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Christmas is about closeness. (At least that what we’ve always been told.) Christmas is about hugging the people you love, enjoying the joyous moment the curtain goes up at the theater with the rest of the audience, gathering together around a table to eat, singing in church together, clasping one another’s hands with a greeting of peace. But these day—again—the very idea of closeness can be complicated. Events and gatherings are again being modified or even cancelled and the intensity is growing as the days tick by.
These days, closeness makes some of us nervous, and with good reason. It gives some of us pause as we calculate: mask or no mask, how much distance? How many people will be there? Test or no test? It makes others of us frustrated or angry because we are done with this distance. Enough already. The very act of thinking about closeness can rattle us one way or the other.
There is certainly a closeness in our Christmas story: Mary and Elizabeth drawing together as they await the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus, the angel Gabriel suddenly appearing right there next to Zachariah or Mary, and everyone drawing close to the manger while Mary cradles baby Jesus close to her heart. But our Christmas stories are pretty chalk full of distance and separation too.
Those shepherds out there on the hillside are far away from everything and everyone who is important and powerful in the world in Rome or Jerusalem. They are way out there on the edge under the wide dark, distant sky wrapped that cold winter night when the angles call out to them from high above the earth.
The Magi that notice that distant star of wonder. But it’s far. And they travel a long distance and for a long time until it stops over that stable. Mary and Joseph are far from their home in Nazareth, maybe even feeling a little homesick. Who wants to welcome a new baby while they’re on this obligatory trip, distant from their loved ones surrounded by strangers?
Even after our Prince of Peace is born, a power hungry king Herod runs the holy family off into the distance out to Egypt. There is, most certainly, distance and a rift in our Christmas story and there’s a yearning for something to be different. The distance is hard:
Mary and Joseph long to be home in Nazareth. The shepherds hope for more just world and that leads them to rush into Bethlehem. There’s a yearning for the promise of something new that the Magi to search for when they follow that star. Mary sang of this hope and longing for different world where the mighty would be brought down and the lowly lifted up. Zachariah sang of his tender hope that his tiny baby, John would make a difference in the pain and struggle around him. Simeon, that church grandpa who greeted the baby Jesus in the temple, sang of hope of a new salvation that was dawning for the people in this child.
The Christmas stories are full of a longing for this world to be different and a hope and belief that God will make it so.
If Christmases from past years with all the coziness and togetherness can give us a glimpse of the closeness that is at the heart of the story, then Christmases of today with this distance and separation that we’re weighing these days takes us, by a different path, also into the very heart of Christmas. Because into that space of aching and hoping and longing, into the distance and discord is where God decides to be born.
In recent years, the world feels shadowy and full of distance. For some, it has felt that weeping has endured for the night, but where, oh where, is the joy that comes in the morning?
There’s people struggling with their rent and folks needing to depend more heavily on food pantries. There’s a lack of opportunity and violence that hitting close to home. School is tough with the masks and the stress and the risks. There’s health care workers who are stretched to the limits and people worried about if they can get the medical care they need. There are folks who respond to social change with hardened hearts and bigotry. There are tornados that whip through cities and fires that burn through towns. Some people are mentally maxed out and others are aching from loneliness. We’re living in a time of great change and it’s not easy.
This kind of pain and hurt and (some of it) sin, shifts and fades or grows with each generation; but this longing for a light that no shadow will extinguish, this crying out from the wilderness for the closeness of Jesus from inside the very chasm, remains.
Into that cold winter night, ages ago, God didn’t send a magic bullet to fix all those problems. God didn’t send the wonder drug or the ultimate means to an end. God sent a baby: a real flesh and blood human presence. Jesus who is born to be with us this Christmas isn’t a fix-it God who eliminates the distance or the pain with the snap of a fingers. Yes, Jesus helps us, helps me and, as Jill Duffield writes, "gives us wisdom face our problems, strength for the journey, hope for the future and courage to live this life that we’ve been given" (or even just live this next day before us.)
in the chasm,
in the disconnection,
in the discord.
In Jesus we know a God who intimately knows our human suffering and longing because he was human. Jesus will not turn away from it but will make a way through it so that each and everyone one of us knows that there is nothing of this world that we may face that is beyond the grace of God. Nothing. In those moments of distance, that’s exactly where God slips into the world and we almost don’t realize it.
when you’re running on empty, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the person who sits with us
when we’re afraid, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the supportive words
we needed to hear, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the bag of groceries
for the family who needs it, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the therapist
who helps you grow, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the tree
that was planted, God with us.
Jesus is alive in the truth tellers and justice seekers
and the deep dreamers who show us the way. God with us
Sometimes, Jesus Immanuel slips in so quietly that we don’t even quite realize it at first just like an ordinary baby born to an very ordinary family.
The light dawns slowly. Although we’re on the other side of the winter solstice by a few days here, these are still some of the longest nights of the year. Every day, we have a few more minutes of light but it will take some time to get to those long, easy days of spring. Even Mary, after everything has happened needs some time to get her head in the game and, scripture says, she ponders everything that has happened looking there at her baby.
The Messiah’s birth heralds a new season, a shifting tide, but there is still a ways to go. There’s still a road to walk, a distance to travel, a heart to transform, a world to renew.
And God is with us as we go.
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