Christmas: The Whole Story
By J. Daniel Day, Pastor
First Baptist Church,
Holidays, as you know, come with expectations attached. Some folks might not be able to imagine a Fourth of July without fireworks, nor Easter without lilies. For myself, I can imagine Thanksgiving without pumpkin pie, even though I can`t imagine who`d want to go there. But what I cannot imagine is having Christmas without hearing the Christmas story.
So, whatever else has claimed my December days and nights, when Christmas Eve comes, my steps turn toward the church house, and there I will gladly sit, early or late, waiting for that one thing most of all-for them to read to me the Christmas story.
Turns out, however, that this story is multi-layered. There`s the one I want to hear, the "Precious Moments" version that Luke tells, the one about the innkeeper and the manger and the angels and shepherds, the one I memorized as a child, and the one that really still sounds right. But, then there`s the Christmas story that Matthew tells, the "R" rated one about a paranoid Herod visited by curious wise men, about Rachel`s moaning for her lost children, and Joseph hightailing it to Egypt to save the child from the slaughter of the innocents. And there`s even the one that John tells, the philosophical one that doesn`t have one sheep or camel or even a Mary and Joseph anywhere in sight, the version about the Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, full of grace and truth. So, there`s really a harvest of stories to be heard, not just one.
And any part of the story is powerful. Take the Emmanuel part. It`s a fusion of the earthiness of the "Precious Moments" story with the profundity of the philosopher`s story. It`s the astonishing assertion that the God who flung galaxies into space and caused the morning stars to sing together, that the Incomprehensible One of the Eternity and of Time, has actually taken on a baby`s flesh and can be seen in a diaper down in Bethlehem`s barn. The Emmanuel part says we live on a visited planet, that God has become small and available to all. God with us!
My own children were born near Christmas time many years ago, premature twin sons. They were too tiny, too weak to come home when their mother did. Thus she and I spent exhausting hospital days monitoring their every ounce and anxious hospital nights monitoring their every breath. On one of the scariest of those nights I left the hospital corridors and wandered off in tearful desolation onto the parking lot. In a far and abandoned corner the light was dim, a perfect match for my mood, and there I stood in silence until the winter winds had chilled me through and through. I looked up into the sky, forlorn, and was greeted by a waiting star, brighter than any I`ve ever seen since. And with the star there was this silent, absurd Christmas-born message: Emmanuel, God with us! It was enough, enough for that night, for that crisis. And so it has been for every dark night since. No wonder we come to Christmas Eve, cradling our broken dreams and empty hearts, wanting to hear this part of the story again and again and again. We are not alone. God walks with us. In the shabbiest of places, in the grandest halls, God is with us. Emmanuel! That`s the stuff of salvation.
I wish I could stop right here, because that`s all the Christmas story I really want to hear. But the story also includes a Messiah part. This comes from Matthew`s "R" rated tale of a tyrant issuing death edicts and sending families into political exile. The Messiah part comes with every prophet`s wail for a better world. It comes with Mary`s Magnificat, with her song about God "scattering the proud, and bringing down the powerful from their thrones and lifting up the lowly," from her confidence that this baby of hers will be the means by which God finally will "fill the hungry with good things and send away empty." And with this you`ve left the Disney Channel and turned to HBO Late Night. You are hearing about hard-ball politics and the clash of principalities and powers and how the kingdoms of this world, be they Protestant or American or Muslim or communist or capitalist, how the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, the Messiah.
I haven`t always heard this part of the story. I have sung the carols about "peace on earth, good will to men," without understanding the oppression and ugliness that first created this cry for a shalom-bringing messiah. With delight I have sung: "He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove the glories of his righteousness" and never once thought it might have something to do with me or my lifestyle or my politics or my nation. But then I began to awaken and saw cities burn as the price of poverty and racism. I drove through a January snowstorm for the funeral of a classmate killed in a war nobody had the guts to stop. I watched the politics of lying rend the fabric of public trust. I witnessed my Baptist family cannibalize itself. "And in despair," like the poet Longfellow, "I bowed by head: `There is no peace on earth,` I said. `For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on earth, good will to men.`"
So, for decades it seems, when I hear the bells on Christmas Day, there is this aching, tragic emptiness stalking all my Christmas gaiety, a haunting question: When, of when, you celebrators, when will you hear the Messiah part of the story? When will the ways of peace fascinate as much as the violence of war? How long must the Prince of Peace wait for His followers to form ranks? How long, O God, will you let this travesty stand? Or is all this Messiah part just a peasant`s pipe dream?
You see, I think I know something about the Emmanuel part of the story, and I think I am beginning to understand something of the Messiah part of the story. But the combination of the two, the inward and the outward, the fusion of the spiritual and the material . . . to make of it one story, one song, this is the challenge Longfellow and every listening Christian faces each Christmas. How, indeed, do we get from the blood-soaked sands of Baghdad to the beloved community where black and white, and fundamentalist and moderate, and Arab and Jew and you and I can live as brothers and sisters in peace.
Thirty years ago Eric Hoffer wrote in Reflections on the Human Condition: "Everywhere we look at present we see something new trying to be born. A pregnant, swollen world is writhing in labor, and everywhere untrained quacks are officiating as obstetricians. These quacks say that the only way the new can be born is by Caesarean operation. They lust to rip the belly of the world open."
I have a horror of being among the knife-wielding quacks at work in this tender moment of history. And when I look for guidance as to how to proceed wisely, should it surprise me that Mary herself shows a way? The words of the Magnificat reveal Mary knew very well the Messiah part of the story, the prophet`s passion for a world reborn in equity and justice. But I notice that her response was not to grasp an instrument of power, or cudgel of authority. She rips open nothing. She does the far more difficult thing. She surrenders herself, surrenders herself to the quiet, birthing power of God. Hers is the ultimate passivity through which the Lasting Hope is born. She really, truly lets Emmanuel enter in.
And do not you and I also have deep places within where something holy might be born? Most surely, there are depths within me that I have never yet opened to the touch of God, tender places, hurting places, noisy places. They are the places where my prejudices and hate, my bitter memories and selfishness fester and grow. Yes, I also have deep places within where something holier might be born. George McDonald asked the question, "Shall I be born of God, or of mere man? Be made like Christ, or on some other plan?"
And maybe this begins to explain to me why I seek the church on Christmas Eve, why I can`t imagine not hearing the story. I really do want to surrender like Mary to really, truly let Emmanuel enter in. Not just into me and for me, not just to reassure me that my sons will be well….but enter the world through me so that all the sons and daughters of earth will be well, so that they will no more hurt or destroy in all the holy mountains of Afghanistan or the Twin Towers of Manhattan, that they will study war no more and learn what makes for peace.
So, I`ll make my way to the meetinghouse next Wednesday night. I will slip into a pew and listen. I`ll wait for them to read for me the whole story of Christmas, Emmanuel and Messiah parts. And then I hope they`ll give me a candle to hold and a handful of silence to stare into its flame. And then I will pray: "Lord, I need Mary`s ferocious hope, I need her glad surrender. I need you! O come, O come, Emmanuel!" And you know what? I think he will come! As surely and as mysteriously as he came long ago, he will come and something holy will be born
