For some of us at least, if we are really honest, we would rather ignore the part in the Christmas story about Herod’s massacre at Bethlehem. Enough to manage the shock of God’s outrageous risk in entrusting the rescue of his world (and universe) to two unknowns – at least one a teenager – and the precarious nature, especially at that time, of childbirth. How do we begin to process the cost not just to God, but to the nameless families in Bethlehem?
It is not just the historical outrages that we shun, however. Aleppo, the Yemen, countless other places where babies and children die at the hands of our violence and greed – our senses and emotions feel assaulted by the horror and so we close down the emerging thoughts and feelings (and often silence the TV or skip sections in the paper).The reaction is understandable, in our perceived helplessness. The scale of suffering causes our compassion to implode: if we felt the full pain of it we would, surely, be subsumed with grief?
I have no answer. But I do wonder if it may help us, whether looking back to Herod or out to our world, to remember that this is essentially the story of individuals. Each one unique, known to God, and loved by him, however different from that it must feel in the maelstrom of pain.
Perhaps a little like this…
Grandmother in Bethlehem
I wasn’t ready to become a grandmother.
Somehow it signalled so much:
The gradual dwindling of my own youth
Cemented by this one act:
Denial of my own mortality
Somehow eroded by this new title.But then I saw him
And it all changed.
Tiny toes, first blue
From traumatic delivery
Then glorious pink
And my heart burst
With relief and pride
And deep protectiveness.
A love like no other.I was holding him
When the soldiers came.
Never had I so cursed
Female weakness.
I tried to hold him,
Screamed as they pushed me aside
Like the has-been I felt.I would have died to save him.
And now I only wish I could.
This post is part of our reflections on Advent and Christmas 2016.
by Christine Sine
It is the second day of Christmas – the 12 days starting with Christmas day that mark the celebration of the birth of Christ.
In the sixth century it was decided that celebrating Christmas just for a day didn’t provide enough time to celebrate all the joy that Christ’s birth brought into the world. They made Christmas into a twelve day festival that ended with a feast on the Eve of Epiphany on January 5th to celebrate the coming of the wise men and the emergence of God’s eternal kingdom. Yep that’s right, for those of us who are Christ followers, the 12 days of Christmas begin with Christmas Day they don’t end there as many malls would have us believe. In countries where this understanding of Christmas has not been co-opted by the commercialism of our society Christmas trees are not decorated until Christmas Eve and remain in the house sparking with light and life until the Eve of Epiphany.
So what are we celebrating this Christmas season?
For many of us this has been a challenging year and we are not sure that this message of God’s peace is really being birthed in a world in which hate and violence seems to have the upper hand. Memories of Aleppo, Berlin, Brexit, political ugliness make us wonder if peace is possible at all.
Yet in the Christmas message there is a message of such hope that it changed the world 2,000 years ago and continues to change it when we take it seriously.
What do we learn from the Christmas story
We need to listen to the angels.
The angels came to the shepherds with an unbelievable message – the Messiah was born in their neighbourhood and they were invited to come and meet him.
Earlier in the story the angel Gabriel came to Mary with an equally unbelievable message – she who was a virgin was pregnant and would give birth to a son who would be the saviour of the world.
What is most remarkable is both Mary and the shepherds listened and believed the angels. They listened to a message of peace and hope when the world around them was in chaos. They believed a message of peace when they lived in world in which the Roman empire maintained its power with violence.
What we forget is that the heavenly messengers reaffirm this message of peace every Christmas. In the midst of a world of violence God’s peace has been birthed and will be birthed again and again and again until the world is transformed. We need to listen and believe.
We need to Let Go Our Fears.
We live in a world filled with fear. Fear of the other who is different. Fear of violence against us and our countries. Fear of loss of economic stability. It is hard to let go our fears but again the angels come to us and say “Be not afraid”.
The shepherds were terrified by the angels yet somehow found the courage to see beyond their terror, believe the message the angels brought and respond. It could not have been easy for them. Not only were the angels scary, but going into the village must have been scary too. They were the despised, the rejected, the homeless ones. Not the kind of people that most of the villagers would have welcomed. Certainly not the ones who would be welcomed to see a newborn baby.
