Nativity

The homily during our Christmas Eve service this year was about finding the calm of the manger scene in the midst of the inevitable madness of the holidays. We were urged to take time to focus on the quiet Christ child and the hope he held for all of us. Listening to the message, I couldn’t help but think that Mary and Joseph must have been better people and parents than we are to achieve any such calm scene. My vision of the birth of Christ is filled with very little calm at all. Two very young people in the beginning stages of their marriage, the wife very pregnant with a child that in most people’s eyes is illegitimate and scandalous. In Mary and Joseph’s eyes he is the son of God, destined for awesome things – power, accomplishments and influence for sure, but also subject to great danger, hatred, and persecution. These two young people are in a strange land with no family and nowhere to stay. There is no hospital, no epidural (may God bless epidurals), no plumbing, and no clean water. These two young people handle the birth of this child – alone – in a barn. They are attended not by medical staff, but by an assortment of livestock. Their visitors are not grandparents, aunts, and uncles bearing balloons and tiny booties, but dirty shepherds that they have never met before. A lot of things come to mind, but calm is not one of them.

Christmas is my favorite holiday, but calm is not a way I would describe it. Family descends. There are meals to be cooked, houses to be cleaned, presents to buy and wrap, cards to send. The house is in a constant state of disarray. Children add exponentially to the chaos. Is everyone happy and having a good time? Do we have enough food? Does everyone like it? Which family members will get into an argument? What gifts will be successes, and what gifts will be flops? What illness will the children contract? Will there be vomiting? Crying? Fit-pitching? Screaming? Fighting?

But somehow, in the midst all of this, there is calm. There is calm in the knowledge that these people are my people, my family. The people who will love you and be there for you no matter what. They will share not only your Christmases, but your successes and failures and embarrassments and flaws. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus had fear and uncertainty, but they also had each other. And because Jesus lived and died for us all, He’s your family too. Though there may have been only three people in that barn on the first Christmas, I feel like we all share it now. We all share the fear and the distractions and the chaos. And we all share the joy and the hope and the calm in knowing that, no matter what happens, we are part of a family and God is with us.