My older daughter Sona was born on June 12, 2005. You hear this all the time, that the experience of becoming a parent is one that no book, no council of elders, no class can fully encompass: you have to live it to understand it. I won’t deign to understand the intensity and pain that Julie went through in labor and delivery, though I imagine the moms this morning can tell you some stories. What I remember of those first few hours and days after Sona’s birth was that car ride home. I think I drove, like, 4 miles an hour. And the whole time, I’m thinking, “Jesus, they’re in our lane! Move over! Slow down!” The hospital was 3 miles away from home, and I think it took an hour to make the trip. When we parked, I carried Sona in her bucket seat into the house. Julie whispered to her, “Welcome home.” And then she shut the door. Sona was awake but quiet. The house was musty and silent. And in that moment, as it dawned on me that we had this new creature in our home, I muttered to myself, “What fool thought it was a good idea to leave this child with us?”
I can’t help but wonder if Mary and Joseph felt something similarly when light broke that morning after their first child was born. Our crèche scenes and our paintings and sculptures of the Holy Family can shield us from the awesome sense of vulnerability that must have dawned on Jesus’ parents that morning: my God, we are responsible for this baby, the task is ours, and we are unmoored. Joseph and Mary were poor Jews living under Roman occupation, from a small village that held probably no more than 500 people. It’s a miracle that Mary survived her labor and delivery, as maternal death during childbirth was not uncommon in the ancient world. And then there’s the stark reality of infant mortality during this period: modern scholarship estimates that one in three children died in infancy in the time that Jesus was born. Even as she might be caressing her baby, Mary may have also been thinking, “Will it be too cold this winter? Will I be able to produce enough milk?” And Joseph might have wondered anxiously, “Will enough people want me to carve furniture or erect a shed? Will I be able to buy enough flour and oil for Mary to cook? Will I be able to escape being harassed and shaken down by Roman soldiers?” The Holy Family wasn’t especially protected from the fraught circumstances of life in the 1st century. They lived, like everyone else in Palestine, precarious lives. Every day was a day of risk, and so that morning, as day light poured into that mucky, manure-smelling barn, the question unvoiced but ever present in the minds of this young couple might have been something like mine in 2005: who left this child with us?
In the Gospel of John’s version we don’t actually get a birth narrative like we do in Luke. Instead, we get a prologue that describes Jesus in seemingly abstract terms: the Word, the Word with God, the Word as God. But John does tell us toward the end of that prologue that “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Eugene Patterson’s version in The Message puts it this way: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” This is the extraordinary, unbelievable story of the Gospel, that God puts God’s very self at risk by moving into the neighborhood as a flesh and blood, fragile, vulnerable human being. God puts God’s self into the loving, caressing, trembling arms of a young Jewish teenager and her poor husband, this couple living such precarious lives, and it is this radical act of Emmanuel, God with us, God in the muck and danger of our world, God moving into the neighborhood, that moves the shepherds to wonder and to praise God in our Gospel lesson, and that moves John in his gospel to say that “we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” Again, Peterson helps us discern the radical, risky act of God’s taking on human vulnerability: “We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, generous inside and out, true from start to finish.”
What God shows us this Christmas morning is that God’s power is in the simple of transformative act of generosity, of solidarity, with God’s creation, a creation that is always at risk and in danger. And God tells us through this fragile child that is God incarnate, God with us, God as us, “I will put myself in the same kind of risk that my creation is in.” God leaves God’s self with us, and while we might wonder at such divine wisdom, we can also marvel at this act: if God is willing to be with us in our human fragility then there is nothing and no place, NO PLACE, where God isn’t willing to be with us.
And this promise, God with us, always, gives Mary and Joseph and you and me the capacity, the energy, the responsibility to do the work of Christmas each and every day, even as morning breaks in and we hold the vulnerable Christ child in our arms and keep him alive one more day. This work of Christmas is best summed up by a poem with this very title, “The Work of Christmas,” by civil rights leader and theologian Howard Thurman:
When the song of the angels is stilled
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the Kings and Princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flocks,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost
To heal the broken
To feed the hungry
To release the prisoner
To rebuild the nations
To bring peace among brothers and sisters
To make music in the heart.
