A little slow this week, but I've been chewing on this one.
We are coming to the end of 'tradition time.' I would figure that, in the American psyche, from about Thanksgiving through early January, we are in the throes of tradition. Or traditions, plural, really. We are taught in this culture to do those things we have been handed on to us. Maybe that involves spending time with family, or giving of our time to the local Food Bank, or singing and listening to certain types of music. It definitely involves eating certain kinds of foods--we have certain things that simply must be eaten at Thanksgiving, and then certain things again at Christmas, and of course certain things on New Years Eve and New Years Day. So rooted are these traditions in our lives that others can move in and take advantage of the idea. In what should be an entirely unsurprising consumerist move, our businesses have made this whole traditional time a "traditional shopping season," with all of the appropriate 'traditional' names to go with it: Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Last Day for Free Shipping, the day/week after Christmas.
But somewhere, in all that bustle, I hope that between things, in the empty space that is the true reality, God jumped out and spoke. Perhaps a late night worship service, or perhaps driving in the car and singing, or perhaps walking the dog, or perhaps in the still quiet of the morning--I hope that the radical joy of the season jumped right out and bit you. That's what good tradition is good for, you know. It gives us something to do, body, mind, and soul, so that rather than trying to do something, we can just be.
But we're coming out of that now, out of that traditional time, and back into a more normal time. Trees will be gone, New Years resolutions will appear as the last of all traditions, and before you know it, we'll be back in a high gear, racing who knows where.
This week, we hear the very elusive readings of the second Sunday in Christmas, readings that we have some years and not others. We hear Jeremiah in a rare good mood, the author of Ephesians tell us the good news of our adoption by God, and of the holy family running away to Egypt--although we leave out the rather nasty verses about the killing of babies--would that be too much for a Sunday morning? It seems to me we often try and avoid passages that are unpleasant on Sunday mornings. Not the spiritually difficult ones, which we have relatively often, but the actual blood and guts ones. No daggers disappearing into fat people, tent pegs through heads, heads on platters, wishing for the death of the enemy's children. It's almost like the lectionary is a little Victorian, accepting the bloody, sexy reality of Scripture under the table but denying that we ever have to talk about it publicly.
But even without all the blood, we have Jesus, Mary, and Joseph fleeing into Egypt to save Jesus' life from the bizarrely barbaric Herod. The symmetry, at least narrative-wise, is a pretty one. Jesus' coming interrupts the normal order of things. All of a sudden, the heavens break open and angels sing. Shepherds dazedly ignore their duties and wander to see what all the commotion is. Strange wise foreigners show up with exotic conversation about a new king. And of course, there's the whole virgin birth business. Jesus' whole being stops the usually violent, dangerous word in its tracks. For a few days around a manger, the world's usual business is interrupted by peace.
But Jesus' interruption is itself interrupted by this flight into Egypt. The violent world suddenly reasserts itself. Power games again take to the fore, and the peaceful family becomes a refugee family. Joseph takes Jesus back to the scene of the crime, the place of the enslaving of the Jewish people. He returns to the place no one else wants to go, which is the safest place for him now. Danger and suffering have again become very real.
It's strange way to end Christmas time, with this flight into Egypt. How depressing--for Jesus' peaceful and dramatic birth, a vision of the unity of the heavens the earth, an actualization of the saving of all created reality, to end with a refugee story.
So what happens to these shepherds, these wise men? Matthew doesn't tell us, but we could guess. This vision of Christ was too beautiful, too peaceful, too hopeful. It's hard to live in the day to day reality of shepherding, or the endless commuting of the wise men following various celestial phenomena, while remembering the joy of that vision. So the easiest thing to do is, of course, to forget about it. To forget about Christmas, and as quickly as possible.
Every year, one of my favorite traditions is to read W. H. Auden's A Christmas Oratorio: For the Time Being somewhere during the Advent/Christmas plunge. Other than being one of the great poets of the last century, he was one of the most insightful religious poets--a true prophet, I think, more like the esoteric and aesthetic ramblings of Ezekiel than the straightforward criticism of injustice in Micah or Amos. Every year, I read For the Time Being, and every year, it speaks anew.
Auden chooses to end his poem with the end of the Christmas season in a section he entitles his last section 'The Flight into Egypt.' Auden talks about it in this way:
Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes --
Some have got broken -- and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week --
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted -- quite unsuccessfully --
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.
Auden is probably right--we, too, have seen the light, and will be ever tempted to try and forget the joy, forget the wonder. We will try to deny the light--not because we are mean spirited, or jerks, but because keeping that vision of light and life is so hard in the daily grind. Auden continues:
The streets
Are much narrower than we remembered; we had forgotten
The office was as depressing as this. To those who have seen
The Child, however dimly, however incredulously,
The Time Being is, in a sense, the most trying time of all.
For the innocent children who whispered so excitedly
Outside the locked door where they knew the presents to be
Grew up when it opened. Now, recollecting that moment
We can repress the joy, but the guilt remains conscious;
Remembering the stable where for once in our lives
Everything became a You and nothing was an It.
The daily struggle, the suffering, and especially that feeling that nothing is special is so much easier, so much more believable to us. With the flight into Egypt, Jesus' story returns to the regular world. No more musical numbers, with Mary singing a solo ("My soul proclaims the greatness of the LORD") and angels following up with a big chorus dance number. Instead, back to life as usual--paying the bills, watching the failing economy, interminable and ambiguous wars, rising unemployment in our families and among our friends, and the interstate is the truest existence, and I know, because I drive on that thing.Such is our temptation, to give into the story of the flight into Egypt. If Christ's birth story ends this way, we can relate. The joys of life, and especially the joyful vision at Christmas, seem to much to bear the rest of the year. The trial, as Auden says it, is that "the Soul endure/ A silence that is neither for nor against her faith."
But Christ's truth is, as always, the broader truth. We have seen the Christ child. We have seen visions of healed world. We have felt God's love for us. We have known that joy. And tempted as we are to forget all of that, we can hold on to the vision that we have seen.
So, I hope very much that in this Christmas season, God jumped out and poked you. I hope that you saw the beautiful vision, the delight of hope and promise of peace. But as we are all carried back into the Egypt of daily existence, it is our call not to surrender that vision. It is our call to carry it with us, to see it enacted, to work for that vision, for that peace. As we all find ourselves plunged back into Egypt, may we hold fast to that scene around the manger.
