Merrry Christmas.
How many times have you heard these words over the past few weeks? As we come closer and closer to December 25th, we become emboldened to wish those we meet a Merry Christmas. Despite the secular context in which we live, “Merry Christmas” persists and there are those who come to its defence when we are told that it is not an appropriate greeting for those who do not identify themselves with the Christian faith. We are, after all, wishing people well on the Christ mass, the medieval mass that was celebrated to recognize the birth of Jesus, the Christ, into the world. Although, of course, no one knows for certain on which day Jesus was actually born, tradition has come to recognize this day, just after the winter solstice, as the birthday of the Christ. For those who are not of the Christian faith, I am happy to wish them, “Happy Holidays” or “Seasons Greetings” although I have to smile a little. For “holidays” are “holy days” and although there are several “holy days” at this time of year in different faiths, one of the “holy days” we are talking about is most certainly the one on which Christians recognize the birth of Christ. And when we wish “Seasons Greetings”, at least part of the “Season” that we are passing through has to do with the Christian tradition of recognizing the birth of Christ. It’s hard to write out this holy story completely even in our secularized, shopping obsessed, consumption focussed winter festival. Somewhere in the midst of it is a child born to a young woman in a barn in the little town of Bethlehem, long, long ago. “Behold I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.”
Merry Christmas.
In those days, there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed . . .”. There are very few biblical texts that are as well-known as this one, usually remembered in the King James Version. A couple of weeks ago I was in Sudbury with my Mom in the care facility where she is part a convalescence program after spending some time in hospital. The minister from my sister’s church came to celebrate communion with Mom on her 98th birthday. There were six of us around a small table in a meeting room with a couple of small battery operated candles next to a poinsettia with a birthday cake sitting off to the side. Rev. Dawn had forgotten her Bible but she wanted us to hear the Christmas story from the second chapter of Luke’s gospel and wondered if we could recite it for memory. I started out, “In those days, there went out a decree . . .”. Over the next few minutes all six of us contributed to retelling the story from our memories, having to correct each other here and there. But we got right to the end and had Mary pondering in her heart all the amazing things that had happened that night. This story of the coming of the Christ is on the tip of many of our tongues. It is deep in many of our memories, from a Christmas pageant when we were a child, or from reading it or hearing it read on Christmas Eve over the years, or from seeing parts of it written and illustrated in Christmas cards. The coming of the Christ has been woven deeply into many of our lives and is held within us like few other stories. “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace.”
Merry Christmas.
In a makeshift shelter cobbled together from plastic sheeting and a few sticks in a small town called Cox’s Bizarre on the border between Myanmar-Burma and Bangladesh, a young woman gives birth to a child. It happens in the squalor and chaos of the exodus journey of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing from the genocide being carried out against the minority Rohinya Muslim population. In an emergency shelter on the island of Sicily a young woman from somewhere in Africa has given birth to a baby shortly after making the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean in a boat that carried double the number of people that should have been in it. In a dimly lit motel room in Scarborough a woman’s contractions begin. She has travelled half way around the world on a torturous journey through South and Central America and through the United States to get to Canada where she and her partner think they will be able to find refuge and a better life for the child that is about to be born. They are not sure if they can access the hospital or whether this might put their status more at risk. Throughout our world the decrees and laws of governments and the horrors of war and famine have put millions of people on the move. Mary and Joseph and the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes can be found just about anywhere we might look. There’s no room for them, they are not welcome and at best something temporary can be created for their needs. The unsanitary conditions always put mother and child at risk and they are dependent on the generosity of strangers to provide that place where they can survive for one more day. It is at our peril that we forget that Jesus was born in a barn and that the slaughter of the innocents is part of the Christmas story. This story that brings us such comfort and joy has a harsh and disturbing side that sadly is part of our story too. We need to keep reading beyond the manger into the light of our weary world. “Because there was no room for them at the inn”.
Merry Christmas
I have been receiving Christmas cards. A few less each year it seems. It is a tradition that is on the wane as our lives become so busy and everything we do is channeled through our phone or our computer. But when they arrive, they connect us with people who are in our extended circle of family and friends and they remind us of Christmas past and of relationships which have sometimes slipped to the margins of our lives. I received a lovely card this year from a dear friend who had visited Scotland over the year and had bought Christmas cards with an image of a painting that hangs in the Scottish National Gallery. It is a nineteenth century painting that depicts the nativity in a Scottish barn of the time. Very rudimentary and clearly the home of the animals. The holy family is tucked away in the back and the shepherds are in the foreground having just come in the door and are clearly surprised by what they are seeing, as was told them by the angels. And in the rafters of this barn there are angels. Fluttering about with their musical instruments, entirely out of place in the smell and the mess. But they are there. Those who carry the message of God’s love and joy and peace for the whole world are there in the rafters of the barn, witnesses to the miracle that has taken place. I connected the image with words from a song by the Scottish hymn writer, John Bell, that I have been looking at off and on over the Advent season:
In a byre near Bethlehem
Passed by many a wand’ring stranger,
The most precious Word of Life
Was heard gurgling in a manger
For the good of us all.
And he’s here when we call him,
Bringing health, love and laughter
To life now and ever after
For the good of us all.
“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen”.
Merry Christmas.
This story is with us. This child is with us. God with us, Emmanuel, has come. And he is here this night in bread and wine, the child in the manger, the crucified and risen one, God’s love incarnate is here. Taste and see that the Lord is good and “Fear not, for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord”.
Merry Christmas.
Thanks be to God.
