It’s almost here. Sometimes one can hardly sense ‘the coming’ amidst the clamor of the season. It is really countercultural. In the midst of the busyness of our lives and the obscurity of the occasion back then, a new born babe! The poet, Ann Weems, in her poem, The Birth, suggests that “God did not pitch a tent among us in an extraordinary way.” It was a new baby whose ‘crowning’ was a great joy to Mary and Joseph. Perhaps Joseph helped cut the cord. Mary suckled him at her breast and wrapped him in a simple cloth. Humble shepherds came to see what was happening; a break from the boredom of watching sheep graze. There you have it.
I need to make myself take time to realize it, to feel it, to grasp it, and then to celebrate it. A baby and parents away from the love and support of their larger family. One could wax eloquent on refugee babies in our day! But, important as that is, it would sidetrack us at this particular moment. Very ordinary; not extraordinary. One has to sit with that for a while. And then jump ahead: the ‘crowning’ at birth gave way to a ‘crowning’ of a different sort some thirty years later; a crown with thorns. Why? Because this child grew into manhood and taught us to embrace the ‘other’; that the kingdom of God was wider than we ever imagined. We were to pray for our enemies and love God with our whole heart and our neighbor as ourselves. That was too much for the authorities both secular and religious. Who is this upstart preacher from Galilee, anyway? And so it began and so it ended. A simple birth; a cruel death. And we are invited to follow him.
So in these next few days, I need to think it all through once more. Perhaps ‘think’ is not the right word. To ‘think’ can make it all too cerebral. I need to let it wash over me again and again; the simplicity of that beginning. A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And then, hopefully, an Alleluia will well up from a deep down place in the center of my very being.