God's steady pace at Christmas. . . by Luke Bouman

I am thankful for the opportunity to blog with the by the way community for Christmas this year. I am a longtime friend and mostly silent participant in the conversations of the community. I appreciate the challenges and joys of being in a community of conversation and deliberation. I am humbled by this opportunity to have my words be discussion and thought starters this holiday season.

I was re-reading an old book that has been in my family’s library for years. It is called “Children’s Letters to God” and it was collected and compiled by the editors in 1966. For something that is decades old, the questions and the comments of these children are fresh, amazingly deep and complex for their sources. One of them in particular grabbed my attention as I thought about this blog entry for Christmas. It goes something like this:

Dear God,
Are you real? Some people don’t believe it! If you are, you’d better do something quick.
Love,
Harriet Anne

I suspect this question is on many adult minds as well, especially given the state of the world. The “great recession” has many families wondering what the next year will bring. Threats from war and terror have a whole world on edge. I wonder if Christmas, as it approaches, offers people simply a distraction from all of this bad news? Or are we distracting ourselves because God doesn’t seem to be real any more? I am especially reminded of this possibility as I hear Christmas music blaring from any number of sources. The song, “We need a little Christmas,” seems to be getting more play than usual. This song about the rush to decorate, from the Broadway musical Mame, talks about our need for something to cheer us up. The lyrics are printed below:

Mame:
Haul out the holly;
Put up the tree before my spirit falls again.
Fill up the stocking,
I may be rushing things, but deck the halls again now.
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute.
It hasn't snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry;
So climb down the chimney;
Put up the brightest string of lights I've ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
All:
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.
Mame:
Haul out the holly;
Well, once I taught you all to live each living day.
All:
Fill up the stocking,
Young Patrick:
But Auntie Man, it's one week from Thanksgiving Day now.
All:
But we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
Yes, we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute.
Agnes:
hasn't snowed a single flurry,
But Santa, dear, we're in a hurry;
Ito:
So climb down the chimney;
Put up the brightest string of lights I've ever seen.
All:
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.
For we need a little music,
Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter,
And we need a little snappy
"Happy ever after,"
Need a little Christmas now.
Need a little Christmas now.

I think it’s clear that our culture seems in a hurry these days. We have little patience to wait for much of anything. We join Harriet Anne imploring God to do something quick.

Now, read the Christmas Story, keeping Harriet's request in mind. If you don’t have a Bible handy you can find the story here:  Luke 2:1-20

If there is one thing that strikes me about this story this year is that this is a story about a God who is definitely not in a hurry. God is not doing “something quick” at all. God is acting deliberately, slowly. This story unfolds more than 500 years after the prophets first recorded the promise of God’s gift of a Messiah. As opposed to the Greek gods, God does not inhabit an adult human form, but instead comes into the world as we do, born as a child. This one who is born will first need to learn to walk and talk, to eat and play and grow. This plan is nine months of incubation, twelve years to come of age, eighteen more before ministry begins. This plan is painfully slow, from our perspective.

But the slowness of it is not the only surprise. The fact that it lacks a certain, shall we say, conventional “star power” is also striking. This birth seems to indicate anything but royalty. The place is a simple animal enclosure, not a palace. The announcement is grand enough, but it is to shepherds (folks who were at the bottom of the religious barrel) not to priests and upright worshipers in the big deal town of Jerusalem. Even “David’s City” isn’t rightly named here. David’s City was the above mentioned big deal town, not backwoods, backwards Bethlehem. Almost everyone hears this story today without hearing how jarring all of these things are.

And yet God goes about this slightly off, deliberate, painstakingly slow plan. As it unfolds, I wonder whether I truly understand what God is about. I am in a hurry. God takes time. I rush to fill the void in order, vainly, to try to eliminate it. God enters the void, and by the presence of a child hallows it. I look for some mighty sign. God gives up the mighty route for the simple. I wish to dwell and worship a babe in a manger. God moves slowly, but does not dwell here. The manger is not the final destination for this baby.

It is only when I slow down to match my pace with God that I discover that God is at work in many surprising ways and surprising places. I have heard the calls of voices in our culture decrying that “Christ” has been removed from “Christmas”. But when I slow down, I realize that no such thing has happened. We didn’t put Jesus in the holiday, and no one has the power to take Jesus out. Is Christmas a time when people are hoping for something? Is Christmas a time when people long for more than what mere possessions can offer them? Is Christmas a time when we wish for the peace and goodwill of which the angels sing? Jesus is born into all of our longings, hopes, and all of our pains and sorrows. We do not always express these hurts and hopes appropriately, but even our poor attempts cannot drive God from our midst. The God who chose to be born in a stable comes to the desperate poor and desperate rich alike. The God who chooses also to die reminds us that even in the most desperate of places, God dares to join us. This is what we discover when we slow down. No matter how bad things get, God is right there with us all along, and doing something, albeit in God’s good time.

So I wonder, if we slow down, what other hidden things we might discover about God? Where else does God turn up unexpectedly? How else is God hidden in and with the desperate places of our world?

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Thanks so much, Luke, for your thought-provoking piece!  Please feel free, everyone, to join in the conversation, by leaving your comments and looking out for the comments of others.   We won't be having a skype conversation this week or next.  But anytime you'd like to let us all know your reflections, please share them here or on our facebook page.  God's holying presence be yours, in your joys and in your sorrows, this Christmas and beyond! 
~ Kari Henkelmann Keyl

Waitin' on a Sunny Day . . . by Elisabeth Aurand

Is Christmas just another pain-killer to soothe us, to distract us from our troubling fears? Or can it be a time to go deeper, to look inside ourselves… and ask God to come in, too?

