Christmas 2017, First Lutheran Church of the Trinity
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In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.
Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them,
and they were terrified. But the angel said to them,
“Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:
to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth
and lying in a manger.” - Luke 2
It’s Christmas 1999.
18 Years ago.
One week until:
Y.
2.
K.
People are filling their bathtubs with drinking water.
Stores are sold out of day to day supplies.
Back-up generators filling the back of many-a pick-up truck.
And 107.7FM—Christian radio in Milwaukee—is GOING WILD with stories both about “The REAL Christmas,”
as well as prophecies about the End Of It All.
Bunkers are built.
Fuel. Ropes. Matches.
Canned goods.
Hard drives are backed up on CD-ROMS,
slipped into those little translucent plastic sleeves.
And the faithful, the “saved,” the believers—those “truly” part of the Christian tribe—they all head for the hills.
Closer to heaven.
Fenced off from the world.
Counting down!
To the New Year.
And to the Apocalypse.
“And only the righteous! will survive.” The radio crackled.
“When the King returns in all His Glory!”
“When the world arrives at consummation.”
“A new heavens and a new earth.”
“The moon will turn to blood.”
And the cosmos collapse.
This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
This is but the beginning.
Before Christ’s triumphant return.
On a horse of white.
With a sword of steal.
A conquering cavalcade of saving glory.
Sheep and goats.
Lights beaming.
The blood of the wicked flowing like a river from the Mount of Zion.
What joy!!!
What Advent Hope that Christmas
would be fulfilled in only 7 days!!!
Watch the clock.
Count it down.
Light one candle.
And watch.
For the ball drop…
+++
Christmas was good.
New years eve we went to bed early I think.
And when we woke up,
those songs on Napster we had begun to download were complete after all.
The stoplights remained in tact.
And everyone who had threatened us with hell that year was not actually raptured.
We were still hopelessly stuck with them.
No white horses.
No bloody streams.
Nobody saved from the day to day up into the sky.
We just shared coffee at the cafeteria,
said Happy New Years!
And we went about our days.
Y.
2.
K.
Began just like any other day.
+++
Seven months later.
(August. Y2K).
I’m working at a summer camp.
Pine Lake Lutheran Camp in sunshiny Waupaca, Wisconsin.
It is AWESOME.
Summer is in full swing.
My campers are amazing. Of course.
I’ve been waiting to work at camp MY WHOLE LIFE!
And finally, I am!
In the office,
I receive a message, a phone call.
Laura, my sister, has just delivered her first ever BABY.
(My nephew).
And she’s down in southern Wisconsin. In Waukesha.
So I pack up my things.
I get a sub for my kids.
And I leave camp.
Summer, Y2K.
And I’m on my way to the hospital.
To the place where my first ever nephew was born.
+++
Now, at that time, I’d never held a new born.
And the idea of holding little baby kids seriously freaked me out.
I mean, of course, right?
What if you drop him?
It wouldn’t be that hard to drop a kid…
Considering: gravity and nerves, and all these sorts of things.
So I kind of keep my distance. I stand in the back corner of the room.
But after a while, they offer Bailey to me.
They gesture.
You know like this.
“You wanna hold him?”
No! I don’t.
But how do you say no to that? Right?
And so I take him.
I put in my arms sort of like this. Super afraid.
And I kinda wiggle him around until he feels rested.
And when it’s clear gravity is now holding him into my arms.
And he’s not floating away.
Or bouncing into something, or getting dropped,
And he’s just kind of there.
(pause/breathe).
I breathe. And I relax.
And then I look down.
And Bailey.
My nephew.
This little lump of life,
he looks back.
And I look into his eyes. Right?
And…
Wow.
It’s like the big bang right then and there:
galaxies,
eternities.
Right there in this little kid was, infinity times infinity and so on and so forth. Right?
Pure possibility.
Right there in this tiny little body.
In every direction.
In this sterile hospital that smelled of bleach.
(And I hate the smell of bleach, but…)
Right there.
I was holding a little bundle of living hope,
and it was staring right back up at me.
+++
The Shepherds, the magi—they spent a lotta time staring up at the sky.
Lying in the meadows, crossing the wilderness, they were familiar with the infinities of the cosmos.
They knew the overwhelming awe that could fill ones body when faced with the majesty of space and the songs of the “heavenly spheres.”
