Blue Christmas - Grief that Was, Is, and Is to Come

John 1:1-5, 10-14, 16-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

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I want to start by sharing a video with you – it’s short and sweet, just 4 minutes – about grief, from someone who has done some serious thinking about and living with it in just the last four years. Her name is Nora McInerny and I’ll let her tell you what you need to know…

For what it’s worth, there is more to this Ted Talk – another 10 minutes, or so, to be exact – if you want to look her up on your own. She also has a podcast called, “Terrible, Thanks for Asking,” which seems interesting enough, if you’re curious. But this caught my attention a couple of weeks ago and I think it’s so much of what brings us here tonight.

When we started having these “Blue Christmas” worship services 10 years or so ago, they were new to me – and kind of a new thing in this neck of the woods, as far as I could tell at the time. And what started – in my mind – as a special kind of service, meant to serve a small, niche of a target audience – has become, in my mind, something I believe is – or should be – for anyone and everyone – because grief is or will be for every one of us at some time or another, if it hasn’t crossed our path just yet.

And I believe it is a hard and holy and faithful practice to own our grief, the way Nora McInerny describes it. Whatever it is that brings us here – or whatever griefs that find us in this life – the death of loved ones (or the fear of losing ones we love), the loss of jobs, the troubles of our children, the struggles of addiction, the fighting in our families, the ending of relationships, whatever it may be – these events mark us, indelibly. These events and experiences make us and reshape us as people in the world and as children of God. And it’s silly, if not delusional, to pretend or to believe or to behave otherwise.

So, my hope for tonight is never to prevent grief, or to fix grief, or to pretend that struggle and sadness are not part of life in this world or part of our life in this season. In fact, tonight is about precisely the opposite. It’s about naming just exactly for what and why God showed up, in Jesus, in the first place. Jesus wasn’t born just for the fun of it – for the sake of celebration and joy and mistletoe and silent nights, remember.

Jesus was born for such a time as this – as much as anything else. Jesus was born for the sake of the lost and lowly, for the sake of the grieving and struggling, for the sick and lonely, for the dark and despairing. And tonight is about remembering the truth of that and the hope there is in that truth. And it’s about letting our faith – and our friends who share it – surround us in ways that we trust together, and hope together, and endure together. And, if you’re not sure you have it in you to trust or hope or endure or believe at every turn these days, tonight is about letting someone else trust for you, or hope for you, or endure for and with and alongside you, if that will help.

Because, if we’re honest, this season is about multi-tasking with more than just the shopping lists and the food prep and the visits with family and whatever else keeps us so busy. This season is also, very much about multi-tasking our emotions.

It’s about holding our grief and our fear and our struggles in one hand, even while the world around us is trying to hand us cookies and smiles and celebrations and all kinds of wonderful reasons for very real joy. Like so many shopping bags, though, it can be hard to carry it all at once. But we can do it – we are called to do it – together. God doesn’t ask us to set aside or to set aside or to move on from our grief in order to hold onto all the other stuff, too. God gives us Jesus whose coming reminds that we can move forward with it, with hope for something more to come.

I like how Nora McInerny talks about how she catches herself referring to her deceased husband in the present-tense at times; how she used to feel guilty or, at least, self-conscious about that – until she noticed that everybody does it. And how she realized that that’s because the loved-ones we’ve lost – or whatever struggles and sadnesses shape us, in this life – are very much a part of who we are and who we continue to be, as they should.

And it made me think of how often – especially at this time of the year, in these Advent days of waiting and hoping and longing for the coming of Christ’s birth – I like to refer to Jesus as “the one who was, and who is, and who is to come.” That phrase always reminds me about the nature of the God we’re waiting for in Jesus: a God who indeed was, and who is, and who, indeed, is to come.

Just like whatever grief we carry with us tonight was… and is… and is to come?  So is Jesus.

Just like our struggles were and are and are yet to be … so is Jesus.

Just like our sadness, our brokenness, our loneliness; just like our fear, our loss, and our despair; just like all of it was and is and is to come … so is Jesus.

And God comes, in Jesus, not to deny it; not to make it easy at every turn; not to call us away from what grieves or hurts or scares us most. But Jesus comes to call us forward with it, so that it – and we – might be transformed by the grace of God; grace which always was and always is and is always on the way.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

Three Days of Being Lost

Luke 2:41-52

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day's journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. 

