Christmas Expectations vs. Reality

Luke 2:8-14

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." And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

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I always try to have a little fun on Christmas Eve so when I came across these pictures last week, I couldn’t resist. They’re pictures people have taken of their babies – presented something like those Pinterest “before and after” pics of things people have tried to make, bake or craft that didn’t quite turn out as much like the original as they had planned. You’ve seen those, right? Something like this:

where the reality doesn’t quite live up to the expectations of the very well-intentioned, wannabe chef who made it.

Anyway, someone did the same with baby pictures … put together a compilation of photos that parents tried to recreate with their kids, but that didn’t turn out quite like they hoped. The reality of it all didn’t quite match the expectation.

Expectation.

Reality

Expectation

Reality

Expectation (Courtesy of Jackson Havel)

Reality

Of course, it was the baby factor that made me think of Christmas when I saw these the first time around. But the more I thought about the difference between the “expectation” and the “reality” that the coming of Jesus is supposed to mean for us, the more relevant and meaningful these pictures seem to be for where we find ourselves tonight – at least with regard to the coming of this savior we’ve gathered to sing about, to celebrate, and to hope in.

Now, I don’t want to rain on this Christmas parade (or snow and slush and freeze all over this celebration, as the case may be), but I do think when we neglect or forget too much about the hard and holy reality of Jesus’ coming among us … and when we cling too tightly to the warm and fuzzy expectations the world has convinced us this should all be about, we miss something about the depth and meaning and greater purpose of it all.

In other words, it’s worth acknowledging that the reality of what shows up in Jesus may look different from what we’ve been trained and tricked to expect a lot of the time.

I mean, we’ve created a fairy tale out of Jesus’ birthday that probably wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, if we’re honest.

We sing “Away in a Manger” and pretend that the cattle are “lowing” but that the “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” I don’t buy that for a minute. Did you see those pictures? Have you met a newborn? The notion of a peaceful, peepless Baby Jesus comes from a song, not from Scripture.

And we pretend that first Christmas wasn’t a logistical nightmare without a safe place for Mary to rest, sleep and give birth … so that she had to make it all happen in a food trough for animals. It’s hard to imagine God couldn’t do better by Mary and Joseph – lined up a bed and midwife or something – after all they had agreed to, don’t you think?

And poor, terrified, traumatized Mary. Our nativity sets and our Christmas cards turn her into a grown woman who was merely inconvenienced by all of this, rather than acknowledging the young, peasant girl that she was, whose body was likely broken and bloodied – in all the ways – by all she endured to meet this moment.

I don’t know and can’t imagine what Mary and Joseph were expecting when they got the news and started planning for this baby, this Jesus who was going to save his people from their sins, this Emmanuel – “God with Us” – who had been promised. But the reality of it all surely wasn’t something you’d include in the brochure, post on social media, or take pictures of for your annual Christmas greeting.

And all of that was just par for the course where Jesus was concerned and a foretaste of the feast to come, really. Because, the expectations of those who were waiting for a Messiah were nothing like what showed up in Jesus.

They longed for a powerful king and got a helpless baby. They hoped for a weapon-wielding warrior and got a pacifist’s prince of peace. They were looking for fine robes and got a bundle of swaddling cloths. They expected riches and got poverty. They thought he would come for a nation, and he showed up for the sake of the whole wide world. They were convinced his judgment would look like fear, not forgiveness; might, not mercy; hubris, not humility. You get the point.

So I’m here to suggest that our invitation tonight … our hope, this Christmas … might just be found, not in lowering our expectations, but in changing them altogether.

How might your life and our world be transformed if we expected to find God in the broken places more often? In the hospital room, at the nursing home, at the funeral home. Maybe we wouldn’t despair so easily, give up hope so quickly, lose faith so fast.

How might your life and our world be transformed if we expected to find God in the poor places from whence he came in the first place? I think less would become more for us all. Our generosity would come more naturally. We would find better, different, more faithful ways to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless and all the rest.

How might things change if we listened to the “other” … the marginalized, the outsider, like Mary … more often? And what if we expected to hear there something about God’s hopes, dreams, and deepest desires? If Mary was right, then the lowly would be lifted up. The mighty would be cast down. Humility and grace and justice would rule the day. And we might be more inclined to help that happen.

And all of this is good news for you and me, too – this change in perspective when it comes to what God is up to at Christmas – because it means that when our own reality doesn’t measure up to our best intentions… when our own experience doesn’t live up to our greatest expectations… when things don’t go the way we hoped, planned for, dreamed of at every turn… we’re called to trust and to see that that’s precisely where, when, how and why God shows up at all.

… to restore relationships, to bring peace where there’s only been chaos, to find what seems so lost.

… to surprise us with love, to shower us with grace, to empower us with purpose.

… to shine light into the shadows, to turn sin into forgiveness, to bring life from death, even.

So, this Christmas and in the days to come, let’s stop looking for God only in what seems picture perfect, pretty, prosperous or powerful and then being disappointed when we don’t find what we expect there. That was never God’s promise.

Instead, let’s look for God where God has always been, in the lost, lonely and broken places – of our lives and in this world – and let’s remember that that’s where God does God’s best work.

It’s into those places that Christ comes. It’s those imperfect people – like you and me – for whom God’s light shines. It’s in those hard, holy moments of our hard, holy, harried lives where faith, hope and love abide, in spite of ourselves … but always by God’s grace … made known, in the flesh, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen. Merry Christmas.

Relentless - Blue Christmas

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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“Relentless” is the word that kept coming to mind – about these days and as I wondered about tonight. “Relentless” because the list and litany of things that I know are weighing on some of you … and on me … and that I thought might bring us here for worship, just kept piling up and piling on in recent days. Of course there’s the news – the wars and rumors of wars, the natural disasters and pending storms, the politics, the politics, and the politics. I’m going to let that all of that “news” stuff speak for itself.

