Author: Pat Liberty

For most of us, the notorious season known as The Holidays strikes an odd combination of dread and delight. There is so much to do, so many people to see and so many family commitments. Or perhaps there is just a memory of that time, or the absence of family commitments due to distance, death or estrangement.  These thirty plus days of the season are a complex thing.

And in the midst of it all we lament that we need to put the Christ back in Christmas. 

So we bring out our crèche scenes and deck the halls. We search the traditions and hope that something new might catch our eye and ground us in a different place.

We roll out the familiar stories and wonder what it is we are to believe. Did it really happen that way?  Is it just a quaint story?  How do we reconcile what we know with what we read?  On the one hand we get caught in “What really happened?” On the other hand we dismiss the accounts as stories of people from a simpler time that have no relevance for us in our sophisticated and learned time. 

Either way we fail to ask what Marcus Borg suggests is the most important question: what did the stories mean then and what might they mean for us now?  Absent our study and prayer, we rob ourselves of what we most need to fill our emptiness and quiet our hubris.

It may be that what is really needed is to put the promise back in the proclamation.  Rather than just tell the stories as static episodes of an otherwise forgotten past, we need to receive these ancient stories as promises that can speak in and through our lives.

Much of what holds us and hurts us in these days is how the past, the present and the future collide in our lives.  We remember the way it used to be in our families when everyone was there. We remember snow gently falling on Christmas Eve and the happiness of times past.  We remember, albeit at times with rose colored glasses. We grieve for what once was and what is no more. We grieve for what never was and measure the distance between the life we dreamed and the life we live.

Wendy Wright writes, “What we all dream, what we all hope for is simple.  We dream that the glimpses of the fullness of love that we sense occasionally in our lives show us what we were created to become.  When a young father takes his newborn daughter in his arms for the first time, when a mother eases the midnight fears of her frightened son, cradling him and recalling the intimacy of his infant mouth on her breast, when an estranged couple grope their way painfully back into love again, when a family makes a pilgrimage to the bedside of a dying loved one and finds itself bathed in the mystery of love; when a single woman comes to see her solitary dwelling not as a place of emptiness but as a nest sheltered under the wing of God, when a community provides an environment of healing, when friends call us to remember our most authentic selves, when a strange and fearful person becomes for us the face of God, it is then that we begin to sense what we are intended to be.  God’s children, the children of promise.”  (Wendy Wright, the Vigil p. 23)

What we dream, what we hope for is simple, that the glimpses of the fullness of love that we sense in our lives show us what we were created to become.

The way we put Christ back in Christmas is to start from where we are. To receive the promise into our lives as they are in this moment and to let that promise be seen in us.  The promise is for us, and our lives become the proclamation.

The good news and the other news, which is finally good news, is this. This present moment, the good and the not so good, the memories and hopes, and the uncertainties and anxieties are the place where God comes with the good news we so long to hear.

Indeed, the One we celebrate in this season, the life we welcome in Jesus is the one that shows us the path through transformation to wholeness.  It’s hard to define wholeness, but it has its root in what we most long for, what we know in our bones is our true home. We were made for love, for life abundant, that what is most important cannot be bought only given and received, that this wild and wondrous journey through our days is more than what we can see.

What changes Christmas and puts the Christ back in it is connecting the promise and the proclamation.  It is more than announcing a baby; it is announcing that God is still in this world making this moment new.

It is more than remembering the past, it is proclaiming that God is still in this world healing what was shattered, strengthening what was planted and bringing it together in a new wholeness that is more than the deepest pain or the greatest joy.

It is receiving the promise and then proclaiming it in the way we live.

New York City is undoubtedly the best place to people watch. I was at The Metropolitan Opera on Sunday afternoon and there were people of every size, shape, color, language and attire. Most notably there was a woman with long flaming red hair, a flowing green evening gown…and combat boots. I wondered about her story.

Sunday morning at Riverside Church was inspired worship in a congregation more diverse than I have ever experienced. It was a delight to people watch and find that I was in the minority as a white person. It gladdened my heart to hear a young transgender man speak of the church as a safe place where God’s presence and love were made known through the people. The music, preaching and liturgy were uplifting and deeply nourishing to my soul.

Monday I was at Penn Station. Now this is a place to people watch. There was a young, late teens/early twenties couple who were draped all over each other like cheap suits. They spoke and laughed just a little too loud, as if they wanted everyone to notice them. A black man came into the waiting area. He was in his late fifties/early sixties, glasses and gray tinged hair. I wondered what his life had been like. How had his skin color affected where he lived, what job he got, or the way he was treated by police? How did he fare financially when he was paid less than a white man doing the same job?

Most of the people pushing brooms and mops and emptying trash were people of color. They may or may not have spoken English. They averted their eyes from the crowds and stared at the work before them. Where did they live? How did they afford a New York apartment? Did they live with food scarcity? The gap widens. My heart breaks.

A man was howling in the great hall of the new station. His mournful voice reverberated off the marble walls. He was clearly troubled. Did he have a place to live? How did he support himself? Did he get the mental health care he needed? Who looked out for him on a daily basis? How long would it be before he was ejected from the station into the cold December afternoon?

People were glued to their phones, everyone staring at a screen. They were oblivious that other human beings were around them. Some people literally walked into other people because they were busy looking at their phones. Most had headphones and couldn’t hear anything but what came through the wireless ear buds.

A young Asian couple came into the waiting area. At least a third of the people waiting were Asian. I wondered how much disrespect they had endured since the beginning of the pandemic. Had they suffered violence or verbal abuse? Most people cannot tell Chinese people from Korean people, from Japanese people. Asians seem to be painted with the same brush and blamed for the pandemic. I wondered about their stories.

There was a classical quartet playing in the Great Hall of the station. The lilting music brought a lighter quality to an otherwise distracted and harried place filled with distracted and harried people. Occasionally the howling man all but drowned out the quartet.

A woman traveling alone sat down across from me, phone in hand and earbuds implanted. She mouthed the words to a song no one else could hear. She seemed weary. I wondered where she was headed, what brought her to New York and where she called home.

This was a wondrous mass of humanity and each person had a story. I was surrounded by unique and unrepeatable human beings living their life as best they could. Looking around at people reminded me that compassion is a way to be in the world. Compassion means to try and walk around in someone else’s skin and have a sense of what life is like for them. The only way we can do that is to put down our phones, pay attention to what is going on around us and be willing to ask questions about their lives (even if we never get the answers).

The black man, the Asian couple, the station workers, the woman traveling alone…what was it like to be them? My second Sunday of Advent was waiting and watching at Penn Station. Waiting for the 3:15 train that left at 5:45 and watching people created in the image of the Holy One for whom we wait in these darkening days of winter. Each one bears the mark of the Divine. Each one is a vessel to receive the Christ who is made known in this season. I gave thanks for each person upon whom my eyes came to rest.