It is easy to make excuses for why we don’t expose ourselves fully to the light of Christ. Letting God find us in the hidden places we retreat to when we are afraid to show what we are really like can be terrifying. To draw close to the Christ who is being birthed in our midst is scary. It means stepping out of our comfort zones into a new world in which we don’t always feel comfortable.
Christmas Invites Us to Believe the Unbelievable
The shepherds believed the unbelievable. Not only was the Messiah born in their humble neigbourhood, but they were welcome, in fact encouraged to come and meet him. How profoundly redemptive this message must have been for them – they, the despised and unwelcomed by society were welcome at the bedside of the king of Kings.
Mary and Joseph believed the unbelievable too. They believed that his child conceived out of wedlock to their humble family would bring down the rich and powerful and raise up the poor and the marginalized.
The wise men from the East also believed the unbelievable – that they as foreigners would be welcome at the birth place of the one who was destined to be king of the Jews.
In the Christmas sermon we heard preached a couple of days ago, John Dixon, speaking about the birth of Jesus said
God has stepped onto the world stage, at the lowest point imaginable. At the very moment Augustus is flexing his muscles and Herod is shaking his fist, God, we are told, enters the mess, humbly, from below. And he does so in order to turn the whole thing upside down.
He goes on the say:
Everything about the story – indeed, the whole story of Jesus – says that God will reverse the mess by first getting his hands dirty. He will mend the world by first being injured. He will enter the noise, only to transpose it into a beautiful tune. Mary’s song will become the world’s song. And joy will pierce the sadness, fully and forever.
And it is true. Joy will pierce the sadness fully and forever. This is the Christmas promise. May we all take time to listen, let go our fears and believe once more the unbelievable story of God.
Artwork: Pastel painting “Milky Way and Brolly” by Keren Dibbens-Wyatt using a public domain reference photo by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
I have been revisiting some of the books that enchanted me as a young girl, ostensibly as research for my own writing, but in fact more truly because in my middle age I am hankering for the simpler joys. Having read all the Anne of Green Gables books my county library had to offer (I should be receiving the next one today if my husband took any notice of my Christmas list) I started on another series written by the same wonderful Canadian author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, about Emily of New Moon.
Emily is a little girl with a sensitive soul, and every so often, she senses something she calls “the flash.” It is a glimpse into eternity, into the essence of beauty, and it comes unbidden at various moments:
“It always seemed to Emily… that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside – but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it, and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond – only a glimpse- and heard a note of unearthly music….. It had come with a high, wild note of wind in the night, with a shadow-wave over a ripe field… with the singing of “Holy, holy, holy,” in church, with a glimpse of the kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night, with the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane, with a felicitous new word when she was writing down a “description” of something. And always when the flash came to her, Emily felt that life was a wonderful, mysterious thing of persistent beauty.” (page 8, Emily of New Moon, Virago Press 2013, originally published in 1923)
Montgomery is a wonderful writer with a great gift for vivid “descriptions” herself, and for delicious characterisation and dialogue. In Emily’s ability, she has captured, for me, something about the existence of holy magic; that truly awe-inspiring hint of heaven we can be privy to now and again, as we see a rip in the fabric of the ordinariness of things, or maybe even the divine essence reflected to be almost incarnate in that very ordinariness.
We have been looking on Godspace during this season of Advent with an eye for where this glimpse of the otherworldly might be found in the hectic and commercialised run up to Christmas. We have been exploring whether it is possible to reclaim the peace and joy only Jesus can give us from the midst of the chaos. I know that we can. More importantly, perhaps, I know that those who don’t know the Lord yet can catch that reality that is so much deeper than our existence out of the corner of their eyes, or on the edge of their senses: from hearing a carol, from sitting in a crowded church watching children fluff their angelic lines, from contemplating the glow of a candle. These “flashes” really do have a chance to shine through at this time of feasting and gifts, because something in us is searching for them. Christmas is when we know we are supposed to find the magic. And all too often it seems beyond our grasp, and we are disappointed. Santa didn’t visit, we think, he never brought me what I really wanted.
But one year, if we are ready and hungry for more than mince pies and turkey, and never mind whether we have been naughty or nice, if there is that moment of wanting something more, we may well be granted a glimpse of the star of wonder, and nothing will ever be the same again.
