This Sunday is one of the most ironic moments of worship in the church calendar.
How it Might Be
Officially this weekend brings us to the Second Sunday of Christmas and Day Seven of the Twelve Days of the Christmas Celebration. In two weeks we should reach the climax of the Christmas Season with Epiphany, the celebration of the Magi and the official beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the flesh. What a great way to usher in the New Year!
You would think that devout disciples of Jesus would be filling the sanctuaries with devotion and celebration at the incarnation on this second opportunity to gather in corporate worship. We should be having “The Twelve Days of Christmas Parties” in our homes throughout the week and exchanging little gifts each day. God has come in the flesh to bring light to the world. Come on, that’s the best, right?
How It Is
The reality for most churches and disciples of Jesus is that we have been working and striving since Thanksgiving to make December “the most wonderful time of the year.” We’ve drained our bank accounts and our volunteer reserves to serve an ideal goal.
We’ve been running hard and fast to the big finish line of Christmas Eve.
Now, we’re exhausted.
Everyone is in the duldrums of the weird week between Christmas and the New Year Celebration. And, to add to the weirdness, this year both Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are on a Sunday.
How can a worship service compete with those two cultural forces?!?
So, instead of a huge continuation of the actual season on this Second Sunday of Christmas, the churches I have served usually opted to skip whatever was in the lectionary, skip the sermon, and do a really unplugged hymn sing with a minimal musical team and a skeleton pastoral and volunteer worship staff. And, if you did want a sermon, it was usually preached by the “B” or “C” squad of preachers on the team because the lead pastor had just preached multiple services and was spent (and yes, it is sad that we tend to rank our preachers in this way, but I’m being blunt in this post, since I have been one of those “B” or “C” preachers throughout my career).
It’s the Christmas hangover Sunday. At least that is how it always felt to me.
The Irony
The Christmas hangover Sunday phenomenon is fascinating to me, because it is evidence of our late modern Western Christianity and what it has become. The ideal of striving toward a Christmas Eve Service is something that was actually constructed during the Victorian era of England. It was given a secular spirituality through the brilliance of Charles Dickens and the global influence of his beloved story A Christmas Carol. And, it has found its religiosity through the advertising brilliance of the Coca-Cola company’s creation of the patron saint of commercialism, Santa Claus (who bears no resemblance to the actual Saint Nicholas of Myra). I invite you to read and listen to a really important piece on this topic by Dr. David Taylor HERE.
Living in Reality
One of the most challenging things about being a Christian Public Leader is navigating the tension between the radical call of Jesus to live the self-sacrificing path of the Kin-dom of God on the one hand, and the reality of where the people we serve and love live their daily lives on the other.
When we are tired, like during this week, it is tempting to shame people into feeling horrible about how much they have missed the mark. Which, by the way, is the actual definition of the Greek work hamartia, usually translated with the English word “sin.” Therefore, shaming people is saying, “You horrible sinners! You have forgotten what the incarnation is all about and have turned to worship the god of money and pleasure instead of Immanuel!”
You might think that is what this post is doing. Maybe I’m tired.
When we are quiet. When we take time to breathe deeply and get centered into the vibrancy of God’s Spirit animating the world. When we reconnect to our mission to help people grow deeper in the love of God, through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the world. When we remember that God met us where we are, in the midst of our brokenness and sin…
When we are there, we can release the shame and meet people where they are. We can ask the big questions of individuals and of collective society:
- Why do we feel the need to make it the most wonderful time of the year?
- Why do we feel the need to fulfill Christmas wish lists?
- Why do we forsake corporate worship to be with our immediate family on the holy day?
- What are the longings and losses that lie at the heart of the striving for a romanticized notion of love and peace?
Reflection and Following the Cloud
I would love to hear how you process this time of year. How does a cloud-follower–a disciple of Jesus living in this moment–discern how to be a loving presence of God in your context?
My prayer for you is that you will experience Immanuel this week and feel the light of the world shining brightly into the New Year, no matter how exhausted (physically and/or existentially) you may feel this year.
Breathe deeply, God is with us.
