The Advent season has once again ushered us to the doorstep of Christmas.
In our culture, Christmas presents us with a huge juggling act. On the one hand, we contemplate the birth of the Christ child and speak of God's love - the spiritual Christmas. On the other hand, Christmas is about family (and friends) and being together as family - the sentimental Christmas. (This is the Christmas many of us are grieving this year because of the pandemic.) Then, there's the gift giving, Christmas parties, Christmas traditions, and Santa - the commercial Christmas. For many, there is the blue Christmas - the pain and heartache with which we live when one we loved has died, leaving only memories to fill the emptiness of their absence. Those living in the hopelessness of depression, addiction, and mental illness know a dark Christmas. (Christmas cheer only adds to the darkness.) And, mostly beyond our awareness, the working poor and the homeless, struggling to survive, are bypassed by Christmas cheer. Their struggles are compounded by yet another bleak Christmas.
I confess that I have struggled with Christmas throughout much of my life. I do not know how to juggle. At best, I can pitch one ball in the air and catch it. But more than one is beyond my ability. And that limited ability applies to juggling the different kinds of Christmases, too. I have depended on Etta for the family Christmas traditions and gift giving. I have depended on schedules and my role as a pastor for Christmas parties and celebrations. I have tipped my hat to the reality of the poor and homeless by making a financial contribution. I have endured my own dark Christmases as I have wrestled with depression for more years than I can count.
Thankfully, I have made progress in dealing with Christmas. (I like to think of myself as a recovering Scrooge.) A major factor in my progress was my discovery and use of the Advent wreath. (I did not grow up in a liturgical church that followed the Advent season.) Following the Advent calendar has helped me focus on the spiritual dimension of Christmas. It has helped me focus on the mystery portrayed in a baby, wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feed trough. It has helped me stay in touch with God's love, expressed in the gift of the Son.
Love is the theme of this fourth week of Advent. The birth of the Christ - Mary's baby, wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a feed trough - the mystery of the incarnation - teaches us about love.
The Christmas story teaches us that love is the essence of God's character. Love is not just something God does on occasion. It is who God is at the core of God's being. God cannot not love anymore than the sun cannot not shine. God always lives out of this love-shaped character. Everything God does is an expression of love. That's what the biblical writer meant when he penned "God is love" (1 John 4:8).
The Christmas story teaches us that love is focused on the good of the other. It is other-centered, not self-centered and self-serving. "God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. God ... sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1 John 4:9, 10). Love addresses the need of the other. In the Son, God addressed the inner brokenness of our lives and the alienation that it creates. In the Spirit, God brings healing to that inner brokenness. Through the Son and the Spirit, God walks with us, nurturing our growth towards a Christlike maturity.
The Christmas story teaches us that love is costly. Love gives freely and lavishly of self, without concern for the cost. In the incarnation, God set aside the "rights and privileges" of the Godhead to become human. (See Philippians 2:5-11.) And this robed-in-flesh is not just for the span of a brief, 30 year lifetime. It is for eternity. My professor spoke of this self-giving as "the impoverishment of the Godhead." God is inseparably linked to humanity for eternity. (Jesus's humanity is a central theme in the book of Hebrews where this mind-blowing understanding is portrayed.)
And love was costly for Mary. We like to be sentimental about Mary. We echo her cousin Elizabeth in calling her "blessed" (Luke 1:42). But that was not what she was called in her hometown or among her friends! What did it cost Mary to be pregnant and not married in her culture? She never escaped the shadow of that stigma. What did it cost Mary when she thought Jesus had gone off the deep end? What did it cost Mary to sit at the feet of the cross and watch Jesus die? The Christmas story teaches us that love is costly.
The Christmas story teaches us that love transforms. It changes us. God's love changes us when we experience it. Love changes us whenever we live out of it. Love does not leave us as it found us. It transforms us, bringing us ever closer to possessing God's character as our own. Love (God) will not give up on us until love is more than something we do on occasion. It is who we are at the core of our being.
The Christmas story teaches us that love is the blueprint of life. Love is not just God's nature. It is the nature of life itself. Fullness of life is only found in loving as Jesus loved. Life's brokenness and pain in its many manifestations are the product of our inability to love. Rather than focusing outward, on the need of the other, we have turned our focus upon ourselves and what we believe we need. Rather than giving to address the need of another, we grasp and accumulate and hoard out of fear of not having enough, out of the insatiable need for "more." We live out of fear. And so we live out of a self-focused, self-serving, what's-in-it-for-me spirit. We live out of step with how God designed life to be lived.
Finally, the Christmas story calls us to live its truth year round. Love, portrayed in a child, wrapped in strips of cloth, lying in a manger, is not a one time event. It is intended to be a way of life - our way of life just as it is God's way of life. We are to be Mary bringing God-in-the-flesh into the world. We are to be the Christ child embodying God's love in the world. We are to be the means by which love (God) brings healing and wholeness to the brokenness of our world.
The way we live out the truth of the Christmas story is by focusing on those whom God prioritizes: the powerless, the marginalized, the poor, the exploited, the people viewed and treated as insignificant and "less than," the forgotten and overlooked (ignored?). Psalm 146:5-9 (one of our Advent readings) names them: the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoner, the blind, those who are bowed down, the strangers (immigrants), the orphan and the widow. These are the ones love (God) calls us to love. And not just at this time of year. And not by giving handouts. Love (God) calls us to love them the way God loved us: getting involved, sharing life, addressing their needs (at so many different levels) so that their lives are transformed.
So which Christmas do we experience this year? And how do we celebrate it? We can celebrate Christmas as the story of the birth of Jesus that took place 2,000 years ago. That kind of celebration makes us outsiders, looking in on the scene. It tends to be sentimental and religious (rather than spiritual). It seldom touches the Christmas that is blue or dark or bleak. Or we can celebrate Christmas as a story that we are a part of it. We can see ourselves as "the other" whom God loves and to whom God gives at great cost for our good. We can allow love (God) to transform us, leading us into Christlike maturity in which love is not just something we do on occasion, but is who we are at the core of our being.
In other words, we can make the Christmas story our story - a story we live today and every day by loving as Jesus loved, by loving those whom Jesus loved.
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