Mostly it’s been the dying, though. So much dying. People losing parents and friends and family and children, even – sometimes after long, lingering sickness and disease. Sometimes quickly, though not unexpectedly. Sometimes in surprising, shocking, unsettling ways – surrounded by circumstances no one could have seen coming. Of course the grief of death shows up in particularly painful ways at this time of year, whether it happened last week or a lifetime ago.

But it’s not just that dying that’s relentless these days. There is the struggle of parenting that’s overwhelming for some, I know. There are kids struggling with what it means to be a kid – or to become an adult – in this world. There are people whose jobs have been on the line – and some who’ve lost what they were counting on in that regard. There are sick and aging parents and friends. There are failing marriages. There are broken relationships of all kinds that would, could, should be something so much more and better and different than they’ve turned out to be.

There are burdens of anxiety and mental illness too numerous and nebulous to name or itemize but that somehow have a very real weight and heft to them, nonetheless.

There are people carrying secrets too hard and too heavy to carry on their own or to say out loud from here.

And I’m sorry/not sorry for those of you with whom I’ve already shared this little video. It added something to our Bethel Bible Study class a couple of weeks ago where I used it to talk theology … and about the nature of God.

Then it came up again in our Stephen Ministry discussion last week where I used it, thinking clinically, about how we deal with each other in caring relationships.

And when something like this won’t leave my mind – or keeps popping up in relevant, meaningful, surprising ways – I feel like I’m supposed to take notice and pay more attention and maybe keep learning from whatever it might be.

So I want to share it with those of you who haven’t seen it – and again with those of you who have – and wonder about it, together, in light of whatever brings us here, for a service like this, at Christmas.

All you need to know about the video is that it’s Brene Brown’s voice you’re hearing. (If you’ve never heard of Brene Brown, she’s a professor, author, podcaster and social worker.) And someone has taken one of her lectures and turned it into a cartoon for some extra effect and added meaning.

So much of the truth about Christmas – which so often gets lost in the mix of everything we’ve done to the “most wonderful time of the year” – so much of the TRUTH about Christmas is acknowledgement of the fact that life in this world is relentless. And the story of our faith never suggests otherwise. God never suggests otherwise. In fact, a friend of mine once said that the Bible itself – the story of our faith in Scripture – reads like some kind of trauma response narrative when you think about it.

From Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, to the Tower of Babel, the Exodus from slavery in Egypt, the exile in Babylon, through to the life, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus, our faith’s story is one tragedy after another tragedy after another, after another, after another when you think about it – some cosmic in scope and scale, some more personal and close to home.

Whatever the case, even Scripture is a reminder that life in this world is relentless – even for people of faith, maybe especially for people of faith – who have their hearts and minds and lives attuned to the music of someone and of something greater than ourselves.

But the other hard truth is, faith doesn’t and will not take away our grief in one fell swoop – nor should it. Faith can’t reverse our deepest darkest thoughts, all on its own, all of the time. Faith won’t fix your anxiety or ease your depression, if you can muster whatever “enough” of that sort of faith is supposed to look like. Faith won’t keep your problems at bay or make your life easier at every turn.

No matter what some preach, teach or post on social media – or have tried to make you believe in one way or another – loving God and having faith is not a prescription against suffering or struggle.

But the promise of Christmas – and the point of that little video about empathy, for my money – is a reminder about the kind of God we’re dealing with, in Jesus. It’s not a God like so many other false gods (drugs, alcohol, self-reliance, our own boot-straps, our own best intentions, our own busy schedules, or whatever else we use to fix ourselves);

The promise of Christmas is not about a god or gods who stand up there and out there, far and away from what hurts us most…offering us a sandwich or a simple solution or a sweet supplication to fix whatever is the matter…

The promise of Christmas is not of a God who doesn’t – who has not – lived and experienced and felt just exactly what we live and experience and feel as a people…

Ours is a God who shows up in the midst of whatever mess we find ourselves and sits with us there and shows us that it is endurable, doable, and able to be overcome…

Ours is a God who shows up in ways as tangible as one of these prayer shawls you are invited to take and wrap yourself in when you leave here tonight…

Ours is a God who comes down as surely as this bread and wine that we’ll eat, drink, taste, smell and share in a moment…

Ours is a God who is sitting next to you now, in this worship, in the presence of someone who has struggled and suffered, too; who is struggling and suffering, beside you even now…

Ours is a God who is even more relentless – more patient and persistent and vulnerable – than whatever brings us here and that we’ll carry with us even after we leave.

Our is a God who comes down, in Jesus, to remind us that there is grace and love and mercy and hope, embodied and emboldened in the world around us, by faithful, loving, kind people and pastors and parents; friends and family and strangers, even.

So, I hope some of you came here tonight selfishly looking and longing for something … even if you aren’t sure what it could be.

I hope others of you came here tonight – whether you knew it or not – looking and longing to enter into this sacred space, to simply sit with and be alongside the others …

I hope each of us sees our potential to be both of these things at any given moment in the days to come…

And I hope we see it all as a picture of the promise and great hope of Christmas – that wild, miraculous notion of the Word and ways of God, making the vulnerable, loving choice to become flesh and to live among us;

…the love of God putting on skin and bones – not just in the person of Jesus, born in a manger long, long ago – but alive and well in God’s children, people just like you and me;

…the love of God born to give and to receive the kind of grace, mercy and peace that is ours because we are God’s – for each other and for the sake of the world into which he comes...

…sharing love, hope and connection that promises the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting – on this side of heaven and the next.

Amen. Merry Christmas.