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ОглавлениеChristmas Calendar: Week One
Christmas Calendar
Week One
1Go get your Advent calendar. Start opening!
2Open the next door on your calendar. Stare at the others with longing. Don’t cheat.
3Put a star in your room that you can see in the dark. Fall asleep staring at it.
4Call somebody fun and make plans for a favorite Christmas tradition: to bake a cookie, to sing a carol, or to trim a tree.
5Call somebody and say something rare and important to them.
6Find a recording of “Prepare Ye” from Godspell (check out iTunes and YouTube). Crank it up to 11 and dance around the house while singing it at the top of your lungs and throwing tinsel around.
7Turn out all the lights and relish the dark for a while tonight. Pray for gestation.
December 1
December 1
Morning
Lead me in your truth—teach it to me—because you are the God who saves me. I put my hope in you all day long. (Psalm 25:5)
Some days it seems like waiting is all you do. For the train. For a reply to your e-mail. For your lunch order. For somebody at the customer service center, which is “experiencing higher-than-normal call volume,” to pick up the freaking phone. For the other shoe to drop. Some days it feels like everybody but you is in control of your time, and all you can do—even if they have Highlights magazine in the waiting room—is sit around hoping they’ll get to you soon.
Apparently, the malls and stores feel pretty much the same way; these days, they put up their Christmas decorations before Halloween. I hate delayed gratification as much as the next guy, but the fact that all the big retailers seem to be against waiting is pretty much a guarantee that there must be some virtue in it.
So today, since you’ll be doing so much of it anyway, see if you can discover the virtue in waiting. Try to pay attention whenever you find yourself sitting around. Don’t stick your earphones in or take your book out as soon as you get to the bus stop. Don’t go for Angry Birds as soon as you get to the grocery line. Instead, notice: who’s making you wait? Why? What are you waiting for? How impor-tant is it? Who’s waiting with you? Why are you so impatient; is the next thing you have to do really so important? Why?
And most important of all: what are you really waiting for?
OK, God. You know I’m no good at this waiting thing. But I know you are. So enter into my wait and liven things up. Amen.
December 1
Evening
“There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars. On the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the roaring of the sea and surging waves. The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. Then they will see the Human One coming on a cloud with power and great splendor. Now when these things begin to happen, stand up straight and raise your heads because your redemption is near.” (Luke 21:25-28)
There’s waiting, and then there’s waiting.
Sometimes it’s the oh-God-when-will-this-pain-end kind of waiting. Sometimes it’s just annoying, like waiting for your turn at the restroom. Sometimes it’s worse, like waiting out the period after a gnarly divorce.
But there’s another kind of waiting, too, a delicious, shivery kind: There’s smelling the almost-done pie in the oven. There’s sitting in the theater listening to the opening theme of a movie you’ve been waiting a year to see. There’s feeling the baby kick you in the bladder a week before due date. There’s lying in bed listening to your lover coming up the stairs.
Advent—those weeks leading up to Christmas—is about both kinds of waiting. On the one hand, it’s about looking around at the state of the world, at the wars and the climate and the corporations and the seasonal allergies, and longing for God to end the wait and show up already. It’s about choosing to see God’s absence.
On the other, it’s about choosing to see God’s almost-presence. It’s about looking around at the state of the world, at the struggling schoolteachers and rich philanthropists doing the right thing, at the babies being born and the love being made and the ancient stars shining bright as hope in the cold night sky. It’s about looking around at all of this, reading the signs, and knowing that everything is about to change.
Advent is about standing in the slop and calling, “How long, Lord?” But just as surely, it’s about standing in the shining, shivering with delight and singing, “Come, Lord, come.”
Lord, this world needs you, bad. Fill it up with signs of your coming, signs so obvious even I can see them, and set me to work to welcome you. Amen.
December 2
December 2
Morning
Teach us to number our days so we can have a wise heart. (Psalm 90:12)
I just love me a good Advent calendar. Growing up, we got new ones every year, carefully selected for each child. At the end of each day, we would open its corresponding door on the calendar. Some calendars had little pictures of Christmassy things behind the doors. Some were scratch-and-sniff. Some had candy in tiny compartments. Awesome.
Always, the biggest, most beautiful door on the whole calendar was the one marked “24.” It was supposed to stay closed until Christmas Eve, when whatever cool thing it hid would be revealed. (Obviously, we always peeked.)
I remember the quiet wonder with which we opened each of those little doors, so much more tangible, so much more engaging than the sedate lighting of the four Advent candles in church. We weren’t very good at saying grace at mealtimes, our bedtime rituals in those days had much more to do with toothbrushes than with prayers, and our longings had more to do with the Sears Wish Book than with the redemption of the Creation. But we gathered around those little doors each night with the hushed expectancy that they told us we were supposed to feel in church. As we did, we learned something about waiting, about counting, about longing, and about God.
There are plenty of Advent calendars in the stores, plenty online, and of course there are apps for that (though those won’t let you peek). Get on it.
O Holy Mystery, you hide behind every door and peep from every window. In these days, grant that I might learn to pause, to hush, long enough to see you there. Amen.
December 2
Evening
The Lord isn’t slow to keep God’s promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient toward you, not wanting anyone to perish but all to change their hearts and lives. (2 Peter 3:9)
Another thing I like about Advent calendars: they dole Christmas out glimpse by glimpse. They build up the picture or the story in slow, random-seeming increments. They don’t go all the way in one shot. They require pauses. They require little bursts of delight. They require patience.