I would have posted earlier, but I was exhausted and have only now mustered up the energy to contribute. 🙂
You wrote:
One of the most challenging things about being a Christian Public Leader is navigating the tension between the radical call of Jesus to live the self-sacrificing path of the Kin-dom of God on the one hand, and the reality of where the people we serve and love live their daily lives on the other.
And one of the most fatiguing things about walking the Christian way is trying to fight through the headwinds of the narrative that contemporary culture throws in our faces. In CBN I’ve posted on my small attempts to take a stand in the face of the onslaught of commercial speech bidding us, goading us to participate in the public spectacle of consumption, particularly the conspicuous kind. And so we’re made to feel inadequate by all the Mercedes and Lexus and Rolex ads and commercials if we’re unable to step up to the plate and show our worth. (When did the whole ‘car for Christmas’ meme start anyway?)
Incarnation means every day can be the most wonderful time of the year. That is, if we understand that ‘wonderful time’ is not a performance or achievement but gift. We don’t make it, however hard we may try. We can only receive it with open hands. This is a hard one for me at work – coworkers like to exchange gifts before we break for Christmas, but I’m still in Advent mode. I wait till after Christmas to reciprocate by making donations to causes that we share. But by now, I suppose, they’ve become accustomed to my quirkiness. At least I hope so. But then, that’s the point, no? Turn the focus (or rather, turn ourselves to the true source of Light) to what’s most worthy of our attention.
Wish lists and fulfilling them – When my 30 year old son Alex was 8, his big ask was a Yugioh dealing deck, a plastic, arm-worn, card game accessory, by no means critical to the actual game-play, that gave the wearer the appearance of having a small aircraft carrier from which to deal and play cards in the style of the title character, emulating the action on the TV series (this was back in the day when there were still temporal constraints on consuming entertainment – timeshifting had yet to arrive, and so the TV was held hostage to the schedule of the local station.) I was bound and determined not to let him down, but there were none to be had in the local stores. It was that year’s “thing” like Cabbage Patch dolls earlier, and so there would be the “haves” and the “have nots” on Christmas Day. I was bound and determined to make sure to find one. I scoured the available online outlets, found one with the toy in stock, but it would arrive after Christmas. I gave my credit card numbers and felt only partial success, but at least I’d have one for him. Lo and behold, it shipped early, and I was thrilled to have one to put under the tree for him.
It turned out to be one of those things that is sought for its own sake, but on use, it turned out to impede game play rather than enhance it. After two weeks, it was relegated to the toy chest and only occasionally pulled out now and again. What did all my desire, attention, engagement, consumption accomplish? In the end, it now takes up space in a landfill somewhere, fodder for some future archeologist or anthropologist, a challenge for interpretation and understanding of how and why this item was used by prior peoples, what significance it may have had, how it shaped their daily life, what powers it may have possessed.
I’m glad I can laugh now, but the real power it possessed was to take my dollars, to transfer wealth. Why was it so important? It fed my ego, made me “the man”, gave me a sense of providing for my family the way a good late-stage capitalist consumer should be conditioned to think and act. The shiny object of desire is used up, discarded, and we’re off and running for the next big thing. Vanity of vanities. I wonder what Qoholeth had to get for his kid.
Catholic guilt requires me to do a both/and with regard to corporate worship and family time over the holidays. This seems to be a concern for the majority of Catholics who don’t show up regularly for Sunday (or vigil) worship. I get a big kick out of how the folks for whom worship is a “couple of times a year” thing tend to be the ones who try to save seats. One will arrive well in advance and try to secure sufficient real estate for the rest of the party, usually late arriving, with the scout defending the turf with a head shake and a “these are saved” admonition to those seeking a place. I suppose this is why some churches have donor names on pews, so their claimed stake is plainly evident when they need it. The both/and dynamic, on the positive side, means that our celebration is not a private or family only affair. At its best, corporate worship has the character of “here comes everybody” with the highways and byways leading all to the banquet in Isaiah. At its most disappointing, it’s the turf battles for seating, dressing up to be noticed, and, particularly in NYC and its suburbs, the mad dash, the race for the exits, worse than the competition in the parking lots to be the first out of a stadium or athletic arena.