Sisters and brothers, who left this child with us? God left this child with us, and because God left God’s self with us, the promise is here, now, and eternal: God will never leave us. And because God will never leave us, we are inspired, called, and challenged to care for God’s creation, to do the work of Christmas not just on December 25, but each and every day of our lives. May we, this day and always, care for the Christ child, God who risks it all, by recommitting ourselves this morning to the work of Christmas, to find the lost, heal the broken, feed the hungry, release prisoners, bring peace to all, and to make music hum in the heart of God and all of God’s children.
Joseph's Vulnerability-A Sermon by the Rev. Jim Lee (Advent IVA)
Lectionary readings
Brené Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and a leading researcher on shame and vulnerability, tells the story of an encounter with a man in a yellow golf jacket. At a book signing, a couple came up to Brown to get four books of hers signed, and as the wife turned to leave, the man said that he wanted to stay and ask Brown a question. He expressed to her how much he agreed with Brown’s research findings on shame, and of the importance to acknowledge and move past shame, to reach out and share stories. But, he wondered, where were the stories of men? When Brown explained that she only studied women, he muttered, “Well, that's convenient.” Then he went on to tell his story: “We [men] have shame, we have deep shame, but when we reach out and tell our stories, we get the emotional [bleep] beat out of us. And before you say anything about those mean fathers and those coaches and those brothers and those bully friends, my wife and three daughters, the ones who you just signed the books for, they had rather see me die on top of my white horse than have to watch me fall off.” Then this man turned and walked away. “In that moment,” Brown recalls of that evening, “I realized that men have their own stories and that if we’re going to find our way out of shame, it will be together.”
It is 2013, almost 2014, and as a culture we have come so far. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our feminist sisters to embrace and live out the simple premise that women’s lives, stories, and contributions are worth hearing, sharing, rewarding. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our LGBT sisters and brothers to embrace the diversity of sexual and gender identity as gifts from God, and I am so thankful to be part of a church that lives out this ongoing prophetic call, that those at God’s table need not be made up simply of straight men, but of all people whom God has created in God’s image. In December 2013, there is much to marvel at, just how far we’ve come.
And yet, there is also something in this morning’s Gospel lesson that reminds me that even in our complex, sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of the twenty-first century, something still rings true of that man in the yellow golf jacket who cannot voice his stories of shame, whose wife and children cannot bear to hear his deep vulnerability borne of shame. Shame is a universal experience, to be sure, and as Brené Brown has uncovered, the triggers for shame differ at times for women and for men. For a woman, shame is a sticky spiderweb of conflicting, competing expectations, of who she should be, what she should be, and how she should be. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Be perfect, but make it look natural. Respond to every person’s needs, your children, your spouse, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your friends. A real woman can have it all. For a man, the primary trigger for shame is the threat that he might be perceived as, or might think of himself, as weak. To be seen as soft, fearful, wrong, defective, to be ridiculed or criticized, are all ways that tell men that they are weak and not worthy of the love of their family and friends, of their coworkers, their supervisor, or their workers. Only strong men are real men. Brown tells another story—and before I tell it, I want to warn you all that I will be using a homophobic epithet. I use it because it is part of the story, but let me pause and say that I and Brené Brown both unequivocally repudiate this kind of homophobic language and its verbal violence. Brown tells the story of a young man in one of her classes who relayed how as a child he loved art—drawing, painting. When his uncle came to visit and saw this child’s art plastered on the refrigerator, he said to the father, “So what? You’re raising a f**got artist now?” That day was the last day this young man picked up a pencil, crayon or paintbrush. That day, a part of this young man’s soul died, and what replaced that part of his heart was this scar of shame that he carried into his adulthood.
In the honor/shame culture of the 1st century, Joseph knew very well how devastating the shadow of shame could be, for him and for Mary. It is a testament to his character that he planned to dismiss Mary quietly. Joseph could have turned what would have been a mark of shame on his identity as a Jewish man—his wife is pregnant but not with him—into an opportunity to project that shame onto Mary, to publicly disgrace her so as to maintain or regain his own sense of honor and manhood. But he doesn’t. There’s already a quiet dignity in Joseph. But that’s not enough. God wants more, and so what does God do? God meets Joseph where Joseph is most vulnerable: in his dreams. And in Joseph’s dream, God tells Joseph that God has a different dream, not only for Joseph but through Joseph for the world. And what does God’s dream look like? It goes something like this: “Joseph, I know this is scary, but there’s more to life than simply living out the same social expectations that leave women where they are, that leave men where they are. There’s more to life than trying to hide your weakness, to push down your fear, to let shame win again, and to let shame ruin so many lives. I know this is scary, but there’s a different way to live, where you live with your vulnerability and uncertainty and messiness, where you embrace all of that, and see what new thing happens.”
