Still Waiting

I was sitting in a hospital room with a friend on Friday and one of his doctors came in and talked to us for a minute, about mostly non-medical stuff, it was just a sort of check in to see how he was doing.  The doctor is a very pleasant lady of either Indian or Pakistani descent.  As she was leaving, my friend said, "Merry Christmas," and she replied in kind, and then (she knew I was a pastor from our earlier conversation) said, "I don't celebrate it for religious reasons, but I still do for cultural reasons, I get gifts for my two daughters and we have fun."

We then proceeded to talk about the challenges of buying gifts for kids as they grow up, adolescents being particularly challenging at times.  I did not jump in with any sort of religious response and honestly did not feel the need to do so.  This was an exercise in practical pluralism, and in no small way a testament to the rather interesting and peculiar world we find ourselves living in.

The doctor was a very nice person, most likely Hindu, but probably fairly non-observant of her religious traditions (just a guess).  She is probably one of those people that the cultural observers like to call the "nones." Yes, Virginia, they come from other religions besides Christianity.  Judaism has dealt with this reality for decades (if not centuries) people for whom their religious identity is more or less something they claim on paper and do absolutely nothing about.  Christianity has fairly recently noticed it and put on a poor simulation of shock.

I have decided not to let this sort of thing ruin my Christmas.  In fact, I'm going to wrap my arms around it and thank God for the grace to be a part of this radical thing that takes place in plain sight, for all to see.

I'm still probably going to get a little tweaked about all the commercialism, and maybe I'll make some snide comments about how none of this stuff has anything to do with Jesus, but in the final analysis, I'm just going to go along with the Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays, or whatever you want to say, because in my heart I'm still waiting for the return of Christ and this gives me something to do in the meantime.

I'm going to be nice to people who honor the birth of my Lord, whether they can follow Anselm's explanation of the Incarnation or not.  If nothing else, the story of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, indeed perhaps his whole life, shows us that God has a way of flying under the radar.

A long time ago, I realized that there were a lot of people you only see at Church on Christmas Eve.  Sometimes that bothers me, because I know there's a lot more to following Jesus than just showing up once or twice a year, and I mean that in the most non-judgmental sort of way.  Honestly, if you can form yourself into the image of Jesus Christ with semiannual visitation and worship, more power to you.  I cannot, it's much more difficult for me.  I need a lot more of the Scripture than a few stories, I need more of the Gospels than just the beginning and the end.  I'm not capable of saying I truly love God enough to just sort of coast along for 98 percent of the time and hope I'll be renewed in an hour.

I understand that I get to be a bit of a bummer during this season.  You know how you get when you have to sit in the doctor's office or at the motor vehicle administration?  That's pretty much what Advent is like for me, and to make matters worse everyone else seems to want to have parties about how great the expired magazines are and talk about how whatever happens at the end of this is going to change everything.

The plain and simple fact is that, at the end of this, nothing's going to change for most of the people who hear this old story one more time.  There are going to be hundreds of thousands of people who will go to church on Christmas Eve, and most of them will not "get it" in the least.

Such people have always been the witnesses to the birth of the Messiah, random shepherds from the fields who came and praised God for a minute, but then went along their way and back to life as usual with nothing more than a neat story that will probably be disbelieved by most.  Wise men from the east, who followed an astronomical phenomenon foretold in their pagan sacred writings (very possibly, Hindu or Zoroastrian), but we have no evidence that anything ever came of what they saw or what they reported when they got home.

I believe that God changes the world when Jesus is born, but it happens in such a way that world never really notices it.  I guess I'm still waiting, not for God, but for the world to notice.

I think that I have gotten that wrong.  I think that God doesn't and never has needed us to notice what God is doing.  God invites us to notice this miracle, but does not shout at us.  I confess that I sometimes give in to the temptation of pride and maybe even wrath when it comes to "defending" the true meaning of Christmas, because I'm still waiting for that miracle to come.  I still need to have God change my heart too.  I need to notice that God is trying to be born in my life every day of the year, and not just on December 25.