But these skies, these infinities, these galaxies
that they saw EVERY NIGHT, these melodies that they heard,
these infinities,
when the sun appeared each dawn,
these infinities became hidden.
They were quickly concealed,
they seemed like a dream,
lost to the day.
And whatever majesty had graced them in shadows in the fields,
when the sun returned,
the magi returned to endless responsibilities,
and the shepherds, burdened by sheep,
also returned to being ridiculed and despised by those around them.
“Aliens!” the not-so-much-better-to-do would yell at the shepherds,
(it was clear that it made them feel better about themselves).
“Why don’t you get a real job?” and other such things were screamed, most of which we don’t care to repeat in a church.
Wearing wool, eating lamb, spewing venom—these were the shepherds’ neighbors.
These were the revelations of the Day Time, the reality of the shepherds’ day-to-day.
Haters hate.
Shepherds are poor. And gross.
Oppression stings.
And shepherd from magi from carpenter is estranged.
+++
Whatever the night revealed of eternities, of possibility,
under the sun, for the shepherds, the world-as-it-is remained.
+++
No wonder they traveled by night.
No wonder they followed not the sunshine, but a star.
+++
It’s true I saw hope in the eyes of my nephew.
It’s true. It felt like a million of those galaxies.
It’s true, peering down felt like gazing upward from a mountain toward the midnight sky.
The thing is:
For Bailey, for my nephew:
the view wasn’t so different. Right?
See,
I saw in this little bundle of flesh all of the things, right?
But as he grew:
As he learned sounds,
as he tasted soil,
as he smelled rain and windex and decomposing leaves;
as he grew:
not only did I see eternities in him,
but he saw eternities in me,
and not just in me:
I saw eternities in him,
but he saw eternities everywhere—in everything, all the time.
Because he was brand new.
And because he was new,
so was the whole world.
A new heavens and a new earth!
Paradises to taste!
Endless places to play.
Endless opportunities to be nourished.
To learn.
And to grow.
+++
For a New Child, every creature is the new creation.
Every direction is an eternity.
All things are made new.
+++
I don’t think the shepherds saw the cosmos in one another.
No eternities in mirrors.
No friends around with whom to play.
Their view had been callused by the world around them, by their neighbors, by the fields.
Distorted from fences and pain.
In the daylight,
under the sun, it seems, they saw just what others saw:
“I, shepherd, am dirty,” they learned to repeat.
“I, shepherd, am despicable.”
“Unclean, I need to be kept at bay.”
Crud on my trousers.
Dirt in my beard.
Pull your kid to the side as I pass you by.
Sad and callused, the shepherds saw not eternities, but only the world as it is, the world (as they were taught) as it had to be.
“Dreams were meant for the shadows,” they repeated.
“Hope is naive.”
“And eternity is far, far, far, far, far, far, far away.”
This was the the truth of the world as it is, revealed to them in the light and heat of the day.
+++
But the shepherds…
still had the night.
The shepherds, the lay, keeping watch, looking up!
And so beneath the fleeting infinities, peering upward, it was to the shepherds that the angels arrived.
A child! They proclaimed.
God the Body.
God is with us.
Born is God the Child who holds the heavens in is eyes.
Born is a savior full of grace and truth.
And so they went.
With haste.
+++
That morning the day began as it always had:
The sun revealed that the world-as-it-is remained.
The righteous had coffee with the wicked.
Haters hate.
Oppression stings.
And shepherd from magi from carpenter is estranged.
No one raptured.
No one from pain is saved.
But when the sun retreated,
and eternities returned,
shepherds and magi and carpenter arrived.
There in bodies moved by hope, they stood together.
There in the love for a Child-God, full of hope and life. Stricken with awe and wonder, they rejoiced, for God the Child truly had been born.
+++
The messiah arrives.
No white horses.
No rivers of blood.
Only the bodies of those hoping against hope from places of pain.
Looking for eternities in a Child’s eyes.
They peered down at the poor child, shivering in the cold.
And then,
God the Child peered back.
And God the Child smiled because here, in each gathered, God the Child sees something we have forgotten in the daylight.
God the Child sees a new creation. New life!
God the Child sees infinite possibilities in every direction.
God the Child sees galaxies, eternities in your eyes.
In 2017. In Y2K.
+++
May grace help us to see what Christ sees in us,
and to trust the Christmas Truth:
The finite holds the infinite.
And God Eternal dwells in you.
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