It's
nearly here now. Sunday, December 23, marks the last Sunday
in Advent, that time of waiting and preparation so we
are ready to receive the gift of the baby in the manger.
Of course, not many of us have taken the time we need
to get our hearts fully prepared. I, of course, am one
who though full of good intentions just didn't take all
the time I had planned so I, too, could be in a state
of complete readiness when I come to adore the baby.
On
the other hand, it is not all that hard to adore babies.
They are amazing little things—innocent and sweet
and just a whole lot of trouble with a tendency to disrupt
all normal routines.
I
wonder if that is one of the reasons that God chose this
strange method to break into human experience. God comes
as a baby, innocent, sweet and extremely disruptive.
I
have been pondering recently a generational quirk in my
heritage. The women, especially on my paternal side, all
tend to have two babies within a year and a half of each
other. This tendency goes back at least four generations.
Now my oldest son and his wife have followed the pattern.
Their second son, Samuel, was born about five weeks ago,
just 17 months after the first son, Joshua, made his appearance.
Now,
I could have told them that Joshua would not take kindly
to Samuel's birth. Joshua, very much used to having the
world ordered to his satisfaction, is a typical demanding,
manipulative, charming, self-centered toddler. Simply
adorable, of course, as all grandchildren are. But still
. . . he has a strong need to be the center of his parent’s
attention. Samuel's birth has been very disruptive to
his little self-centered world, just as my second son's
appearance was to his older brother's world, and my sister's
appearance to my own world. Yes, these babies were quite
disruptive to our natural tendencies to be self-centered.
As
I said, I could have told them this, but why bother? We
all have to learn these things for ourselves, and by the
time I could have told them that, this new life was well
along in his mother's womb. Personally, my oldest son
was such an easy charming baby that I assumed it was all
because I was such a wonderful mother, so why not have
another? After all, it was clear I was a great gift to
the art of mothering! Boy, did my second son upset my
overly flattering picture of my mothering capabilities!
Yes, that disruption again.
So,
I'm thinking about the baby we keep singing about in the
well-loved Christmas carols like “O Come, All Ye
Faithful,” and “Away in a Manger” and
“O Holy Night.” This music show us love and
gentleness and hope and sweetness and the goodness of
God. But we don't often sing of the disruption caused
by this very strange way of God's entering human life.
Think about it. Mary's and Joseph's plans have gone completely
awry. Surely their families must have felt much disappointment
with the too-soon birth of their grandchild. Some middle
eastern men who lived by studying the stars suddenly leave
everything behind for several years in their search to
make sense of a strange light in the heavens. Their searches
lead them to a poor family in odd circumstances. The king
of Judea, Herod (not a nice man at all), decides he so
doesn't want his life and goals affected that he orders
the slaughter of a lot of little children to ensure his
own claim to the throne. All this is very disruptive to
the ways we think God should enter the world of humanity
Then
this baby grows up and turns out to be nothing like the
kind of Savior that the people want. He favors the poor
and the sinner and the outcast and those with no place
in polite or ordered society. He castigates the religious
and upright people. He dies the death of a criminal, and
his body disappears after his death and his followers
cause all sorts of chaos with their wild claims of resurrection.
Very disruptive indeed. Not at all what is expected.
It
does seem that the entrance of holiness into that which
is non-holy causes all sorts of disruption. Instead of
hearing words like, “I love you so much that you
don't have to change anything,” we hear, “I
love you so much that you must undergo deep transformation
in order to be able to fully understand it. If you really
want to receive this love, your life will never be the
same again.” I think most of us would rather hear
the first statement than the last. But the last one is
a lot closer to the real message of Christmas—and
it's wonderfully disruptive.
So,
have a merry Christmas—and let the entrance of the
baby throw things off just a bit. You'll never be sorry
you did.