So when he awakes from his dream, this dream in which God reveals God’s dream, Joseph does just that: he decides to live differently. He casts aside the social conventions of honor/shame, between men and women, he marries Mary and he names and cares for the baby Jesus. God invited Joseph to step off the deadly wheel of shame that imprisons men and women, and Joseph did, and opened himself to a much more vulnerable way of being, but also a way of being that began to bring God’s dream into the world. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he modeled for Jesus a way of being open to others. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he taught Jesus that the meek would inherit the earth, that God is on the side of the poor. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he showed Jesus that no man should ever raise a hand or stone against a woman, that lepers should be embraced and not avoided, that a poor widow dropping two pennies in the offering plate touched God’s heart far more than the regular pledger, and that a father waits longingly for his lost son to come home so that he can embrace his child who has been found. And because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he gave Jesus the courage to say while he was dying, hanging on that Roman cross, that evil imperial form of execution, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Joseph awoke from his dream and gave up the pretense that real men needed to be strong and powerful and right and perfect, and instead opened himself to vulnerability. And when he did, he allowed God’s revolution to begin in the life and ministry of the child he named Jesus.
My sisters and brothers, this Advent season is about preparing ourselves for the God who comes to us as a helpless, vulnerable, poor child born in a stinky barn. This God asks us to strip away the stories that the world tells us we need to be, what we need to have, or else we should be ashamed of ourselves. This God asks you and me to give up the very stories that demand that we be real men or real women, so that we can open ourselves up to being authentic children of God. This God asks us to do something new. And when we do, when we awake from our dreams and begin to live out God’s dream, to be open, to be vulnerable, and to model this radical openness in our lives, then you and I will be ready to receive this child we call our savior, and to make Christmas the truly liberating event that it is: to turn the world upside down by daring to turn the human race into the human family.
Brené Brown, a professor at the University of Houston and a leading researcher on shame and vulnerability, tells the story of an encounter with a man in a yellow golf jacket. At a book signing, a couple came up to Brown to get four books of hers signed, and as the wife turned to leave, the man said that he wanted to stay and ask Brown a question. He expressed to her how much he agreed with Brown’s research findings on shame, and of the importance to acknowledge and move past shame, to reach out and share stories. But, he wondered, where were the stories of men? When Brown explained that she only studied women, he muttered, “Well, that's convenient.” Then he went on to tell his story: “We [men] have shame, we have deep shame, but when we reach out and tell our stories, we get the emotional [bleep] beat out of us. And before you say anything about those mean fathers and those coaches and those brothers and those bully friends, my wife and three daughters, the ones who you just signed the books for, they had rather see me die on top of my white horse than have to watch me fall off.” Then this man turned and walked away. “In that moment,” Brown recalls of that evening, “I realized that men have their own stories and that if we’re going to find our way out of shame, it will be together.”
It is 2013, almost 2014, and as a culture we have come so far. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our feminist sisters to embrace and live out the simple premise that women’s lives, stories, and contributions are worth hearing, sharing, rewarding. We’re not there yet, but we have learned so much from our LGBT sisters and brothers to embrace the diversity of sexual and gender identity as gifts from God, and I am so thankful to be part of a church that lives out this ongoing prophetic call, that those at God’s table need not be made up simply of straight men, but of all people whom God has created in God’s image. In December 2013, there is much to marvel at, just how far we’ve come.
