Embrace the gift of life this Christmas

Rev. Mark Lukens

We couldn’t have our Christmas pageant at Bethany Congregational Church this year because too many of our Sunday school children were quarantining. We had been gradually opening up again, gathering folks we hadn’t seen for awhile and with the vaccines and the boosters and all the other precautions, we hoped and prayed that we would be fully open with all the “smells and bells” to welcome the coming of our savior and our deliverance from this plague as well.

But that isn’t going to happen, and it looks like our plans for a grand celebration of Christmas are going to have to wait until another year.

It looks like Christmas will be a smaller, simpler affair this year and maybe that’s okay. Maybe, without all the distractions, we will be able to pay a little more attention to the signs in the sky, and listen for angel voices the way the shepherds did, not with ears exhausted from shopping and all the doing around the holidays, but with awe and wonder of the incredible gift that was coming into the world, the creator of all that is, born not in a cathedral to the sounds of a Christmas symphony, but in a stable, straining to be heard above the cries of Mary’s labor.

Maybe, as we continue to try and hang on to our hope, our faith and our love during this difficult time, we will begin to realize that it is  not the gifts that we bring, but the gifts that we were made to be, that matter.  Maybe we can look around at the people we try to ignore the rest of the year and remember that God brought his gift of salvation from among poor and working people, from among those unknown and uncounted in the corridors of power.

God burst into history, not as a conqueror, but as an infant dependent on the kindness of strangers in a world that was hurting, cynical and violent, not to condemn us for our sins, but so that we could lift each other up in his name, learn to love and honor each other and transform this hurting world into the kin-dom of God it was created to be.

Christmas isn’t about supply chains or about the trappings, it’s about a God whose love cannot be controlled or deterred, a God whose will for us is to love with our whole being, a God who gave us himself as a gift so that we could do the same for one another. As it says in the Gospel of John, “The light came into the darkness and the darkness could not overcome it.” That is the God we celebrate on Christmas, a God whose love shines as a beacon of hope to his struggling, suffering children.

When we make Christmas about the gospel of Jesus Christ, about feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick and coming together, (even if we have to do it with masks or over Zoom), in love. The love is the thing and as long as it is, we will celebrate!

Merry Christmas!

Lukens is a pastor at Bethany Congregational Church in East Rockaway.