This morning I sat in my living room watching chunks of my Christmas tree lights stutter and blink insistently, like Will sending a message from the Upside Down, and then, section by section, over the course of an hour or so, groups of lights held hands and silently screamed and died. Now there are several gloomy, unlit spots on the tree, and I sat contemplating how the tree in my living room feels like a symbol for everything.
This was a lovely tree in the field when I cut it down. But the trunk wasn’t long enough for my tree stand, so when I secured it in, it swung around wildly, crashing to the floor at least twice. So I cut off some bottom branches, and ended up taking out all the beautiful tree-shaped bulk and leaving it looking like an upright, green chicken drumstick with a huge bite out of it. So I stuck a piece back into the stand on its own to fill the hole, a patch, if you will.
The tree boasts a sparse smattering of ornaments because, after three days of looking at it empty and commenting plaintively to each other that we needed to decorate it, Maisy finally mustered the energy to hang a few on. But the Bing Crosby listening, egg nog drinking, ornament nostalgia memorabilia fest was not happening in our house this year.
I keep coming back to something Mark Yaconelli recently said is helpful to remind young people, which my pastor friends keep telling each other and everyone else: It’s normal to feel tired in tiring times. It’s normal to feel anxious in anxious times. It’s normal to feel sad in sad times.
These are tiring, anxious, sad times. And our skins are thin, our patience for navigating all of this was spent months ago. Lots of us are edgy, and most of us are tired. I copied down a line from an Economist headline the other day, “Era of Unpredictability is Not Going Away Soon.” I keep looking back at it to help myself let it in.
So, into this comes the Christmas Story. And I don’t know what kind of unpredictable times they were living in, or anxious times, or sad or tiring times, but it’s safe to say human beings have been times like these all throughout history. And God keeps recruiting us for love anyway, or maybe even recruiting us for love for these kinds of times. In truth, there is no time God is not calling us into this life alongside each other to join Jesus there, and to be part of what God is already doing, despite the times, in the times, and through the particulars of the times. And this week I have been struck by how God reached out to each of the people in the Christmas story differently, specifically.
We have spent Advent peeking in on the Christmas story, preparing our hearts to receive it again. We began where Luke begins the story of Jesus – with Old Zechariah, a priest from the hill country, and his long dead prayers for a child being suddenly answered even as his prayers on behalf of the people for salvation for Israel were being answered. God met Zechariah in the silence. He was a witness, a mystery bearer, one who does the holy act of observing what God is up to.
God recruited Zechariah through an ego tussle with a smug angel, nine months of imposed silence, and the invitation to watch and marvel.
And Elizabeth, with her astonishing new role as a mother in her old age, keeping it all to herself until the summons to be a friend, sharing pregnancy with her very young niece Mary. In her age and wisdom, she was bearing in her womb the great prophet who would announce the Messiah. She recognized the mother of God who came to her. And together they prepared for the world to change, with joy, and wonder, and trepidation, and learning, and hormones, and Zechariah at their beck and call, they bore in their bodies the God who comes in the flesh to bear this human life with us, and the one who will prepare the way, and ready the people’s hearts for his arrival.
God recruited Elizabeth through resurrected hope, stirred vision and understanding and the gift of precious companionship.
And Mary, the one who said yes to being the bearer of God. A life interrupted and rerouted, for a world reoriented and redeemed. She was given Elizabeth and Zechariah, given courage and insight, given the Spirit to overshadow her and fill her very body with the life of the world. Mary is shored up for the road ahead, and promised the guidance of God.
God recruited Mary with an angelic visit of gentle reassurance and by being drawn into a small community of support to share with her this miracle, to surround her, uphold her and prepare her for what is to come.
Then we meet the shepherds, going about their business, not expecting or looking for anything outside the routine. There was nothing to make them seem worthy of sharing in anything majestic or important, nothing to make them even wonder about such things. They tend sheep, look after them, the way Jesus later says God does for all of us. They become in Jesus’ teachings, a template of God’s consistent, relentless watching over us, God’s protection of us and God’s ceaseless, night and day care of us. And they are invited to bear witness to what is unfolding.
It was with an angelic choir breaking open the night sky, the most spectacular chorus of music and light and life, a heavenly celebration spilling over into earth, inviting these particular ordinary people to join in the joy, to peek at the promise that God recruited the shepherds.
Now this week we turn to Matthew’s story of the Christ. And we meet Joseph, who wasn’t invited, wasn’t informed ahead of time, was simply told what was happening and left to adapt. Joseph, who was called to walk a road he didn’t get to choose, chose to walk it with grace and generosity. Joseph chose to let go his own plans for life and accept the life he was handed, the role he was called to.
God recruited Joseph through grief and loss and unacceptable circumstances, a dream and a relinquishment of power. And he accepted of a path of love and cooperation with God.
And we meet the Magi. Scholars from far away, outside this story, not hoping, longing, looking for a Jewish Messiah, minding the signs of the cosmos, anticipating the movements of the universe. They are brought into the story and eager to follow where it leads, ready to discover what it holds. Persistent and dogged, traveling for years, arriving at the home of a toddler, shocking the neighbors and confounding his parents with their sureness and their foreignness. The magi embody the promise extending to the ends of the earth, celebrating a redemption that belongs also to them, and so to all of us too.
God recruited the Magi through science and study, through their own intellect and diligent connecting of dots, through their determination and due diligence, and through their trust.
This story breaks all boundaries. Heaven and earth come together, kings are brought down and the marginalized and overlooked are drawn into the center. Strangers already belong. Plans are thwarted and courage is kindled, the unknown is embraced and a community is formed of the most unusual collection of folk, recruited by God to be those to whom God comes, those in whose care God entrusts his baby human self, those who God trusts to share in this great mystery and promise for the whole world. Not because they earn it or deserve it, just because God does it.
And nobody gets the same invitation, nobody plays the same part; God takes pleasure in meeting each person specifically, uniquely, in a variety of unexpected approaches, particular to each life, which is to say, there is no end to the ways God comes into this world. There is no one outside God’s sights. Each of us is called into the promise. Each of us is invited to participate. Each of us is recruited for love. Every life is part of God’s great schemes.
This week on Christmas Eve we will gather together to share the story of Jesus. And we will tell this one little part of it. But the story of Jesus transcends all times. It started way before this part – before time existed, when the word was with God and through whom all life into being. And the story of Jesus outlasts you and me, and every nation and culture, and conflict and war, and advancement and civilization, and species and the very earth itself. And you and I, right now, today, in these very times, are living the story of Jesus, the story of God coming in, the story of love greater than death interrupting ordinary life with promise.
May we be ready to receive this story. May we be open to being recruited too.
Amen.
This week, we are reading through the Gospel of John. In my house, it is at the dinner table. Maybe for you, it will be when you wake up, or before bed, or over lunch. It can be read in about 20 minutes a day, or by reading three chapters each day. If this is your approach, today, we are reading Chapters 10-12.