And yet, there is also something in this morning’s Gospel lesson that reminds me that even in our complex, sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of the twenty-first century, something still rings true of that man in the yellow golf jacket who cannot voice his stories of shame, whose wife and children cannot bear to hear his deep vulnerability borne of shame. Shame is a universal experience, to be sure, and as Brené Brown has uncovered, the triggers for shame differ at times for women and for men. For a woman, shame is a sticky spiderweb of conflicting, competing expectations, of who she should be, what she should be, and how she should be. Tell me if you’ve heard this before: Be perfect, but make it look natural. Respond to every person’s needs, your children, your spouse, your parents, your boss, your coworkers, your friends. A real woman can have it all. For a man, the primary trigger for shame is the threat that he might be perceived as, or might think of himself, as weak. To be seen as soft, fearful, wrong, defective, to be ridiculed or criticized, are all ways that tell men that they are weak and not worthy of the love of their family and friends, of their coworkers, their supervisor, or their workers. Only strong men are real men. Brown tells another story—and before I tell it, I want to warn you all that I will be using a homophobic epithet. I use it because it is part of the story, but let me pause and say that I and Brené Brown both unequivocally repudiate this kind of homophobic language and its verbal violence. Brown tells the story of a young man in one of her classes who relayed how as a child he loved art—drawing, painting. When his uncle came to visit and saw this child’s art plastered on the refrigerator, he said to the father, “So what? You’re raising a f**got artist now?” That day was the last day this young man picked up a pencil, crayon or paintbrush. That day, a part of this young man’s soul died, and what replaced that part of his heart was this scar of shame that he carried into his adulthood.
In the honor/shame culture of the 1st century, Joseph knew very well how devastating the shadow of shame could be, for him and for Mary. It is a testament to his character that he planned to dismiss Mary quietly. Joseph could have turned what would have been a mark of shame on his identity as a Jewish man—his wife is pregnant but not with him—into an opportunity to project that shame onto Mary, to publicly disgrace her so as to maintain or regain his own sense of honor and manhood. But he doesn’t. There’s already a quiet dignity in Joseph. But that’s not enough. God wants more, and so what does God do? God meets Joseph where Joseph is most vulnerable: in his dreams. And in Joseph’s dream, God tells Joseph that God has a different dream, not only for Joseph but through Joseph for the world. And what does God’s dream look like? It goes something like this: “Joseph, I know this is scary, but there’s more to life than simply living out the same social expectations that leave women where they are, that leave men where they are. There’s more to life than trying to hide your weakness, to push down your fear, to let shame win again, and to let shame ruin so many lives. I know this is scary, but there’s a different way to live, where you live with your vulnerability and uncertainty and messiness, where you embrace all of that, and see what new thing happens.”
So when he awakes from his dream, this dream in which God reveals God’s dream, Joseph does just that: he decides to live differently. He casts aside the social conventions of honor/shame, between men and women, he marries Mary and he names and cares for the baby Jesus. God invited Joseph to step off the deadly wheel of shame that imprisons men and women, and Joseph did, and opened himself to a much more vulnerable way of being, but also a way of being that began to bring God’s dream into the world. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he modeled for Jesus a way of being open to others. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he taught Jesus that the meek would inherit the earth, that God is on the side of the poor. Because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he showed Jesus that no man should ever raise a hand or stone against a woman, that lepers should be embraced and not avoided, that a poor widow dropping two pennies in the offering plate touched God’s heart far more than the regular pledger, and that a father waits longingly for his lost son to come home so that he can embrace his child who has been found. And because Joseph embraced vulnerability, he gave Jesus the courage to say while he was dying, hanging on that Roman cross, that evil imperial form of execution, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” Joseph awoke from his dream and gave up the pretense that real men needed to be strong and powerful and right and perfect, and instead opened himself to vulnerability. And when he did, he allowed God’s revolution to begin in the life and ministry of the child he named Jesus.
My sisters and brothers, this Advent season is about preparing ourselves for the God who comes to us as a helpless, vulnerable, poor child born in a stinky barn. This God asks us to strip away the stories that the world tells us we need to be, what we need to have, or else we should be ashamed of ourselves. This God asks you and me to give up the very stories that demand that we be real men or real women, so that we can open ourselves up to being authentic children of God. This God asks us to do something new. And when we do, when we awake from our dreams and begin to live out God’s dream, to be open, to be vulnerable, and to model this radical openness in our lives, then you and I will be ready to receive this child we call our savior, and to make Christmas the truly liberating event that it is: to turn the world upside down by daring to turn the human race into the human family.
