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Okay, technically this isn’t a “Christmas” article since its being posted after the 25th. So let’s call it a “Christmas Spirit” piece. After all, we do hope that the meaning of the Nativity extends past the day, don’t we?
I’m going to stick with using a Christmas carol to anchor this piece as well. I find it hard to imagine, but the original tune to George Wesley’s Hark the Herald Angels Sing was apparently quite slow and solemn. The current music, composed by Felix Mendelssohn a hundred years after the words were written, seems so appropriate since, to me at least, it makes the hymn seem so upbeat and uplifting. I mention it simply to as a reminder that some of the things we consider to be “permanent” parts of Christianity are anything but.
For example, there are those, I’m sure, who find the triumphalism of some of Wesley’s lyrics unpalatable. Remember, though, that he was writing nearly two hundred and seventy five years ago. It was a time of empires and kings and seemingly unlimited global economic expansion. It’s to be completely expected that the Wesleys and many others thought of God in the same terms.
What’s fascinating to me is that in spite of it all, the message of compassion and love and interconnectedness represented by the Nativity still shines through.
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
hail th’ incarnate Deity,
pleased with us in flesh to dwell,
Jesus, our Emmanuel.
A Light in the Darkness indeed.
The Wesleys were leaders of the Methodist movement. Methodists established shelters, schools, hospitals, soup kitchens and engaged in other activities that today we would call “social outreach.”
While they may have believed that Christ was born that we no more may die, they also weren’t sitting around waiting for Jesus to come back, trounce the bad guys and set the world right. They understood that for there to be peace on earth, and mercy mild, they themselves needed to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. “God and sinners” would be “reconciled” when they accepted their own responsibility to act at one with the rest of Creation and not to put their own self-interest ahead of everyone and everything else.
That understanding of reconciliation came back to me while watching the news on Christmas Day. Without the daily stream of opposing political opinions trying to get their thirty second sound bite on ahead of everyone else’s every thirty minutes, the news channels were free to look for something else to fill the void.
Turns out it wasn’t all that hard.
There were plenty of real people doing real service by spending at least part of their Christmas helping others. Whether it was serving Christmas dinner in a soup kitchen or visiting with someone in a nursing home or hospital or reaching out in some other way, there was no shortage of evidence that, religious or not, people felt the Presence of God.
And more importantly …
… they responded.
“Strange isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many lives.” – Clarence, angel second class, to George Bailey – It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946
As we’ve said before, no metaphor is perfect. However, my own experience as a parent is that I have never felt more “connected” to my children’s’ mothers or to the world than when I first saw and held each of my offspring as newborns.
I feel the same way about Creation every Christmas.
Light and life to all he brings,
The Nativity isn’t really about God’s action in “becoming” a baby. What, after all, does any baby do simply by being born?
It’s our reaction to that birth that’s the measure of how effective it is.
Whether it’s our own children …
Or the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
May your Christmas have been joyful. And may every day following be full of meaning, peace, and purpose.
