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Christmas as a Wake Up Call

 

            Those who know me know the Christmas season is not my favorite.  Having confessed that, however, does not mean I have problems with Jesus or his birth.  Since I am convinced Jesus was fully human, he had to be born.  I would like to think he was fully human in every sense.  But the Christmas season as our American culture deals with it is much more than the story of the birth of a baby in Bethlehem.  In fact, almost no Christmas advertisement I hear references that birth at all.  The Christmas culture, as I like to call it, is not selling a baby or a savior figure. 

            I would even be fine if we limited the Christmas season to the four weeks of Advent.  Because Quakers are not liturgical literate, I really did not know what Advent even meant.  But with some education and good friends who are liturgical, I now know quite a bit!  I like Advent.  I appreciate the church’s sense of preparation that Advent represents.  Four weeks is a good way to get ready for a significant event. 

But our Christmas culture begins sometime in October!  I can always tell it has begun when my favorite radio stations start playing the Christmas songs.  I should not be disgusted with Christmas music by Thanksgiving, but such is life in America for me. Some of my family think I am just a grinch.  I don’t think that is fair.  I simply want the appropriate focus.

And what is the appropriate focus?  Actually, I don’t think the original focus of Christmas was the baby Jesus.  Again having said that does not dismiss the birth.  I have faith that was very real.  I also am aware only two of the four gospels tells the birth story.  Mark’s gospel begins with John the Baptist, the baptism of Jesus and the time in the desert.  John’s gospel begins with the recounting of the Genesis creation story and then underscores the dramatic act of God become human.  We are told that God became human and dwelt among us.  This we call the incarnation.

For me Christmas is the incarnation---God becoming human.  Of course, the incarnation is Jesus.  But it is also us---not in the same form, but in reality to be sure.  The incarnation is the core Christmas story for me.  If we know some Christian history, we know that Christmas as a focus on the baby did not really play a significant role until the medieval period.  Much of this comes with the figure of St Francis, one of my very favorites.  Until then, the incarnation plays the key role.

All this was in my mind when I read a recent piece by Richard Rohr, a contemporary Franciscan, as he quotes some words from Ilia Delio, also a Franciscan and friend of mine.  Reflecting on Advent, Delio says, “We’re called to awaken to what’s already in our midst…”  I appreciate her invitation.  I see it as an invitation to awaken from the illusion of so much of our contemporary culture and really see---see what’s already in our midst. 

Delio then adds these thoughts about the meaning of Advent.  “I think Advent is a coming to a new consciousness of God, you know, already loving us into something new, into something more whole, that we’re not in a sense waiting for what’s not there; we’re in a sense to be attending to what’s already there.”  I find this compelling.  To see Advent as coming to a new consciousness of God is quite the gift!

The gift is to realize we are being loved into something new and something whole.  In this sense Advent prepares us for the Christmas gift of new life---something we can have now or, perhaps better, already have now, if we will wake up.  And that is exactly where Delio goes with this.

She notes, “But the other part I think is that we can think of Advent as God waiting for us to wake up! You know, as if we’re asleep in the manger, not Jesus! Jesus is alive in our midst…”. This is an amazing passage.  Suddenly, we are the babes in the manger, not in place of Jesus, but alongside of him.  Just as God became human in Jesus, God comes into each of us human beings.  It is indeed a gift---a gift of an amazing life.

Delio concludes her thinking with these words.  “What if we’re in the manger and God is already awakened in our midst and we’re so fallen asleep, we’re so unconsciously asleep that God is sort of looking for “someone [to] get up and help bring the gifts into the world?”  At Christmas God comes looking for me and for you.  Am I unconsciously asleep?  I confess that I probably am.  Maybe my earlier words about Christmas are the words of a guy unconsciously asleep. 

If I can wake up, then I can join God and all the others and help bring gifts to the world.  If I can wake up, that is a miracle.  Christmas is full of miracles.  And if I can become that miracle, then I get a mission: to brings gifts to the world.  Wake up!  I am ready.  I am ready to become a miracle on a mission.

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