A Blue Christmas Sermon by Larry Budner
“Blue Christmas” sermon, December 15, 2013
Larry Budner
“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”
Most of us recognize that famous opening line of the best Christmas special ever, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and many of us here today feel the same: everyone around is excited about Christmas, or at least happy anticipating how much they will enjoy Christmas after the stress of preparing for it; but the joy is lacking, and we feel out of step.
Some of us here may be in mourning, as we have lost several beloved members of the congregation recently, and others may be suffering from severe depression. However, even for these people, there can be an aspect of their reaction to the Christmas season that seems confusing and out of step.
Lucy, the amateur psychiatrist, tells Charlie Brown that what he needs is “involvement,” and gives him the directing role in the Christmas pageant. As a real psychiatrist, I think Lucy’s prescription is a bit premature.
I would have Charlie Brown look closely at his sentence, “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” The idea that there is one correct way which people are supposed to feel at this time of year is a source of great suffering to him: not only is he unhappy, but he believes that he is also a failure at the task of “getting into the Christmas spirit,” which makes him even more unhappy.
Charlie Brown’s experience illustrates an important part of how negative moods develop: we have negative feelings, and then our thoughts and judgments make our feelings worse. We think that we are no good, unlovable, and ineffectual. An important way in which therapists help people is by teaching them to pay attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally, to things as they are. Patients learn to just observe their moods, feelings, and thoughts, not holding on to negative judgments or insisting that things be different from what they are at that moment. Frequently, this relieves the suffering brought on by our own judgments, and lets new perspectives and new ways of engaging the world appear. It’s a tremendous relief when we can trust our gut feelings and instincts to choose a healthy path when the world around us isn’t leading us any place we really want to go.
A great example of this is when Charlie Brown’s heart goes out to the spindly, unattractive Christmas tree in the lot. He sees some potential there and decides to trust his instinct and buy it, instead of the shiny aluminum tree his friends are expecting him to bring back to the pageant.
Charlie Brown is a child who has endured loneliness, rejection, and negative judgments from his peers for much of his childhood. He has a great strength, though, which is his tremendous compassion and sensitivity to others who are rejected and isolated. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to recognize that Charlie Brown is taking care of a part of himself at the same time he chooses the rejected tree. He stands up to the ridicule of his peers because he has cared for himself; he has lived up to his highest values and made himself whole by refusing to be part of a system that judges by external appearance and creates groups of insiders and outsiders.
I would suggest that we quiet ourselves this season through prayer, meditation, listening to music, or any other way that works for you, so that you can see what surprising person or thing in the world draws your heart. I would like to suggest that you, also, trust yourself. It may be that your unhappiness is a symptom of depression, in which case medical or psychological treatment may be a gift from God. But it may also be true that unhappiness at this time of year reflects the deepest part of you, that part of your soul which is a part of God, telling you that things are not right, either within you or in the world around you. It could be that God is inviting you to be in touch with parts of yourself at are hidden away, rejected, hurt or vulnerable, and which need to be reconciled with the rest of you and with the world. It could also be that God is inviting you to be in touch with the parts of creation which are also suffering. There are many around us who are suffering from illness, loneliness, poverty, addictions, family problems, and feelings of meaninglessness and hopelessness.
Think of the great Christmas stories, as well, about people who were made whole when they allowed their heart to go out to things and people around them. Think of the Christmas gospel, and its message of hope for a people suffering under the heavy hand of empire. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, whose interest in the crippled Tiny Tim came from his sense of his own crippled humanity, and the tiny remnant of compassion which he possessed by virtue of the great compassion showed him by his sister who loved him and rescued him from a mean father and loneliness at school. Think, even, of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, where little Cindy Lou Who, in her innocence and trust, awakens in the Grinch his own remnant of social relatedness underneath decades of isolation and mistrust.
Isn’t there something this season that grabs your attention? Something that arouses your compassion like the tree did to Charlie Brown? Perhaps this Christmas, you should stop trying to have the Christmas the world says you should have, and accept that a “Blue Christmas” may be an invitation and an opportunity. Maybe Lucy was right after all: what you need is involvement. For a little while, don’t try to change your emotions. Sit with them, pondering the paradox that whatever negative emotion you are experiencing may lead you a response which will bring you a measure of wholeness and peace. And then look around. You may have a chance to be a blessing and a Christmas miracle to those around you.
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, and thank you.
Amen.
Larry Budner
“I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.”
