There are six teenage girls upstairs sleeping. By tonight my parents, son and nephew will be here. The toilet in the upstairs hall bathroom is leaking water and gas; the handle on the refrigerator door broke off and the car battery died, all in the past few days. Oh and a couple of the thermostats needed battery replacement.
Minor, right?
I thought I might take my Christmas Eve sermon out for a test drive here this morning. Just for yucks. Just to see if it sinks or floats.
The thing is, as a pastor Christmas and Easter are days to love and loathe. The church becomes overrun with folks who won’t be there a week later. Everything feels more amped-up on those days and we’re a casual church, unaccustomed to fancy dress or punctuality, really. Our gatherings are kind of organic and a little disorganized. The music is great and sometimes when I have a mic I’m inspired. Sometimes I find the fire and everyone feels it.
Christmas brings a weird set of emotions. It’s awesome to have so many people in church. It’s not awesome to feel like we’re putting on a little pageant for the benefit of the guests.
The Taurus in my fumes and says The rest of us are here the other fifty-one weeks of the year, trying to figure it out, working to build community. Then I remember that, as the tale goes, the pregnant couple couldn’t find a place to have their baby that night. The wayfaring strangers needed a warm room and some love. So I have to work on my holiday hospitality.
What do you say to a room full of people who might only be there one night of the year? How does a pastor capitalize on all those eggnog-soaked hearts? Because I know that a lot of them have a mindset about God. I know a lot of them have decided they don’t need any of it, it’s just a bunch of bunk, or that they get their spiritual kinks worked out in yoga class.
Which, that’s fine. I wouldn’t call myself religious, in truth. I don’t really care about organized religion. I don’t care if churches wither and die. I don’t. I care that churches figure out how to get with the program, pay attention to what’s happening in the world right now, lose all the musty and meaningless rules and habits and meet people on the weird road that many of us are walking right now here in this world. I want to see pastors ditch the silly costuming and condescending pastorly voices. I want to see more women running things. I want to see the actual tenants of Christianity — gentleness, humility, forgiveness, truth, service to the underserved — mirrored in the behaviors of leaders and congregants. Until that day, if a churches are dying, I say good riddance. Make some space for the new, better, more dynamic thing to arrive.
One of my favorite passages about God isn’t found in the Bible. I don’t know much about the Bible. I love old mythologies, but I’m always suspect about who ‘wrote’ them, who had access to printing, who was allowed to tell the stories … usually privileged white men, so … there’s that. Those texts are certainly to be referenced, but with the caveat that they were recorded at a certain moment in time—there was a context that no longer exists.
My favorite bit about God comes from The Count of Monte Cristo. There are two men in the scene, serving time in a really horrible prison in … France, I think, in the early 1800’s. One is a holy man, Abbe Faria, and the other is Edmond Dante who has been framed and wrongfully imprisoned. Just before his death Faria gives Dante the key to a buried treasure. Dante says that he’s going to use the fortune to get revenge on the man who put him in prison.
Do not commit the crime for which you now serve the sentence, Abbe Faria tells him, leave revenge in the hands of God.
I don’t believe in God, Dante says.
It doesn’t matter, Faria replies, God believes in you.
It doesn’t matter if you shun faith or God or think it’s all a joke, a fairy tale. It doesn’t matter if you look at the Grand Canyon or the Rockies or a butterfly in flight or a peony unfurling or a newborn baby and don’t see God. I don’t know how that’s possible, but ultimately that’s your business.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in God because God already believes in you. And the day you open your mind to that tiny seed of possibility is the day an entire world of wonder is born to you.
My standard response is, what have you got to lose?
We’ve all heard the story of the couple going to his hometown to register for the census, very pregnant, unable to find a place to stay, baby born in a barn, placed in a manger, adoring livestock hovering nearby.
I’ve given birth three times now, in a hospital, with lots of drugs. I know what that looks like, the screaming, the agony, telling the med students at the University hospital to get the f out of the room. I know the exhaustion, the insanity that comes with realizing that your body has produced another human, that was inside you for nine months and is now gone. A team of skilled doctors, midwives and nurses got me through those ordeals and if there had been a cow and a donkey in the room when it was all over I probably would have asked for a pistol.
It’s a cute story, and I do believe that God wanted us to know that God is in love with us and so maybe did present in human form in that baby. But honestly, I think God presents in human form in all of us, all the time. Jesus had some awesome skills (that sounded a lot like magic tricks), but I don’t fixate on that stuff much. I like the humility of his life, the kindness, the tending to the sick, lame and impoverished. I think I’d like anyone who could wave a wand and make a castle materialize, with staff, white stallions and an ever-flowing chocolate fountain, but chooses not to. That’s interesting to me. I always like the person who quietly gives his or her resources away, fixing broken things in the world without drawing any attention to themself.
We’ve heard the Christmas story so many times now that it kind of loses its zing, right? So what to say to a roomful of skeptics who are eager to get home to the figgy pudding?
When I was young and forced to go to church I hated it. It didn’t make any sense to me, the stories were weird and scary. It was an oppressive line we were fed: a powerful white guy in the sky keeping track of my transgressions. I liked the Santa version of that much better. At least he brought gifts. The payoff for good behavior in that narrative was much more appealing.
What would have made a difference? I think if I could have found myself in any of the stories, if any of it had felt … more real, applicable in my little life. I mean that’s what we’re all ultimately looking for, right, a story out there in the world that feels like home.
It took time, I needed to reject, seek, live. Then I saw it: I saw myself in the tired pregnant woman. I saw myself in the wanderers looking for shelter and finding none. I saw myself in their poverty, in their distaste for oppressive governmental decrees. I saw and see myself all the time in the shepards looking up at the night sky in wonder.
I saw and see myself all the time in their curiosity, in their choice to try to see what God was wanting to show them.
And seeing myself in those ancient narratives makes me realize that I belong here. Or, as Abbe Faria said, that I matter.
As strange as it seems, I think this is what we are all seeking all the time: a sense of belonging; the confidence that my life matters.
Manger, sheep, barn, inn, frankincense, the details don’t really matters all that much. But you matter, and I matter and that’s really important information.
And you don’t even have to believe it, you don’t have to buy into the idea of a Creator, a benevolent loving energy, if you don’t want to, that’s fine, your loss I might add. Because the God you doubt does not doubt you. And never will.
Merry Christmas. xo, mo
I suggest that your theme really is “G-d believes in you”! Start there and you are golden. You know Jews continually question their faith, so I think it is safe to presume even Jesus did the same. Taking things for granted is the curse of this era. Exploring your own beliefs is clearly your calling!
Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas,
❤️🩹
Martha
My only suggestion is to not get down on the one timers. As you know, there might be one in the crowd that decides to come the rest of the 51 weeks and makes all the difference. 🤷🏻♀️