After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, "Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety." He said to them, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

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The gospel story for today is the only canonized account of Jesus’ childhood. The primary reason why we do not have any other stories is that no one really cared about kids at this time in history. A child’s every move and milestone was not tracked in a baby journal or documented in real time on Instagram. Truth be told, the reason why we have so few stories of children in scripture, Jesus included, is the same reason why we have so few stories of women in scripture. They just were not important in that culture.

If you recall the story of Jesus’ birth we read on Christmas Eve, it might have struck you as odd that Mary is barely mentioned. There’s all the background about which male rulers were in charge at the time, the male shepherds hear the good news from the angel, there’s no room in the inn, and then we have passing mention that Jesus was born. No labor, no appreciation for Mary’s hard work. Jesus just shows up and he might as well have been carried in and dropped off by a stork.

Now, there’s much more to be said about the absence of women and children in scripture; however, for our purposes this morning I will simply acknowledge that reality and then ask, “Why, then, was this story included?”

It’s worth pointing out that this is not a story about parenting. We can’t get stuck on the thought, “How could Mary and Joseph, those awful parents, lose track of Jesus for over three days?” Sure, it’s not a great look; it is, however, understandable. People journeying to Jerusalem for Passover would do so in a caravan. Kids, as they are want to do, move at their own speed and there would have been an assumption within the group that the care of the kids was everyone’s shared responsibility, not just the immediate parents.

One reason why this story of a 12 year-old Jesus is included because it is an account of a child being exceptional. Sure, all parents thinks their children are exceptional; but in order to really be someone special in this time and place, it helped to have a legend of an exceptional experience as a child.

The great leaders in Roman history were the only ones whose childhood stories were told. After all, the Caesars claimed to be divine, and divinity isn’t just something you stumble into as an adult; rather, one has to show signs that there was something special the whole time. For example, Caesar Augustus, at the age of 12, is told to have delivered a public funeral oration for his grandmother that impressed the nation.

If the only story about a child you hear is about your Lord, Caesar, demonstrating academic skill as a 12 year-old, imagine how your attention would be peaked when you hear of another 12 year-old who taught rabbis in the temple and amazed them with his insight. Could this person be divine, like the Caesars are divine?

This phenomenon of being drawn to stories of exceptional children has persisted through the centuries. There are stories of Mozart playing harpsichord at age 4, composing melodies at age 5, as well the account of him hearing an a performance at the Vatican at age 15 and going home to copy the whole orchestration down on paper by memory. Then there’s French mathematician Blaise Pascal who, despite no formal education, published a paper at at 15 that drew the attention of René Descartes.

The achievements of these men are impressive on their own, but the addition of their remarkable stories of childhood do seem to add something special and unique to their mystique.

The story of the amazing 12 year-old Jesus not only adds to his aura, but on a more practical level, the story gives encouragement to Luke’s original audience, itself a community of faith very much in its adolescence. Imagine you are a part of the first wave of Christ followers. You have very likely been separated from your family as a result of your belief in the Messiahship of Jesus. Nevertheless, you left your family to pursue God’s claim on your life. You hear the story of Jesus who also felt comfortable leaving his family in order to pursue God’s claim on his life. Not only that, but the adolescent Jesus has something valuable and instructive to teach the existing church; just like you and your movement of Christ followers. This story is very much an allegory for the life of Luke’s initial audience.

And finally, there’s the connection with what would come to mark the end of Jesus’ life. How many days did it take Mary and Joseph to find Jesus? Three. Yes, after three days of being lost, Jesus returned to his family and friends. What he was doing in those three days was something incredible, unique, powerful, and divine. In much the same way, Jesus, having been crucified, was gone for three days, doing something incredible, unique, powerful, and divine.

This was a story for a particular group of people to encourage them to claim their authority as followers of Christ. While much has changed today, the church is still very much in a period of adolescence. What never changes, however, is that true authority resides within God’s Word, and pursuing God’s Word will lead us to make sacrifices. There will be times when, in obeying God’s Word, we find ourselves separated from everything we thought we knew or held dear; but we will be found again. Our lostness is never permanent. And our proverbial three days of lostness will allow us to accomplish something incredible, unique, powerful, and divine.