Most of us recognize that famous opening line of the best Christmas special ever, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and many of us here today feel the same: everyone around is excited about Christmas, or at least happy anticipating how much they will enjoy Christmas after the stress of preparing for it; but the joy is lacking, and we feel out of step.
Some of us here may be in mourning, as we have lost several beloved members of the congregation recently, and others may be suffering from severe depression. However, even for these people, there can be an aspect of their reaction to the Christmas season that seems confusing and out of step.
Lucy, the amateur psychiatrist, tells Charlie Brown that what he needs is “involvement,” and gives him the directing role in the Christmas pageant. As a real psychiatrist, I think Lucy’s prescription is a bit premature.
I would have Charlie Brown look closely at his sentence, “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel.” The idea that there is one correct way which people are supposed to feel at this time of year is a source of great suffering to him: not only is he unhappy, but he believes that he is also a failure at the task of “getting into the Christmas spirit,” which makes him even more unhappy.
Charlie Brown’s experience illustrates an important part of how negative moods develop: we have negative feelings, and then our thoughts and judgments make our feelings worse. We think that we are no good, unlovable, and ineffectual. An important way in which therapists help people is by teaching them to pay attention to the present moment, non-judgmentally, to things as they are. Patients learn to just observe their moods, feelings, and thoughts, not holding on to negative judgments or insisting that things be different from what they are at that moment. Frequently, this relieves the suffering brought on by our own judgments, and lets new perspectives and new ways of engaging the world appear. It’s a tremendous relief when we can trust our gut feelings and instincts to choose a healthy path when the world around us isn’t leading us any place we really want to go.
A great example of this is when Charlie Brown’s heart goes out to the spindly, unattractive Christmas tree in the lot. He sees some potential there and decides to trust his instinct and buy it, instead of the shiny aluminum tree his friends are expecting him to bring back to the pageant.
Charlie Brown is a child who has endured loneliness, rejection, and negative judgments from his peers for much of his childhood. He has a great strength, though, which is his tremendous compassion and sensitivity to others who are rejected and isolated. It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to recognize that Charlie Brown is taking care of a part of himself at the same time he chooses the rejected tree. He stands up to the ridicule of his peers because he has cared for himself; he has lived up to his highest values and made himself whole by refusing to be part of a system that judges by external appearance and creates groups of insiders and outsiders.
I would suggest that we quiet ourselves this season through prayer, meditation, listening to music, or any other way that works for you, so that you can see what surprising person or thing in the world draws your heart. I would like to suggest that you, also, trust yourself. It may be that your unhappiness is a symptom of depression, in which case medical or psychological treatment may be a gift from God. But it may also be true that unhappiness at this time of year reflects the deepest part of you, that part of your soul which is a part of God, telling you that things are not right, either within you or in the world around you. It could be that God is inviting you to be in touch with parts of yourself at are hidden away, rejected, hurt or vulnerable, and which need to be reconciled with the rest of you and with the world. It could also be that God is inviting you to be in touch with the parts of creation which are also suffering. There are many around us who are suffering from illness, loneliness, poverty, addictions, family problems, and feelings of meaninglessness and hopelessness.
Think of the great Christmas stories, as well, about people who were made whole when they allowed their heart to go out to things and people around them. Think of the Christmas gospel, and its message of hope for a people suffering under the heavy hand of empire. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, whose interest in the crippled Tiny Tim came from his sense of his own crippled humanity, and the tiny remnant of compassion which he possessed by virtue of the great compassion showed him by his sister who loved him and rescued him from a mean father and loneliness at school. Think, even, of the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, where little Cindy Lou Who, in her innocence and trust, awakens in the Grinch his own remnant of social relatedness underneath decades of isolation and mistrust.
Isn’t there something this season that grabs your attention? Something that arouses your compassion like the tree did to Charlie Brown? Perhaps this Christmas, you should stop trying to have the Christmas the world says you should have, and accept that a “Blue Christmas” may be an invitation and an opportunity. Maybe Lucy was right after all: what you need is involvement. For a little while, don’t try to change your emotions. Sit with them, pondering the paradox that whatever negative emotion you are experiencing may lead you a response which will bring you a measure of wholeness and peace. And then look around. You may have a chance to be a blessing and a Christmas miracle to those around you.
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown, and thank you.
Amen.
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