For that wonder is never more obvious to us than at Christmas, when the ordinary and the heavenly co-exist with a daring unknown on other feast days. The King of Kings, wrapped up and lying in the livestock’s food trough. A weary young unmarried mother, who is also the virgin handmaiden of God, destined to be Queen of heaven. A worried, unsure step-father to God’s flesh, skilled woodworker, yet unable to provide decent refuge for his family just when it was needed most, his carefully crafted world turned upside down. A small town lit up by a majestic star, and the brightness of angels, that will soon be grief-stricken by the murderous actions of a jealous Herod.
The glory and the guttural mixed and held together, the curtain fluttering that in thirty-three years will be ripped in two. The contradictions contained in this nativity scene are stretched as far as the east is from the west, and yet, in the centre, right where I might sometimes just catch my breath at a glimpse of its golden beauty caught on the edge of cheap tinsel, is an unearthly sense of wonder, just like the flash in Emily’s sight, that cuts through to my very core through all the commercial, plastic nonsense, and shows me the Christ child, and such beautiful, holy mystery, that my heart leaps with the joy of it, deep and fleeting at the same time, in perfect paradox.
Merry Christmas to all, and may God bless us, every one.
This post is part of our 2016 Advent series.
Christmas greetings from Tom and Christine Sine in Australia.
The peace of God of rest on you,
The love of God shine through you,
Let Christ be birthed afresh in you
This day and every day.
From Pixabay.com (Click Photo for original)
Once upon a time (just last night – Christmas Eve, 2015), in a land far, far away (about 35 miles from my home) … I saw God!
It started out like many holiday gatherings; one that has it’s usual assortment of aunts and uncles and cousins and, in our case, a healthy smattering of friends who may not share our “blood line,” but who never the less belong with us – and to us.
Our clan has grown seemingly over night, with several of us now elevated to “greatness,” as in great-grandmother and great-aunt. The children showed off their children, who in turn showed off their new husbands and boyfriends. Babies bounced from lap to lap and toddlers were given free reign to run and explore.
Little boys who were just children a minute ago somehow became teenagers when we weren’t looking. Little girls who once huddled together in their own cliques away from the adults were now adults themselves, sharing stories of their careers and goals, their successes and struggles, seeing each other with the new eyes of maturity. And of course a “new” crop of little girls are waiting in the wings to take up where the now 20-something cousins left off.
We had other guests this year as well; uninvited guests who profoundly made their presence known. Illness, absence, traumatic events, our limited mortality all sat right down at the table as if they belonged. You know you can’t avoid these “party crashers,” so you may as well scoot over and make room for them. They are, after all, the harbingers of what the circle brings – life, death, then life again as we make our way through.
They can truly be harsh, but as strange as it may sound, for once I saw that they’d brought an incredibly special gift with them. Their “present” was the present ..clearly understanding how now – in this present moment we have the chance to hug and kiss and laugh and joke and eat and drink together – knowing full well we won’t look the same next year. It’s not that we don’t “want” to, but because it just doesn’t work that way.
We can never re-create the special moment of right now. Nothing stands in freeze-frame except photographs. Life will undulate; its pitch will increase and decrease without a care of what we want – how much we want things to stay the way they are and never ever change. Perhaps it’s my age. Perhaps it’s because I’m further down the road which gives one a unique perspective (if one “chooses” to see) that made me realize that as I embraced my family, both in
welcome – then in goodbye, it was actually “God” hugging me.
It was God’s warmth radiating to me and through me, extending to such a depth of love that it had to be a much more numinous exchange than I could ever conjure up on my own. Yes, that was surely “God-with-us” this Christmas Eve. That was surely what this holiday is all about – what all the church services, and Christmas carols and nativity scenes and other gestures of affection try to convey – but so often miss the mark.
Recognizing this present in the present is surely the only way we can ever end the story with:
“…and they all lived happily ever after.”
Emmanuel
(Breviary, O Antiphons)
“You have come near, God-with us.
Not only made your home among us,
You have come to dwell within us,
Making of our heart a habitat of divinity.”
This post is part of our reflections for Advent 2016.
by Lynn Domina
Photo by Lynn Domina All Rights Reserved.
