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Context December 13, 2004 |
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Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz. (Isaiah 7.10)
By Tom Ehrich
With Christmas twelve days away, the choice again comes down to simple or complex, easy or difficult, shallow or deep.
A simple prelude listens for familiar tunes and hums along, savoring the simple delight of cheerful carols. Complex hears those same tunes and remembers what the world was like when Der Bingle sang “White Christmas” (America’s dark first year in World War Two), how Longfellow’s despair after Gettysburg shaped “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” how the tragedy of that war stirred Phillips Brooks to write “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” how a future Confederate soldier named James Pierpont wrote “Jingle Bells,” even as his nephew James Pierpont Morgan prepared to build a fortune selling defective rifles to the Union Army.
Easy decorates a tree and abides by family expectations. Difficult remembers other trees, sees empty chairs, longs for childhood, is confused by feeling out of synch.
Shallow makes a list and adds an average of $1,000 to credit card debt. Deep grapples with not having enough and yet having more than most, and wanting what isn’t on the list.
Simple doesn’t want complex near. Hence the label “Scrooge” for anyone who isn’t cheerful at Christmas time. Easy turns away from difficult. Hence the annual binge of food and drink.
Christmas, you see, always has a context. The ancient prophecies had a context. The Biblical record of events in
Every year, our celebrations of Christmas have a context, rarely simple, easy or shallow. The question is whether we will see the context. We will feel it for sure. But will we own it? Much in us yearns to be that 10-year-old child again, safe in the bosom of family, a recipient of magic and love, awestruck by tree and lights. Dealing with the context can seem an offense against the holiday. We want the events to be exactly as Luke described them, even though Biblical scholarship tells another story. We want our family Christmas to be the same as last year, even though our lives have changed.
I wrestle with this dilemma. But I believe the context contains the meaning.
Ahaz, for example, was a weak and fearful king of
In fact, the weak kings did what weak leaders usually do: they dallied, they consorted with evil, they sold out. Eventually, the men of
These events forced Yahweh’s people to reconsider their God, not as a guarantor of political supremacy but as a redeemer of the weak, who wouldn’t prevent exile but would find them in exile, who would be revealed in time in the weakness of Jesus, just as God was once revealed in a young prophetess and her son, leading Isaiah to call the child “Immanuel,” God-with-us.
Just something to think about. Here's another: This semester has been a long one, the longest of my education, at dook* or otherwise. My class schedule was difficult and my responsibilities at the Divinity School added to that; there were other factors that made it difficult that I will not name specifically here, but as I look back on this past semester, I am thankful for the month long break I'm now in the middle of. Many times I went back to read the motivated entry I wrote at the end of my time at Greenleaf, when I was driven and eager to build on that experience by going at my studies full bore. It did not take long for that motivation to wane, and I wondered whether the conviction I felt as I left there had been genuine. I'm still not entirely sure--I believe it was. What I think is that the preparation that began before I ever went to Greenleaf and made leaps and bounds while I was there has continued over the course of these months. The difference has been that it has not exactly been the kind of experience one relishes. I'm not sure I'm saying what I mean--let me frame it this way.
Advent has taught me something this year, perhaps more than in the past. I am always awed by this night, the revolutionary scene of the Savior born to a single mother in a back alley stable. It is ridiculously counter intuitive. Not one of us has an imagination vivid enough to dream up such a thing. It is beyond any far fetched tale any author has been able to tell. But to begin to comprehend its mystery, we must understand Advent. We must know what it means to wait. Israel had, after all, been waiting for awhile, through exile after exile, violent war after violent war, through kings and judges and prophets, waiting for the perfect image of the King to come to them. Their waiting was not pleasant. Read the Psalms, they are the work of a people who found God elusive and who grew weary in their waiting for a revelation from God. They were tired of waiting for Him to send what was promised. But He did. And it wasn't what they had been waiting for--they thought they knew what they needed, a mighty king who would strike down any who threatened God's people and win the victory over their oppressors on the battlefield, who would come mighty and triumphant, the king of all earthly, warrior kings. And what they got was so different from what they were looking for that many of them missed it altogether. They got what we remember tonight, a young mother and a carpenter, gathered in a barn, with no place for them in the Inn. They got a man who came in peace and spent his time wandering from town to town with misfits and outcasts, befuddling the religious and political leaders, a King who would rather die than be the warrior so many wanted. Christmas is the ultimate demonstration of God's imagination, how it continues to dwarf ours, and thankfully so.
And so what is best for us (and for me) is to wait, to wait patiently with eyes open for how God will choose to be revealed in our lives. We might best spend our time trying to get rid of those preconceived notions about what we need, what we're waiting for, what we want. What I need, what I'm truly waiting for, what I want, only God knows. My hope is that I am awake when it comes, to wonder at how great and beautiful and imaginative it is, to be awestruck by how much better it is than anything I could have imagined or planned for myself, and to give thanks for it. Whatever it is I'm waiting for, or what we're waiting for as the Church, as a country, as a world, God is working it. It is most certainly not what we think we are waiting for, God is simply too creative to be pinned down in such a way. God grant us the humility to resist giving God orders for what we want or need, and marvel at what we find in the manger instead. Merry Christmas.