Christmas Without Edges

When I was a teacher,  I asked some form of this question to my students each year before Christmas: 

“In my neighborhood of 200 or so homes, there are 5-6 homes with Christian decorations out front, and well over 100 homes with lights, Santa’s, reindeer and other inflatables. Roughly 80% of all Americans would say they are Christian.  Why, then, do you think we’re so reluctant to profess that faith at Christmas time? “

“People don’t want to be preachy,” they tell me.  “Yeah, they don’t want to come off as better than their neighbors,” another says.  “I think it creates awkwardness,” says another, “better to play it safe.” 

I’m pretty sure my students are correct. We don’t want to imply that we’re more religious than our neighbors, so we opt for the lowest common denominator, choosing instead to celebrate fictional children’s stories:  large blowups of Frosty the Snowman, or Santa riding in his sleigh, or Rudolph grazing with other reindeer. 

I’m not a killjoy! I’ve raised four children, and when they were young, part of our Christmas tradition was to drive around neighborhoods, oohing and aahing at the lights, “rating” who put on the best “show.” 

But at the same time, we're in danger of losing something precious, aren't we? By not celebrating the Christian story explicitly, by reducing our Christmas decorations to those which give least offense, I fear we’re losing the sharp edges of Christmas that make it such a compelling story-- full of human emotion, irony and beauty. And if we rub down these sharp edges, what’s left?  

Consider what the gospels tell us. Mary and Joseph are compelled to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem for reasons of the census, with Mary soon to give birth. That’s a distance of 90 miles, by donkey, which would likely take three, maybe four days. We don’t know Mary’s exact age—Scripture says a “young virgin”—but at that time girls were often married  just after menstruation, so scholars believe Mary was likely on the younger side of the teenage years. In her ninth month, she would have been terribly uncomfortable on that trip, terrified at the prospect of her first birth like all mothers, and undoubtedly cranky. If Joseph was the typical husband of his day, he'd have been about 19-20 years old (not the older man that some Christian artists depict). He would also be weary from the trip, worried for his wife, uncertain of himself, frantic at not finding a suitable place for the birth. He must have felt like a lousy provider. 

And what about that stable? Perhaps because of the influence of Christmas carols like “Silent Night,” we tend to imagine the stable animals as quiet, docile things, staring lovingly at the newborn, glow in the dark, Christ-child. But surely it was a horrible racket of nay-ing horses, baa-ing sheep and bleating goats! New mothers and newborns need sleep, so this was a terrible state of affairs! Mary must have been utterly exhausted. Our carols talk about the “sweet smelling hay.”  Well, there was certainly a smell, but it would have been from animal manure, the stench of which can be overwhelming.

Forgetting all this, we miss the great irony of Christmas: the angels proclaiming to the shepherds, “Glory to God in the Highest!”  and “A savior has been born, who is Christ, the Lord!” Might they have imagined a great king, born of a royal household? Instead they find a much lowlier state of affairs: the newborn infant of a peasant carpenter and mother, lying in a feeding trough. Did the manger still have remnants of the slop fed to the animals? If not, I’m sure it retained the odor. 

And what of the warning that Joseph and Mary had to smuggle Jesus out of Bethlehem to Egypt, to avoid the murderous intent of Herod? That reads more like a spy novel than a sweet children’s tale.

We do this often to the gospels, which have become so familiar to us that we miss the human element—the "hooks" that grab us. We’ve reduced the cross, for example, to jewelry, forgetting the brutality of ancient crucifixions. When I speak to students about crucifixion, I point out that Rome maximized its deterrent effect, first by forcing the crucified person to carry the upper beam through public streets, then by humiliating him by stripping him naked, and then by prolonging his death on the cross for 2, 3 or 4 days, expertly avoiding the major arteries when hammering in the nails. The crucified person would eventually die of suffocation, too weak to push up with his legs to regain his breath. "Death by crucifixion was so excruciatingly painful," I remind them, "that breaking the legs of the crucified with a sledge hammer to hasten suffocation was considered an act of mercy."