In my lifetime, I've treasured the season of Advent, a season some Christians celebrate the four weeks before Christmas. Advent helps me get ready for Christ's coming. The joys of God's coming to us in Jesus are wonderfully apparent! But we can also take seriously the darker side of life, knowing that God's light is shining there, too.

This Sunday, in many churches that celebrate Advent, there will be two readings from the Bible that bring to life both the light-filled joy and the deep darkness of the season...

There’s “comfort and joy” proclaimed undiluted and unadulterated in Isaiah 35:1-10 .  It breaks upon us like warm sunshine as we hear “The desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly.” That speaks of the joy that the ancient Israelites had when they left servitude in Babylon and returned home to Israel: they found the burning sand, thirsty ground and the haunt of jackals now becoming a pool, and a swamp of grass.

But there’s also sternness from the second text, from Matthew 11:2-11, the story of John the Baptist. He is in jail and hears about the miraculous and healing deeds of his, cousin, Jesus. Nothing joyful happens to John – for example, he is not freed from jail. Yet he has been shown hope through the news of good things happening in Jesus’ ministry that he can hold onto; this allows for his own “patience in suffering.”

From these witnesses you hear what it means to live as a believer, stated well by Evelyn Underhill in Advent devotions, edited by Christopher Webber: The spiritual life is a stern choice. It is not a consoling retreat from the difficulties of existence; but an invitation to enter fully into that difficult existence, and there apply the Charity of God and bear the cost.

The voices witness to the “good bones” of the faith life wherein Christians both honor real life existence with its lonely, dark, cold times and wait upon the joyful work of God. (This work is truly joyful, too — sending the warm sunshine that allows a field of crocus to come up out of the snow and bloom opulently in the spring.) The Advent decoration of choice at Washington National Cathedral  – bare pine or fir trees standing sparely in the nave – strikes the balance in the Spirit, with its fresh and fragrant green of life with promise and yet a lack of adornment, like an adult’s sober path through life.

Many folks, including those who are “churched”, don’t seem to know the way of both let-loose joy and focused resolve. I read one church group writing about its leadership as discouraged, worried and “losing its way” as a result of clergy misconduct, and this sounded like an “anti-text” to Isaiah’s words that no one will “go astray” on God’s Holy Way. Leaders hoped for “renewal” yet also cited “questions of relevance” affecting “church attendance across our country” just as if they were a desert that could not rejoice and blossom or the dry land that would never become glad.

But Isaiah writes in chapter 35, verse 8, of a holy way where it’s practically impossible to go astray and a way “home,” insured by God’s love and care. “Home” did not mean perfection, as Paul Duke writes. Yet, he continues, the prophet (Isaiah) declares that desolation, disability, grief and sighing for home will all be swept away, overtaken by luxuriance, liberation, health, strength, safety and multitudes, fools included, singing their way home –and God will send us flowers on the way!

Do we sense we’re on a Holy Way? Do we understand that God’s direction on this way means we will not lose our bearings? Do we find that the things of hope bring enough resolve to endure whatever life throws along the path? I find that many folks (including Christians) at this time of year are mainly given to giddiness, frenzy and "irrational exuberance") –that is, unstable joy and no true sense of “home” in all the frantic Christmas preparations.

The faith life announces seasonal joy, yet wraps it in the conviction of “home” and the assurance that God provides and continues to provide the sunshine no matter what or when the storm. We open our arms.. ready for the sunshine. As Bruce Springsteen sings it, “I’m waitin’, waitin' on a sunny day , gonna chase the clouds away, waitin’ on a sunny day….

Please feel free to join in the conversation, by leaving your comments and looking out for the comments of others. You can also join in an audio skype conversation Thursday at 7pm (EST), Dec. 9. You need to have downloaded the program from skype.com and have a microphone with your computer (as most laptops do). Then add "bythewaycommunity" to your contacts list on skype, and call in on Thursday.

The Chrismas Blues . . . by Kari Henkelmann Keyl

Departing from btw’s usual format this week (reflective blog, audio-skype conversation), I’d like to offer a brief but important reminder to all who happen to stop by.

These weeks leading up to Christmas celebrations (and other holidays/holy days) can be terribly sad times for many people. Some are missing loved ones who have died, and can’t imagine this season without them. Many are lonely all through the year, and this time of “merriness” just makes it feel worse. Plenty have lost their jobs, have other frightening financial concerns, or are devastated by broken relationships. Lots of pain out there. And inside of us as well.

Let’s take some time this week to pray for all who are grieving, all who are suffering from any kind of loss. Please be on the look-out for those who need some extra care. If you are among the heart-broken, let someone know. Let God know, too. Feel free to let the by the way community know, and perhaps we can share the load together.

Watchful God, you know well who is aching from loss, who needs recognition and healing care. Open our eyes to see the pain around us and within us. Create community where there is none. Mend our broken hearts… and send us out to do the same.

Lord Jesus, we remember you were part of a wandering homeless family.  You were born into a time and place where strangers were not welcomed, where the needy were trampled. You grew up in that world and saw God leading us home. Now, Lord, in this time and place, be our home. Give us safety… and forgiveness… and new life.

Spirit of God, implant in our very beings your lively energy, your bubbling hope. Give us confidence in your power over pain and death. When we are doubting and afraid, surround us with people who can be your messengers of hope. In your holy name we pray… amen.