Following the Christian calendar, year after year, is like reading a favorite book over and over again. We know the beginning, the middle, and the end so thoroughly that each scene is infused and intertwined with the rest of the story. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, to enter the story at the beginning while suspending the knowledge of the ending. After all it is the empty cross that ultimately provides the meaning for Jesus’ birth. But this knowledge takes us out of the story into the privileged position of a spectator that knows the context and outcome.
Today’s COVID Christmas is an ideal time to enter into the story. But we need to try and “unknow” the ending. Christ was born at time and place when hope was in short supply. Israel was occupied and under foreign rule. Jesus enters the story not as the grown up champion of Israel announced with great fanfare to the populace, religious leaders, and military/political leadership. Rather, Jesus arrives as an infant, whose birth is announced to family (Elizabeth) and a select few. The select few were not rulers, but shepherds. The announcement however was glorious! (Luke 2:8-18). It was the lowly shepherds that spread the news. Later Simeon and the Prophet Anna would see the baby Jesus and understand what they were seeing. According to Matthew, Herod would learn about Jesus from foreign sources (Matthew 2:2), not from local sources.
To those that are not related to Mary, select prophets, foreign wise men, or shepherds, the hope of Jesus enters as a faint whisper, perhaps a third or fourth hand story of a child, born weeks before, with some prophetic words spoken about His future. These stories are easy to dismiss as rumors, but somehow, perhaps, eliciting a glimmer of hope. To those sensitive to the Spirit of God might have perceived that there was something “in the air” that promised renewal.
This COVID Christmas invites us to enter the story of Jesus’ birth, not as a shepherd, prophet, or wise man, but as a common person outside of Jerusalem or Bethlehem. Many of us are disconnected from in person worship, as a common person was often disconnected from the temple in Jerusalem. There was no Christmas celebration; Christianity as a religion was something that occurs in the future. I suspect that Hanukah did not have the same emphasis as it does today. There probably wasn’t the same amount of travel to get family together at the winter solstice as there is today. Still, to a few, there was perhaps a glimmer of hope “in the air.”
Today we in the United States are in a very dark period dominated by both political chaos and pandemic. Yet there is a sense of “hope in the air.” The hope for the pandemic arises in the nature of vaccines that will at least help lessen the burden of the pandemic. The hope for the political crisis lies in the 4 year political cycle where a new administration takes power (even if the political debates and divisions continue). The hope in the spiritual realm lies with an infant, too young to start His ministry, still unable to speak or walk, yet already making His presence known in the “spiritual air” of the era. It is a start, a promise of what is yet to be, that there is “light at the end of tunnel.” Yet we still need to pass through the remainder of the tunnel. Yes there is hope for what is yet unseen or experienced.
Today we seem desperate to make Christmas as normal as is possible. Perhaps we think that minimizing the impact of COVID provides us with some hope. This is a false hope. True hope stands in the midst of the chaos and looks into the “spiritual air” to sense the stirrings of possibilities that the Holy Spirit is presenting. Then our job is to align with the Holy Spirit.
Perhaps we should accept a Christmas that is not “normal,” so that we can reflect on the first Christmas as it actually occurred: when something new entered the world. Perhaps true Christmas is attempting to discern what the Spirit of God is doing today that will only become obvious in the future.
Have a great Covid Christmas.