagine an infinite God confined in the space of an infant.
Lacking a family to be with them even though they were in their hometown (how many times have you felt like a complete stranger in your hometown?), I imagine the inkeeper lighting a lamp, walking down the stairs, and immediately turning around to run and get his wife. Blowing the coals on the fire that was resting until 4am the next morning when the bread for the day would be baked, they heated pots of boiling water. The children tried to climb down the stairs to see what all the commotion was but were shooed back to their beds. I imagine Joseph mouthing "thank you" as the innkeeper's wife did what any good midwife or mother would do, knowing exactly where to be and exactly what to do while the innkeeper shooed the cows, batting their noses away from the manger so that there could be a place to put the baby.
While all of this is happening, the heavenly host (which is a little like an army, and not exactly a comforting sight) approaches a bunch of shepherds (nomadic wanderers... read: people who are homeless) and tells them, "Behold, I bring to you tidings of great joy." I imagine the shepherds using colorful language most people wouldn't say in church as they woke up, rubbed their eyes, and sat up, wondering what in the world was going on. I imagine them stumbling sleepily to the manger, expecting it to be a joke, expecting to be the last ones there, expecting to be turned away like most homeless people would be from a church on Christmas Eve... and then I imagine them falling on their knees when they realized they'd beat the crowds... when they realized they were the crowd.
God came to the wrong place. God came and the wrong time. God invited the wrong people. God got it all wrong... so far as we would understand it. God didn't fit any of our expectations and, from the way it looks, there is no chance God would exceed them. Perhaps this is because God comes into our world and de-centers it, asking us to look at it a little differently because everything looks a little different when the infinite dresses itself in flesh... and not only in flesh, but in that of an infant.
I wonder if part of the reason God does this is so that we know that it's real. God doesn't remove us from our reality and bring us into God's; God comes into our reality. It's a reality in which families are a little too complicated and space a little too cramped and with truth a little too uncomfortable, and maybe this is exactly why God comes... into a space that is a little too complicated, a little too cramped, and the truth is a little too uncomfortable. On the one hand, it's too crazy to be true... yet on the other hand, it's a little too crazy to not be true.
We packed so much into Christmas that Christmas was missed. After last year, in which I led worship two days in a row (and changed the altar cloths from Advent Blue to Festival White) and woke up at 3am to take a friend to the airport, something was missing. I missed the children's sermon with the bubble soap on the hay, I missed the shepherds and the angels and the songs and the candles and the silent night... I missed leading worship.
I missed inviting people to come look at the manger with me to see the complete absurdity of God. I think I missed the absurdity of God this year. I didn't want to go to a church where someone would undo the mystery for me, telling me this is the only way that made sense for God to come to us... I didn't want to go and hear about how Baby Jesus never cried or soiled himself...
I wanted to sit in the background and listen to Mary rock Jesus to sleep. I wanted to watch as Joseph turned his head so that people wouldn't see him tearing up as he watched his son scream his way into existence. I wanted to watch as the shepherds looked around, wondering to whom the angels were speaking and why God wouldn't choose someone better. I wanted to preach... not because I could do it better than someone else, and not because there weren't a million great sermons preached on December 24th and 25th... and not because me preaching makes Christmas any more real than what it ever has been...
I wanted to preach because it's part of me; it's part of how God gets through my thick skull to remind me that there is something more important in the world than me, and every time I think I have a handle on it, it slips through my fingers.
It's really easy for us to become the center of our own worlds and to fashion God a place to fit into that world. God never really fits into the places we would make, and chooses to come to the places we would never send God. Forsaking the purple robes and crushing the powers that be, God comes as an infant, laying on animal drool. God comes through childbirth... through beauty and pain intertwined. Likely on the lowest floor of the inkeeper's house, the whole family was woken by Mary's screams as she delivered God-with-us. This story is best read to children, whose imaginations can handle a God this big. The Nativity doesn't just invite us to be the birth of our Lord, it invites us to imagine an infinite God confined in the space of an infant.
Lacking a family to be with them even though they were in their hometown (how many times have you felt like a complete stranger in your hometown?), I imagine the inkeeper lighting a lamp, walking down the stairs, and immediately turning around to run and get his wife. Blowing the coals on the fire that was resting until 4am the next morning when the bread for the day would be baked, they heated pots of boiling water. The children tried to climb down the stairs to see what all the commotion was but were shooed back to their beds. I imagine Joseph mouthing "thank you" as the innkeeper's wife did what any good midwife or mother would do, knowing exactly where to be and exactly what to do while the innkeeper shooed the cows, batting their noses away from the manger so that there could be a place to put the baby.
While all of this is happening, the heavenly host (which is a little like an army, and not exactly a comforting sight) approaches a bunch of shepherds (nomadic wanderers... read: people who are homeless) and tells them, "Behold, I bring to you tidings of great joy." I imagine the shepherds using colorful language most people wouldn't say in church as they woke up, rubbed their eyes, and sat up, wondering what in the world was going on. I imagine them stumbling sleepily to the manger, expecting it to be a joke, expecting to be the last ones there, expecting to be turned away like most homeless people would be from a church on Christmas Eve... and then I imagine them falling on their knees when they realized they'd beat the crowds... when they realized they were the crowd.
God came to the wrong place. God came and the wrong time. God invited the wrong people. God got it all wrong... so far as we would understand it. God didn't fit any of our expectations and, from the way it looks, there is no chance God would exceed them. Perhaps this is because God comes into our world and de-centers it, asking us to look at it a little differently because everything looks a little different when the infinite dresses itself in flesh... and not only in flesh, but in that of an infant.
I wonder if part of the reason God does this is so that we know that it's real. God doesn't remove us from our reality and bring us into God's; God comes into our reality. It's a reality in which families are a little too complicated and space a little too cramped and with truth a little too uncomfortable, and maybe this is exactly why God comes... into a space that is a little too complicated, a little too cramped, and the truth is a little too uncomfortable. On the one hand, it's too crazy to be true... yet on the other hand, it's a little too crazy to not be true.
2 comments:
My dear friend -- whatever you may find yourself called to, I hope you never stop writing like this. Such a gift, to so many.
Thank you, Mandy! This is awesome.
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