Do you labor under the illusion of the “perfect Christmas?” All shopping/wrapping/baking/decorating done, family gathered in harmonious conviviality, Santa having delivered everything everybody wanted and more? The pastor’s version is all that (especially if you’re a female pastor, and single…) PLUS all bulletins finished/pageant rehearsed/special music ready, and the Spirit having delivered to you a brief but brilliant, life-transforming word of life to share with those gathered in the church for one chaotic hour – perhaps the one hour per year.
Every year I swear I’m going to be oh-so calm and serene and oh-so ready for Christmas Eve that even I will have a spiritual encounter with God. Who am I kidding? If Luke’s story has any historical accuracy, the Holy Night we celebrate was a mess, its protagonists exhausted, scared, lonely, anxious, no doubt cranky. And at least one was in agonizing pain, delivering her first child in a stable, with only her betrothed to help her – and he more helpless than she. (Today's gospel passage is here.)
Mary and Joseph didn’t want to be in Bethlehem, especially not when her time to deliver was so near. They were there at the behest of a cruel tyrant seeking to squeeze yet more taxes out of a conquered people. Luke is so specific about the people in power at that time – Caesar Augustus, Quirinius; and the towns Mary and Joseph traveled from and to – Nazareth in Galilee, Bethlehem in Judea. His specificity reminds us that the gift of God in flesh, Emmanuel, God with us was not general and vague, but personal, bounded in human time, space and history. And emotion.
Jesus didn’t come into this world on an eiderdown comforter. He came into a mess, a chaotic night in which a young couple desperately sought accommodation in a strange city, finally accepting the offer of space with household livestock as the woman’s birth pangs grew in urgency. He came into a political and religious mess, to a people exhausted by generations of oppression at the hands of a succession of occupying empires.
And he comes into our mess. If we’re feeling harried with only 48 shopping hours left before Christmas, that Amazon order still unplaced, Christmas cards not yet embarked upon, arguing with our spouse or children or both – don’t think you’re not in the Christmas spirit. You’re ONE with the Christmas spirit, the original one.
Where are you today? What feels most urgent? Is it something life-giving or spirit-dampening? Try to name the feelings attached to the urgency or the stress. Naming feelings is the first step to ushering them away, their work of making us pay attention done.
Invite Jesus to be with you in what you’re feeling. As we accept his presence in our turmoil, we may become readier to identify with what he experienced as a newborn – complete vulnerability, confusion, cold.
And if you’re actually ready and serene, glory to God in the highest, and peace to God’s people on earth! That’s the Christmas Spirit too. Get out and share that calm with someone harried.
Getting to Bethlehem can be a stressful slog, and a journey full of pain and expectation. All of the above. We’re right where we’re supposed to be.
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