How Long, O Lord: A Seeker’s Litany
We’ve searched for you in forests and meadows, on beaches and hilltops, beside rivers and gorges,
But we’ve seen only trees and grass, sand and flowers, currents and stones;
We’ve searched for you at midnight and at noon,
But we’ve seen only darkness too dark to comprehend and light so bright it stung our eyes;
We’ve searched for you through blizzards and hailstorms, mudslides and drought,
But we’ve felt only cold and fear and pain and thirst;
We’ve looked for burning bushes and listened for whirlwinds and asked for a sign,
But we’ve seen just our ordinary world and heard only daily noise;
We’ve hurried through crowded streets and wandered into deserted alleys,
Until we could not distinguish between stranger and friend;
We’ve noticed the famous and the nameless,
And still we could not find you.
Tell us where you are; tell us who you are;
Restore our faith; revive our hope;
For we seek you still, and we believe we will find you;
We call to you still, and we long to know you are near.
This post is part of our reflections for Advent 2016.
I wonder what it was really like, that day the Prince of Peace was born? Mary and Joseph must have been churning with emotion. As new parents, there would have been joy and amazement as this delicate child emerged from the womb and gave out his first cry.
In the back of their minds though, what must they have been thinking? They had received those strange messages from God about this baby, and Joseph knew he was not the natural father. I imagine their joy was mixed with large portions of wonder, fear, anticipation, and confusion. How could they begin to take it all in?
Then the shepherds arrived with their unbelievable story about a host of angels announcing to them the birth of Mary and Joseph’s little child. Mary “pondered” all these things in her heart. What a tame word for all the swirling emotions she must have been experiencing!
We all have images of these events in our minds. From years of stories, Christmas pageants, and carols, our ideas of Jesus’ birth have been shaped. We have images of “three kings” journeying from the east to worship the newborn King of the Jews, yet the number of Magi is never mentioned. Similarly our minds may conjure images of Mary and Joseph turned away from some kind of local hotel, finding shelter in a barn or a cave with the animals.
But the words used to describe the “inn” actually refer to a kind of upper family room, a guest room, that was already full, so they had to stay in the lower part of the home where the animals were brought in during the evening. It’s highly unlikely that they were alone in the room. Mary was almost certainly attended to by various female family members as she gave birth. (For more see Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey.)
The power of story can shape our understanding of the birth of Jesus. More often than not these pretty stories downplay the radical nature of what God was up to in this miraculous birth.
We know the shepherds were there, welcomed into the room with Jesus. We’ve heard how radical it was for these shepherds to be present, to be the first to hear the Good News. But I also wonder what it must have been like for Joseph’s extended family. They also were required to journey to Bethlehem for the census.
- What must have been going through their minds?
- Was this all still a disgrace for the family, or had they somehow reconciled themselves to the scandal?
- Were Mary and Joseph staying with family there, or had they been shunned?
- If you were one of the extended family there for the census, how would you get your head around the news from the shepherds? Could you accept it?
We don’t know the answers to these questions; all we can do is guess. We don’t even know if Joseph’s parents were still alive. But what if they were? Can you imagine what it would be like to be Joseph’s father in this situation? What would you be feeling if you were Joseph’s mother? Was the scandal made more palatable because their social status was already rather low? Did they hold onto family, in spite of the embarrassment, embracing this child as one of their own?
I wonder…
Was this Jesus’ first act of reconciliation, of “drawing all things to himself”, to bring this family which had been fractured by scandal, back together? Or was this instead part of the fulfillment of Jesus’ more difficult words:
Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. Luke 12:51-53
With Mary, I ponder.
Filled with wonder and awe, with anticipation tinged with confusion, I ponder.
As we live into our faith as best we can, the flaws in our own assumptions are revealed. We wrestle, knowing in whom we trust, in whom we believe, yet also aware how often this same faith, “as through a glass darkly”, has manifested with both love and hate, reconciliation and division, hope and despair.
Even as we celebrate Emmanuel, God-with-us, we’re stuck admitting we don’t have all the answers, and some of the “answers” we have are more problematic than helpful. Yet we continue to believe,
to wrestle,
to hope,
to sit in wonder, and ponder all these things in our hearts.
For to us a child is born,
to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Isaiah 9:6
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