Christmas Spirit Year Round Christmas Eve 2021
We come from Love. We return to Love. And Love is all
around. For God is Love.
“I was asked to contribute to an Advent booklet of daily
meditations,” said Nancy, as we stood in Clark’s Ace Hardware in Ellicott City.
When she’s not holding down the front desk at Fairhaven, a Life Care community,
she works at Clark’s part-time. The Advent booklet is for the residents at
Fairhaven where she welcomes visitors, distributes packages and mail that does
not fit into the resident’s mailboxes, answers the phone, and other duties as
assigned. When my mother lived there Nancy and my mother were best friends.
Nancy would make sure the dining room knew that my mother would not be coming
down – ever. And Nancy was interested in my mother’s presentations on art, art
history and architecture, as she had done on behalf of the Art Institute of
Chicago where she was a volunteer and had at one time been a student in the
museum’s art school. Nancy does anything and everything for all the residents at
Fairhaven – a true model of God’s love for others – all others. She is the Love
that is all around.
“So, I was given the story of the Angels appearing to the
shepherds for December 24th,” said Nancy. “I thought I would try
something new, putting a modern look on it. When they are told to leave their
flock and go see the baby in Bethlehem, they start asking themselves things
like: ‘What kind of gift should we bring? It’s got to be better than any other
baby gifts. And who has a credit card that’s not maxed out?’ Some of the
residents read the whole booklet at once and stopped by to tell me how much
they enjoyed a fresh look at how the birth of the Christ child might take place
today!”
I can see them now: seasonal farm workers leaving the
fields, piling into their Ford F-150 with 286,000 miles on it, heading into
Bethlehem to find a working ATM machine. Then it’s off to the nearest Safeway
to purchase some gift cards and anything else that the first-time parents Mary
and Joseph might need. It being Christmastime the check-out lines were long and
moving slowly. Finally, they are only two shoppers from check out when it
happens. Later, the baby they were going to honor would turn their miracle into
a parable.
“The Kingdom of God is like four seasonal workers standing
in line, waiting to purchase some much-needed groceries, when a man at the head
of the line turns and asks, ‘Does anyone in line have a Safeway shopper’s card
and use the gas points?’ We do, they say, and hold up a red card. The man then
proceeds to check out over $400 dollars of gift cards and other items, putting
all those gas points on their card! That was enough for them to drive home to
Guatemala and back for the holidays to see their families. They were beside
themselves with gratitude and thanksgiving, tears rolling down their faces,
thanking the man over and over again. How faithfully did this man’s generosity
reflect the Love of the Christ child – the Love that is all around?”
Actually, that just happened to me at the Enchanted Forest
Safeway in Ellicott City. Talk about enchanted! The Spirit of Christmas breaks
in on us when we least expect it.
Back to Nancy. She then told me that several Christmases ago,
she was walking through Clark’s Ace Hardware and noticed something strange with
the Creche that was on display. In the manger, instead of a Baby Jesus was a
lamb. Who would put a lamb in the manger, she thought to herself? When she
found whoever set it up, he told her that there was no Baby Jesus in the box so
he put the lamb in there instead. She then went through every box of the
Creches and so it was: no Baby Jesus, only lambs! “Someone in the factory had only
one job,” said Nancy, “to put Baby Jesus in the box with the rest of the
Nativity characters and failed to do it. And someone else had one job to
inspect the boxes before they left for Ace Hardware stores all across America.
What an incredible fail!” We laughed about it.
Later I had two thoughts about the case of the missing Baby
Jesus. First, I recalled that John the Baptizer in John’s Gospel is forever
pointing to Jesus down by the River Jordan and telling anyone who would listen,
“Behold, the Lamb of God!” He points to the end of the story of Jesus where,
unlike the other three gospels, Jesus is crucified on the day of preparation
for the Passover – the day the Paschal Lambs are slaughtered, to re-enact the
night the slaves in Egypt used the Blood of the Lamb over their door posts to
save them from the Angel of Death. Jesus, suggests John, is the Paschal Lamb whose
body and blood saves us all.
Which points to the second truth of the Incarnation of God
in man who comes to dwell among us: the wood of the manger is the hard wood of
the cross. That is, he came into our world a fully formed human baby, with all
the vulnerabilities and dangers, as well as the joys and love of human life as
we all live it and know it. He would grow up to give us one single commandment:
to love one another as God in Christ loves us; to love God, love neighbor, and
to love ourselves. That’s it. Like the two people in the factory who had only
one job, to put Baby Jesus in the box, we are given one single job: to Love.
I started reading a book by John Pavlovitz, an Evangelical
Pastor, blogger, speaker, and hilarious proclaimer of the Good News of Jesus
Christ. In a new, book John writes, “As a long time Christian, by aspiration
(if not always in practice), I often envision an exasperated Jesus coming back,
and the first words out of his mouth to his followers as his feet hit the
pavement being, ‘You had one job: Love. So, what happened?’ I wonder what
massive wave of excuses and rationalizations would come flooding from the
mouths of the faithful multitude in front of him, how they might justify their
mistreatment of the assailed humanity in their care, the verbal and theological
gymnastics they’d attempt to avoid culpability for their cruelty.”[i]
That made me think that perhaps a lamb in the manger is just
right. The Lamb of God who left us with only one job the night before he died,
as we all will one day: Love. People like my friend Nancy and the man I had
never seen or met before at the Safeway got it. They know how to Love others as
effortlessly as a fish breathes under water. So does my friend Pamela Pruitt,
who at an Advent workshop I recently led wrote a poem that pretty well sums up
why it is each year we gather on this night to remember who we are and whose we
are. So that we can begin again to tackle the one job Christ left for us all:
Love.
Hymns
If
Jesus is born
Again
Each
year
At
Christmas time,
He
never
Grows
old
Like
the rest
Of us;
He does
not
Need to
learn
Our
lessons.
But,
He
allows us
To sing
His
songs
.At our
leisure,
Until
We know
All the
words
By heart.
- Pamela Pruitt, Dec. 4, 2021
We come from Love. We return to Love. And Love is all around. That third one is
us. We are created to be the Love that is all around. This is the heart of
Christm
That’s it. Three points and a poem. In the immortal words of
Charles Dickens’s Tiny Tim, “God bless us, everyone.” Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a Good Night!
Amen.
[i]
John Pavlovitz, If God is Love Don’t Be a Jerk, Westminster John Knox
Press, p.2. The book is subtitled, Finding a Faith that Makes Us Better
Humans.
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