The "holidays" are coming, whichever you happen to celebrate, at least as far as retailers are concerned. You barely have time to buy your pencils in July and sip your pumpkin spice latte thing the first week of August while avoiding the gallery of horrors that is the Halloween display the week after before the Christmas stuff comes out the same morning you put your kids on the school bus for the first day. But Christmas bugs people, it really makes them sad or annoyed or they actually hate it. And that is important. Why? Because it is a window into reality! Dig deep into that bitterness or pain or anger and discover why. It will hurt, like digging out a splinter in your foot, but it will put you on the road to healing, not just your Christmas loathing but your whole wounded person. Marx once quipped that religion was the opium of the masses, but I disagree, rather I know it is pop culture and mass consumerism, including social media, who promise happiness if only you buy, think, or say the right stuff, but even their most successful prophets and priests are unhappy, but too distracted to notice. So take hold of that biting pang at Christmas (or Mother's Day or whatever), and like an aching tooth or an upset stomach, look deeper into the symptom it is, find the root of the problem and deal with it, instead of putting a bandaid on it and hoping it goes away, it won't.
Christmas has always haunted me, its beauty, its mystery, its hope and peace, and even its innate sorrow. No, not Santa or Frosty or the Muppets or Mickey doing Dickens, but rather a shivering little trio of poverty stricken, outcast humans huddling around a feed trough in the dark of night, one newly born, their only visitors a bunch of raggedy shepherds, perhaps even more socially unacceptable than the terrified parents. That is the real Christmas, not the snowflake encrusted windows, treacly songs about Home and Chestnuts or snarky songs about hooking up, astonishing banquets and sweet treats, and everywhere lights and candles and being surrounded by a perfectly behaved array of choice family and friends. That stuff is nice, but it isn't any more real than Dickens's famed novel being acted by every animated character known to man. But we are all supposed to believe it is how things are supposed to be. Only the gospels, and many a forgotten hymn based thereupon, get it right, only the Gospels ring true to the real human condition. Modern commercialism and celebrity preach that all you need is the right pill or diet or ideas or clothes or whatever and your life will be great, but it isn't, for anybody, but they don't care and you shouldn't either, just keep following and spending blindly along soldier, don't you dare notice your aching feet and that vast empty darkness that is supposed to be your heart.
But the gospels get it, the Christ didn't rise from His manger bed to become 'King of the Jews' or to become a triumphant warrior king over the Romans as the impatient Hebrew children insisted, rather he lived a quiet, unassuming life before spending about three years ministering to the poor, women, children, slaves, the outcasts and disabled. The talking heads of the day were appalled and sent Him to the cross, the hideous death that coined the term excruciating. Now comes Easter, with its fluffy bunnies and colored eggs, happy children in bright clothes, forgetting how dark was the night in the shadow of Golgotha, how unfathomable the despair of that Saturday, the confusion and fear come Sunday morning when no body was found in the tomb. The Messiah was dead and so was God, or so thought His friends and followers and the leaders alike, but they were as wrong as Nietzesche. For God had not conquered the mere political powers of the day, rather He had conquered death itself, sin had found its remedy, and man his hope. No more was man doomed to die in darkness, but rather the Light itself had come and conquered, and His Church has outlived Rome and all the powers of Hell since thrown against it.
The gospel is messy, sad, ugly, hard, confusing, beautiful, joyous, offensive and foolish (of its own admission!) but it is real, whereas all our smarmy holidays are not. No other religion, worldview, government, philosophy, or creed has yielded anything close that speaks truly to the mess that is the human condition, no matter what age or land or culture you inhabit, and also offers a solution thereto. It spoke as plainly to the slaves of Rome as it does to the billionaires of our day, but the slaves at least were wise enough to listen and respond, whereas the rich man insists ever on saving himself, gilding life with his vast means but still finding himself discontent and not knowing why. Dig into that ache, dig into the pain, dig into the wound, and there find the root of the problem and let the Great Physician attend to it.
But beware, the Gospel itself has not escaped the saccharine gilding of the age, beware any gospel that comes to you preaching prosperity and plenty, unalloyed peace and happiness in exchange for a little faith and financial remuneration. We are told quite clearly that daily we must take up our cross, die to self, and that in this world we will have trouble. He won't be used as a means to an end, He didn't die to get you a nice car or a dream job or to heal your diabetes; rather He calls His people to be slaves and servants, to one another and the disbelieving world, to conquer sin and eternal death, and that He has done, no matter our physical or emotional condition, that too will one day be redeemed, but not yet, not yet. As the Jews at His first coming, who demanded a conquering king to overthrow the Romans, so too do we demand a vengeful God who will overthrow our political enemies and establish his kingdom upon our most deeply held ideas, with ourselves at the helm, but again we are blind, as blind as the zealots of the first century. He is coming, but His kingdom will overthrow all human institutions and ideals and He will reign supreme, and if we can't handle that, will we then cry for His blood or overthrow as the disappointed political aspirants of old, and to as little avail? Or shall we be good and faithful servants, as humble and patient as our true Master, abiding by His words, rather than forcing our own into His mouth, and found faithful when He comes?
