In our children’s Godly Play class, each Sunday during Advent, we have been preparing to enter the mystery of Christmas. I particularly like the way Godly Play talks about entering that mystery. We are told that you have to take time to get ready to enter a mystery. Advent is four weeks long because Christmas is such a great mystery that you have to take enough time to get ready for it. This time of year, people are hurrying through the malls, shopping, and doing all kinds of things, but they miss the mystery of Christmas, as Godly Play tells us. They don’t know how to enter a mystery, or maybe they forgot.
Do we know how to enter a mystery? Has Christmas become just one more “thing” we have to do? Is it possible to reclaim its mystery in spite of the busyness, stress, and tensions of Christmas “outside the Church”? It is also true that this time of year can be difficult for some. The days are short and dark. Lost loved ones are on our minds. For those who have no family and few friends, it is a lonely time. This, I think, is part of the mystery of Christmas. The mystery of God’s time, of liturgical time, is truth expressed in the only way we can try to express it—in poetry. Jesus was born in a historical year, but he is born anew each year—each day, in fact—in our hearts. The Baby’s birth did not eradicate our darkness, suffering, and problems. It reframed them, it subverted them from below. This is how God works.
This year Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, and there is a particular poetry in this. This is one of the reasons I am in awe of the liturgical/Church year. God’s time breaks in and unfolds in different ways in our own chronological time. The poetry in Christmas Day being on a Sunday is that we celebrate Jesus’s birth on the Lord’s Day, the day we also celebrate his victory over death. And this means that on the day we honor his birth, we also acknowledge his death. This is the mystery that much of the world does not understand or want to understand. The Gospel evangelists were not unaware of this mystery. In St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s swaddling bands also point to the grave clothes he will wear. Each Christmas, during Communion, we sing the wonderful hymn “A stable lamp is lighted,” which brings Jesus’s passion into his birth. We sing the same hymn on Palm Sunday.
This is the heart of the mystery of Christmas and is why it’s good news. At Christmas, we bask in joy and hope, yes, but the Gospel truth is that tied up in all that joy and hope are all the things that afflict us and from which we can’t run. In all that, God comes to us. This is the mystery of God-with-us, Emmanuel.
At this time of year, I’m especially grateful for the faithful service of our hardworking staff, Chris Wittrock, Mary Campbell, and Matt Glandorf. I’m thankful for the presence of Emily Amos our organ scholar as the choir tackles extra music this season. Thank you to our wonderful choir. Thank you to all of you who are making Christmas possible liturgically, but who are too many to name: the acolytes, the Altar Guild, the lectors, the livestream team, and the ushers. So much happens behind the scenes every day at Good Shepherd but especially at this time of year. If you can, come and help us decorate the church today. Pop by at any time or after Evening Prayer.
Finally, I wish you and yours a blessed Christmas. It is my prayer that you can begin to enter into the mystery of this time of year, despite all that makes that difficult. If you are in town, I do hope to see you on Christmas Eve at 6 p.m. (note the time change this year). And since Christmas Day is the Lord’s Day, would you consider coming to Mass on Sunday, too? We will keep our usual schedule. Christmas (The Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ) is one of the principal feasts of the year. I think it deserves all our attention, even attending Mass twice in the span of two days. Let us enter into this mystery will all the vigor, faithfulness, and humility that we can muster. Christ is coming soon. He is knocking at the door. May we open the door and let him in. Merry Christmas!
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle