Christmastide Musings
A stable lamp is lighted whose glow shall wake the sky;
The stars shall bend their voices, and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry and straw like gold shall shine!
A barn shall harbor heaven, a stall become a shrine.
Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
Do I mean it?
As usual, believers were faced with many familiar distractions this Christmas. Once again, retailers bombarded us with the lie that we can spend our way to happiness. Family gatherings provoked some stress and strain. Therapists warned us about the physical, emotional, and financial overload this season can cause. And, of course, the ever present and greatest obstacle to authentic Christmas faith: Sentimentality! These distractions, though, are mere child's play compared to a far more fundamental stumbling block to authentic faith - the stupendous Christmas claim itself, that "God is in Christ reconciling the entire universe to himself" (2 Corinthians 5:19). Authentic faith requires genuine astonishment; a "second naiveté" as the French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) once put it. Do we dare?
Another philosopher, Canadian Charles M. Taylor (b. 1931), once heard Mother Theresa of Calcutta explain why she served the poor. She often complained, "people say we're social workers. We're not social workers! We're Christians who worship Jesus as Lord and therefore serve people made in the image of God." As a practicing Roman Catholic, Taylor thought to himself: "I could have said that too!" but, upon further reflection, he wondered,
"Could I have meant it?" (emphasis his). It's easy to recite the Creed, especially at Christmas, yet how casually do we make our Christmas confession? With Taylor, I ask myself; "do I mean it?"
In her book Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982), Annie Dillard writes, "Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are like children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT. . .! It is madness to wear straw and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets! Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews! For the sleeping God may awake someday and take offense, or the waking God may draw us to where we can never return."
England's Poet Laureate John Betjeman (1906-1984) was a practicing Anglican, who also held his confessional feet to the intellectual fire. In the first five stanzas of his poem "Christmas" Betjeman describes "sweet and silly Christmas things" like saying, "doesn't the church looks nice," and "hideous" gifts like bath salts and cheap perfume. Then, in the last three stanzas, he ups the ante about as high as it can go:
And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?
And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,
No love that in a family dwells,
No caroling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
Here, I'm reminded of British novelist, Julian Barnes, who, upon admitting that he doesn't believe in God, still misses him! As we await "God's return in power and glory to judge the earth," I find myself feeling the same!
This week many of us will sing the old (and anonymous) Latin Christmas carol "Good Christians all Rejoice" with its words, "Ox and ass before him bow, and he is in the manger now; Christ is born today! Christ is born today!" But none of the gospels ever mention animals at the manger. How did they enter the story and what do they signify?
The earliest mention of animals at the nativity is the apocryphal Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew from the eighth century: "On the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable, placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet Isaiah, 'The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's crib.' Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass, with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying, 'Between two animals you are made manifest.'" St. Francis of Assisi gets much credit for creating the first manger scene with live animals sometime in the 11th Century, and even more interesting is a Christian sarcophagus from 4th Century Rome depicting an ox and ass worshipping the Christ Child. So by the 16th Century it's hard to find a manger scene without them.
The silent witness of these brute animals challenges us to make our own confession this year, and with Charles Taylor to wonder whether we "really mean it." When all is said and done, the "meaning of it" looks rather more common and ordinary than we might think. Amidst life's atrocities, natural disasters, wars among nations and rage within families and churches, abuses of power, greed, lust, and the sort of garden variety gossip and rumor-mongering that fuels many people's daily lives, Jesus is born, again and again! Subsequently, he is tried, crucified, buried and resurrected again, and again, and again! All of the human voices, all of the easy speeches; all fall upon deaf ears unless our hearts are broken and our minds changed. God loves us too much to allow "cheap grace" and sentimentality to rule Christmas! God is here to stay, and "means it!"
My prayer this Christmas, and for all the years left to me on earth, is that I may be one of those stones, and mean it! Richard Wilbur's hauntingly beautiful Carol says is best:
But now as at the ending, the low is lifted high;
The stars shall bend their voices and every stone shall cry.
And every stone shall cry in praises of the child
By whose descent among us the worlds are reconciled.
