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 As tempting as it is to argue for one or the
other, I want to hold up that whichever came first, isn’t it enough
to be thankful for both?
Sometimes, we get so caught up in the minutia—or even about being
right—that we miss the point entirely. Often, we miss the simple
gift that might be in front of us, right now.
The Christmas season is no different. So much energy has been
invested in how we communicate the gift of the Christ child with our
words. Do we say this or that? Is it okay to use an ancient symbol
for Christ (the X), or must we keep the whole word?
In our efforts to promote our ideologies, we miss the significance
of what happened in the Incarnation—the gift of Love in the child
Jesus.
Isn’t that the reason for the season? Those who walk along the Jesus
Way to God remember that Christ interrupted humanity’s strange
obsession with being right and powerful.
Isn’t the birth of Christ more about God’s faithfulness and promise
never to give up on the world and less about whether or not we make
Christmas great again?
After all, the Incarnation interrupted the narrative that greatness
is found and defined by worldly powers.
This interruption by God at the nativity of Christ reminds me of a
Christmas pageant I was in as a kid. It was a director’s worst
nightmare. Joseph forgot his lines. Mary tired of walking around
with a football under her dress and threw it out half way through
the play. Just as things seemed they couldn’t get any worse, one of
the shepherds bumped into the Christmas tree, causing it (along with
the manger) to tumble down.
As the crowd gasped and the shepherds started to cry, John the
Baptist proclaimed, “At least baby Jesus is okay!” Upon the young
actor’s proclamation, the crowd erupted into laughter, and the
dejected director smiled.
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Christmas is a time for Christians to use their
lives, ministries, and voices to interrupt our culture’s
narrative—the one that tells us that presents are better than
presence; love is available only to those who enter the world “like
everyone else”; and your story is only believable if you look like
Santa Claus from the western world.
To limit Christmas to anything other than God’s affirmation upon
creation’s goodness, the belovedness of human community, and the
gift of every living creature, is to deny the true reason for the
season—that God is with us, never against us, and always restoring
us.
Resist getting lost in the details. Disrupt the idea that your way
is the only way. Instead, celebrate that God made God’s own self
known to us in the messiness of a birth. In the unlikeliest of
places to an unlikely family but in a particular time, God gifted
the world with Love. This Love would grow up to teach us with
Christ’s own life that God is with us. Every time we alleviate the
pain of those who are hurting, every time we tend to the needs of
those who are despairing, every time we tear down fences and walls
to welcome the outcast or stranger, and every time we listen to our
own life, we usher in the Reign of God, not unlike Mary and Joseph
did some 2,000 years ago.
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