One student, after listening to tall this, asked “Mr. Weber, all this Christian fascination with Jesus’ death, isn’t it, well, a little morbid? If Jesus had come today, would Christians 2,000 years from now be wearing little electric chairs or syringes around their necks?”  “Yes! Exactly so!” I said, delighted. Such was the cross regarded in its day. But morbid? No. In fact the opposite: the cross becomes the instrument for our salvation. 

And so, my prayer for all of us this Christmas is that we are “snagged” once again by the jagged edges of the gospel, so that in our celebration of Christmas,  we're brought back to the foot of the crib, filled with awe and gratitude.

He is Emmanuel, "God with us!" Come, let us worship him! 

Merry Christmas. 

Waiting!

We are in the middle of Advent. The word “advent” means “coming,” and of course, it’s a reference to the coming of Christ at Christmas. So over the next four weeks, we await the coming of Christ.

We’re not very good at waiting. We want everything immediately! Think about it: The fast food industry has exploded in the last thirty years because people want their food quickly, and don’t have the time or patience to cook it at home. We have fast food drive-through lines because it’s "way too much work" to park the car, walk several feet and stand in line to order. And even with drive-through lines, if you’re like me, you become impatient if the line is not moving quickly enough! Now we have Dash and UberEats, which delivers food right to our door. 

In this digital world of ours,  information can be shared instantly, which is fantastic on one level, but dangerous on another, as it’s too easy to text someone when we’re angry at him or her,  before we’ve given ourselves a chance to cool down. We have overnight printing, overnight mailing, instant food, microwave ovens—all things that allow us to get what we want now, without waiting. If we want something and can’t afford it, no need to wait and save for it—we have credit cards! The average American adult has an alarming nine open credit card accounts and carries an average debt on those cards of $8,000.  The T-Mobile song says "I want it all. I want it all. I want it all, and I want it NOW!"

So it’s hard for us to wait for Christmas—we hardly wait for anything else. Stores are already in the full court press, pushing us to get all our Christmas shopping done. I was in a local store in October, before Halloween, and they were already playing Christmas carols.  So in Church we’re singing “O Come O Come Emmanuel” but everywhere we go we’re hearing “Joy to the World, the Lord has Come. “

I want to suggest two simple things we can all do that may help us step back from the helter-skelter world of the instant, the “now” that we all live in—two things that might help us better focus on the event we will celebrate on December 25 and thus help us have a better Advent.

The first is this: Nothing helps us tune into the true “reason for the season” better than helping other people.  There’s not a better time to do it. The Christmas season is a very lonely time for many elderly, as they miss their spouses who have died, or perhaps their children who don’t visit them enough.  Do you have an elderly grandparent or other relative? Visit them--just you. Ask your mom and Dad if they can drop you off and pick you up. It'll make a world of difference to them. What about another older relative? An aunt? A great aunt? What about an elderly neighbor? You showing an interest in them will have a huge impact.   Be there for them! 

You know, it’s pretty common that we, too, can get depressed or start feeling blue at this time of year, and our tendency is to say to ourselves, “I need some time for myself”, some “me time” but that’s exactly backwards. The best way to get us out of our funk is to focus on the needs of others, to make others happy. This is a great time of year to do it.

My second suggestion to get us ready for Christmas, to help us more fully appreciate this Advent season, is to spend about 10 minutes/day in prayer, asking God to lead you, bringing your worries before him, seeking him for guidance on decisions you must make about friends and personal issues. God accepts all styles of prayer!  We just need to turn off our cell phones, thank God for all he's done for us, and then bring our worries and prayers to him.  We don’t lean enough on God—but unless we lean, we cannot feel him pushing back, holding us up. And so we put all this pressure on ourselves to make good grades, go to the right high school, worrying about what people think about us, instead of sharing those worries with God and asking him to help us.

If we go outside of ourselves to help others, if we pray and lean on God during these next few weeks, I think we’ll find this Advent season, this time of waiting, will help prepare us more fully for the most important event in human history. 

