Christmas Once Again

 

Christmas decorations have been up long before Thanksgiving. Stores, malls, and some radio stations play nonstop Christmas carols. People spend money they can’t afford on presents that neither are needed nor wanted. Children get all excited about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is coming to Town. Stores sell make-believe crèches and the Hallmark Virgin. Yet, for all our efforts, we’ve never managed to ruin it. That in itself is part of the miracle.

Growing up on the farm, Christmas Eve was just like any other day since the animals still needed to be cared for, cows needed to be milked and chicken eggs needed to be gathered. As one went about cleaning the places where they were sheltered from the cold, the animals eagerly waited for their food. Hay had been gathered during the summer and now was brought to the manager for the cows to eat. In the midst of the puffs of the animal’s breath as they chewed the hay, I could only imagine what that first Christmas was like for Mary and Joseph. In the winter darkness, among the smell of the hay and the sound of the animals eating, they laid Him in the manager. Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion.

The Word became flesh. The Ultimate Mystery born as a babe in the manger. In a word it was called the “Incarnation.” Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space was visible to shepherds and Wise Men, and time was split apart. We can only be awed by the thought that this was, “God of God, Light of Light, and very God of very God–who for us and for our salvation,”as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.” Came down: It is the Resurrection and the Life Mary holds in her arms, and because of that our lives are forever changed. This is that Good News that we never grow tired of hearing, “For to you a Savior is born!”

With Christmas Joy,

Pastor Qualley