Luke 21:25-36, from First Sunday of Advent.
What a jarring way to kick off the Christmas season, eh?
Here we are all primed for stars and angels and shepherds and wise men and Mary and Joseph and “the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And yet the story starts this Sunday with that babe, all grown up, sitting on a hill mere hours before his execution and describing the end of the world in violence, cataclysm and panic.
We wish you an apocalyptic Christmas.
Don’t worry. All the merry, cozy, twinkly stuff is still coming. Truth is, we’ve been awash in it since before Thanksgiving, haven’t we? This week’s readings aren’t about depriving you of all that. Nor are they about shaming you for enjoying it. They are about reminding you why it matters so much.
Christmas is holy time and sacred space. And well it should be. But one of the things I love most about Christianity is its utter lack of fussiness about admission to such times and spaces. Yes, plenty of churches will expect you to dress up on the outside and at least pretend to clean up on the inside before arriving at one of their Christmas services. But Christianity itself has no such expectations.
Quite the opposite, Christianity urges you to come as you are, with your dirty, rumpled clothes and equally dirty, rumpled life, be you a tax collector like Matthew, an ignorant fisherman like Peter, a doubter like Thomas, or even a traitor like Judas. Come as you are, Christianity says, and bring your violent, panicked, falling-apart-at-the-seams world with you, because Christmas isn’t nearly as much about your coming to God as it is about God’s coming to you, and coming to you not in spite of your mess but because of it.
It’s easy to get the idea that there’s no place for you by the manger until you can make yourself as happy and peaceful as the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph all seem to be. Make no mistake, though. The manger lies in the world Jesus described that evening on the Mount of Olives. He knew all about that world before he came. Knew all about you, too. And yet he came anyway, came and laid down his life both for it and for you. The adorers around the manger aren’t smiling in bliss. They’re smiling because their redemption is drawing near. So lift up your head. Yours is drawing near, too.
Next week: Second Sunday of Advent