Underneath it all, at least it shows us that there are three natural zones of concern, three foci – self, family, society or gathered church. I wonder if the best balance can be found only when the self is centered, anchored in prayer, reflection on the Word, contemplation. If this is lacking, my guess is the holiday celebration will be off kilter and ultimately disappointing.
Longings and losses at the heart of the desire for romanticized conceptions of love and peace – wow! Not pulling any punches here. I substituted “desire” as I think it gets closer to the heart of things. Each person will have her/his own lists of such things, those story threads emerging from the particularites of each person’s journey, each person’s location in time and space, each person’s actions and choices and the consequences they bring. And whether or not the seed has found purchase, how deep roots extend, whether life has conspired to partially or fully uproot what one takes to be one’s life, life’s work.
I suppose a theological answer could borrow from Augustine’s description of our restless hearts. Tap Thomas on how everybody really desires good, but many mistake apparent goods for real goods. Nietzsche might challenge us to question the authenticity of our desires and choices, whether they are truly conducive to human excellence or if they are conventions perpetuated by the timid who seek to render the vanguard of human progress safe and non-threatening to those huddled in bourgeois complacency and mediocrity. Nietzsche’s American prophet, Edward Bernays, offers a unique synthesis of Darwin and his uncle Sigmund in literally writing the books on how critters who have evolved symbols and culture, whose disembodied further evolution stands over against the original biological matrix. Bernays writes the playbook on manipulating symbol and culture to serve the elites’ plans who hijack the process of evolution, the telling of the human story, and bend it to serve the private interests of social control and wealth transfer to guard and keep power and privilege.
Untrammelled, exploitative capitalism started by polluting nature with the toxic wastes of manufacturing, and has evolved into a demiurge that pollutes culture with lies, so singly focused that it is unaware that such lies undermine the light consensus of what we are given to be our reality. This center cannot hold, in the words of the poet. And so, as we read the signs of the times, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this world riven by violence and lies is no longer a suitable home for humans. Desire for apparent or invented goods, under the concealment of private pursuit of happiness, drowns us in misery. Thomas Hobbes’ that life is continual fear, danger of violent death, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. How many of us wake up each day to this world, which sees love as transactional as intimated by jewelry commercials, with peace symbolized in the Coca Cola commercial featuring the song, I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, with happy young people standing together on a hillside on a sunny day, each holding the bright red and white avatar? Idol, one among many, for an age that confuses absence of conflict with peace, emotion with love, self with God.
Solzhenitsyn shortly before his exile urged his countrymen to refuse to participate in the lie. Lies pollute culture and society just as PCBs pollute our rivers and streams. And it’s lies upon lies – just go along to get along, don’t stick your head up as it might get chopped off, don’t make waves. Be complicit. Bad things will happen if you’re not. And when the structure totters, built on sand as it is, reality fractures, authority dissolves, truth is lost, the way forward obscured, life is as Hobbes says it is.
This is the world before Advent. This is the world outside of Advent.
And those who hear and understand and cherish and pass along the promises made by the prophets, particularly Isaiah, prophet of Advent, can give reasons for their hope.
And those who come to call on the House of Bread find grace upon grace, blessing upon blessing. They find in the Incarnate Word the fulfillment of desire, the way, the truth, and the life.
And as we leave Bethlehem – we all must leave Bethlehem – we know this gift is a gift to be shared, freely. We know we care called in the place and time we inhabit to live this gift as we are called. The heavy lifting has all been done by the Messiah come as Suffering Servant. We are part of the cleanup. It becomes our job to bring our loaves and fishes and let him work in us.
And so coming back to the point of departure of your essay, Steve, yeah, we need to rest after a long haul. We need to re-create; after all, Abba took a Sabbath. Then, ite – missa est – go, do your thing, we’re done here for now so go and do and be.
How? In part, you answer that question with the story of your life. But this also involves asking, and letting your life evolve out of that conversation. In the meantime, encourage the sisters and brothers – I think that is one of the great calls of our time – bring encouragement to those who waver. Strengthen the hands that are trembling, make firm the knees that are weak. Bring the heart of the Teacher to the world through your witness. Sometimes that means keeping the lights up till Epiphany. Or livestreaming the waiting of Advent. Or whatever your heart moves you to do.