This time of year, I need to come clean about something.\u00a0 I too am part of the excessive consumption and sappy sentimentality.\u00a0 I like the music, and not just Ave Maria or Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, but also Bing Crosby and Tony Bennett and even, in moments of weakness, Alvin and the Chipmunks.\u00a0\u00a0 And I enjoy too much the ham, sweet potatoes, and apple\/pumpkin\/pecan\/chocolate\/rhubarb\/strawberry\/blackberry pies.\u00a0 The bell ringers at the mall get me, and so do the neighborhoods burning hydrocarbons to light up wire reindeer and strings of multicolored lights.\u00a0 I like it all, even when I feel guilty about some parts of it.\u00a0 I’m not alone in having mixed feelings.\u00a0 Many of you do too.<\/p>\n
Still, there is another piece of this season worth recalling.\u00a0 Or rather, it’s the whole point beneath all the excessive glitz and kitsch.\u00a0 It is about life and death, sin and redemption, possibilities lost and found.\u00a0 At its core it is a story not the least bit sentimental, one of a family too poor to afford a decent place to have a baby, of rulers whose fear led them to massacre innocents, and of hints of illegitimacy and aching disappointment.\u00a0 Christmas presents such an odd story of the time when no one knew the baby’s name or even whether he would live in obscurity or just die like so many other infants in the days before modern medicine.\u00a0 It is a story of fragile human beings, lost in a world in which the powerful strutted across the world’s stage only to be replaced by others.\u00a0 In short, it is the human story.<\/p>\n
I thought of that again today when reading the obituaries of two major world leaders, Kim Jong Il and Vaclav Havel.\u00a0 One was a savage tyrant who used his immense privileges for self-gratification of body and mind.\u00a0 Kim Jong Il, if he is remembered at all, will go down in history as one of its worst human productions, a man whose death definitely made the world better.\u00a0 He will not be missed, at least not by free people.\u00a0 Havel, on the other hand, gave his life for human freedom and dignity, first as a dissident, often jailed, playwright in Communist-era Czechoslovakia, then as the president who managed the peaceful split of the country to maximize self-determination.\u00a0 May he rest in peace.<\/p>\n
The differences between the two men could hardly be more stark.\u00a0 But perhaps they illustrate the range of human possibilities, the deep longing we have for human wholeness, but also the impulses for darkness that lurk within us and that can rise to prominence under certain to-be-avoided circumstances.\u00a0 Moral differences matter a great deal, and we do well to have clarity about that.\u00a0 No one is perfect, but some imperfections have far worse consequences than others.\u00a0 The key is to find God amid our imperfections.<\/p>\n
The curious thing about the Christmas story, I think, is not that it illustrates the complete failure of all human endeavors.\u00a0 It is not a Gnostic myth of a redeemer come to rescue a select few from the invincible darkness of the world.\u00a0 Rather, it is a story of solidarity, of God the Almighty creator of this very world (not some other world up in heaven!) joining us in our fragility in order to bring to the forefront the capabilities for goodness and wholeness that he placed within us.\u00a0 It is about the healing of creation, not its dismissal.\u00a0 So — to mix Matthew and Luke for a moment — angels sing to poor shepherds, Persian astrologers follow a star, and old people in the temple see a baby whose appearance fulfills all the old prophecies.\u00a0 Human beings stand together in their freedom before God.\u00a0 There is a seamless connection among humankind, and between us and God, that is revealed in the baby in the manager and all for which he stands.<\/p>\n
So, is it Christmas yet?\u00a0 Yes, it always is, for every day God is with us in our suffering and in our joy.\u00a0 Too many babies are still born (and stillborn, alas) in stables, and too many tyrants still sleep peacefully in their palaces.\u00a0 Yet there are also men and women who live with dignity and peace, even amid the sorrow.\u00a0 Immanuel is not just a pretty word, but a description of the nature of reality.\u00a0 And there is better news still.\u00a0 Another holiday is coming.\u00a0 Easter is on its way.\u00a0 The God who brings life from a womb can also bring it from death itself.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This time of year, I need to come clean about something.\u00a0 I too am part of the excessive consumption and sappy sentimentality.\u00a0 I like the music, and not just Ave Maria or Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, but also Bing Crosby and Tony Bennett and even, in moments of weakness, Alvin and the Chipmunks.\u00a0\u00a0 And I enjoy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2270],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas"],"yoast_head":"\n