May we use our time well.

The Abortion Issue: Better Listening to Each Other

We don’t debate important social issues very well in our country. The abortion “debate” has been more like two deaf people shouting at each other for fifty years.

Productive discussions begin with better listening. 

Yes, pregnancy affects women in deep and profound ways—in ways that we men can never fully understand. I watched my wife through the pregnancies of our four children, saw the physical changes she went through—but more than that, the emotional and psychological impact they had on her. One day, she’d have morning sickness, feeling nauseous much of the day. But on another day, she was radiant with joy, bonding with the life within her, at peace. 

Abortion is indeed an important social issue, but let us never forget that pregnancy is first an issue that impacts women and their bodies, as the pro-abortion side likes to remind us.  Respect for women, respect for their privacy, respect for the idea that women are in all sorts of different situations at the time they become pregnant—some in loving relationships, some in abusive relationships, some in no relationships at all, left to bear the burden of their pregnancy alone— respecting these realities are a precondition for any sober, serious debate of the issue, and certainly preconditions for any truly Christian debate on abortion. Women have inherent dignity, and that dignity must be honored. 

On the other hand, those inclined to support abortion must also listen. The issue is not exclusively one of a woman’s privacy. That which is growing within a mother’s womb  is not an appendix, a lung, or some other appendage of the woman, but a distinct human life, with a DNA distinct from its mother, with its own heart beat, it’s own blood type, its own wonderfully mysterious combination of its mother and father. No just society, no civilization founded on the belief that we possess “unalienable rights,  among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” can credibly give anyone else the right to terminate that life, including the mother, any more than a society can confer on parents the right to abuse their own children after birth. Both the mother AND the child have inherent dignity, and we cannot advance the cause of one at the expense of the other. 

In the end, of course, I am against abortion—it does violence to children. In saying so,  I know that a significant number of my fellow citizens will disagree with me.  So is that where our discussion ends? 

I don’t think so. Perhaps we will always disagree about the legality of abortion, but cannot we agree on building a culture where the idea of abortion is (almost) unthinkable? 

Can we insist upon a culture, for example, that truly recognizes the equal dignity of women? That prioritizes equal pay for equal work? That insists upon appropriate maternity leave and family friendly employment policies, so that women who become pregnant are not tempted to consider abortion a necessary choice? Can we not prosecute deadbeat fathers who renege on their responsibilities to help raise their children? Can we not reject a porn industry that profits from objectifying women purely to serve men’s pleasure? Can we not muster enough outrage over international sex trafficking, and punish countries through our trade practices  that tacitly tolerate it? Regardless of one’s position on abortion, can we not say, loudly, ENOUGH! 

And where women find themselves in crisis pregnancies, can we not pour out resources on her and her child, making sure she receives proper pre-natal care, that she is able to complete her education, that she is supported after her child’s birth, both financially and socially, surrounded by loving communities, rather having to endure the scorn and judgment of others, isolated?

And cannot both sides acknowledge the wonder and beauty of children, and especially babies? There is a reason, after all, that when a mother brings her baby into a room full of people, that everyone in that room stops what they’re doing, and goo-goos and gaga’s with that baby! Children make us smile, and remind us that God still has hope for the human race! Can not we regard children as they truly are—a magnificent gift from God?  Can we stop with our insulting comments to parents with many children (Hey, you know how that happens, right? huh huh)? Can we stop joking with expectant parents that their lives are now “over”? 

Whatever side of the aisle, anti-abortion or pro-abortion, we can work together on these kinds of social reforms. If we do, we can build a culture in our states where abortion seems less and less necessary.  

Is it polly-annish idealism to suggest as much? Well, certainly, there is a lot of insincerity on this issue, particularly those who profit from it, or political operatives who use this issue to manipulate votes. I don’t hold out much hope for reconciliation with them! 

But among the rest of us—those who have sincerely held beliefs about women, about children, about a more just society—I believe these are worthwhile goals to work toward.