Advent is about expecting the coming of Christmas, the remembrance of Jesus’ first coming. But it’s also about expecting Jesus’ second coming, the one that he said would straighten up the world, delight the good, open the eyes of the bad, and fix everything. It’s about sinking not only into the longing and trepidation of that promise but also into trust that it will be fulfilled.
Since the earliest days, believers and scoffers alike have been asking “Well, why isn’t he back yet?” And they’ve wondered whether it might be that he’s not coming back. The author of Second Peter has an answer for them: he’s not back yet, dear Humankind, not because he’s slow or uninterested or not coming at all, but because he’s giving you time to pull yourself together before he does. Time to practice seeing him in small ways so you’ll recognize him when he arrives in big ones. He’s revealing himself in slow, random-seeming increments, just little glimpses here and there of the picture he’s painting, of the story whose end he is. It’s your job to be patient, to pause, to look, to be prepared for little bursts of delight.
So why don’t you go get to practicing and open that next door on the calendar?
God, you’ve been gone a long time. The world is ready for you to come back now. But I assume you know what you’re doing, so I guess we can wait till you’re ready. In the meantime, don’t leave us without a little preview now and then, OK? Amen.
December 3
December 3
Morning
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. (Psalm 90:1 NRSV)
Sometimes I think we ask too much of home. We load it up with more freight than any one word or idea or even place could ever manage. It’s not only the place we came from; but it’s also the place we’re supposed to be welcome no matter what. It’s supposed to be the container for all our soft-focus memories, all of who we used to be and used to hope we would become. It’s supposed to smell like cookies baking and sound like laughter at old stories. It’s the locus of so much nostalgia that it’s no wonder it tends to collapse under the weight of all the expectations we load it with.
Maybe you’re one of the luckier ones when it comes to home. But even if everyone there is well-adjusted, un-addicted, constantly healthy, and never resentful, even if it’s still populated by all the dear ones who have been there since you were born, even if you love being there more than anywhere in the world, still it will never be what the made-for-TV movies want you to think it should be; still it’s not likely to be all you remember or all you hope. The problem with home is that it’s full of people, and whether it’s full of their presence or their absence, at least one of them is probably going to annoy the crap out of you while you’re there.
So what the psalmist has to say should be good news for just about everybody this Christmas, whether you’re headed home for the holidays or have no home to speak of, trapped far from home or planning to host the gathering, or looking forward to or dreading whatever reunions are in your imminent future.
Because all that we ask of home that it can’t deliver, all that we depend on it for that it disappoints us in, all that we need and it will never be able to deliver? Your home can’t deliver it, but God can, and the porch light is on.
So today, look around at the home you’re in now. Change one thing in it to make it more like what a home ought to be: clean some old baggage out of a closet, invite a friend over to fill it up with love, rearrange a shelf to make it more beautiful, or go to the grocery store and pay a little more to buy the fair-trade option of whatever you’re getting. Make just one small change, and dedicate it to God.
God, you are my refuge and my might, my alpha and omega. You are my true home. Which is a good thing, since the one I have in this world is so weird. Amen.
December 3
Evening
I’m the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star. (Revelation 22:16)
Why is everything scarier in the middle of the night? A noise you wouldn’t think twice about if you heard it at noon can paralyze you at 2 a.m. A dream you’d totally just laugh off during your afternoon nap leaves you staring at the ceiling, blankets up to your chin, in the wee hours. A window that has never looked out on anything but the side yard becomes the potential frame for a vision of horror when you’re on your way for your midnight pee.
And that’s just for those of us who live in relatively safe houses. Never mind those who spend their nights on subway grates or cardboard, in fear of attack or invasion, in danger of spouses or temptation.
So what is it? Is it that at night, we’re more vulnerable or just feel more vulnerable? Is it that the dangers are greater or just look bigger in the dark?
Against the shadows, against the night, against that which stalks the good and the bad, for those who live their lives in nighttimes of fear and for those who just wake up alone once in a while, Jesus promises this: the night will end. The morning star will rise, and then the sun. The night will not and cannot finally win.
If you find that easy to believe in the daytime, but a little harder at night, hang a star in your room this Advent, a light-up Christmas star from Target, a glow-in-the-dark star stuck on the ceiling, or a starry night-light. You can call it a Christmas decoration so your friends don’t think you’re weird, if you want. But don’t forget what it really is: a promise.
Lord, I don’t know how long this night is going to be. But with you, I know it’s going to end. Come, Morning Star, come. Amen.
December 4
December 4
Morning
Therefore says the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel: . . . I will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your alloy. (Isaiah 1:24-25 NRSV)
The Israelites have been worshiping other gods alongside their own. They have created what God, in the mouth of Isaiah, calls an “alloy” religion. Isaiah and the other ancient prophets were always worrying about purity of faith and worship; any mixing, they fretted, would bring the whole thing to its knees. To hear them tell it, God agreed.
I sometimes have a similar reaction to Christmas, to our frenetic, consumerist interpretation of its meaning, to all those catalogues and Very Special Episodes of TV shows. Sometimes, it seems to me an unholy alloy.
But then I tell myself to lighten up. I mean, is every alloy bad? And mightn’t God be powerful enough to co-opt the culture’s co-optation of the day of his birth? I think God can work with the traditions we hand to God.
In that Spirit, here are some Christmas things that have nothing to do with Jesus’ birth, but in which I believe God is at work anyway:
• Elvis’s Christmas Album. If it can make my whole family sing together while performing a complex operation involving a saw, a tree, a small living room, electricity, and water without us killing one another, it’s holy.
• Shopping. Yes, it can get out of hand, but searching for a great gift to make someone happy can be a profound experience.
• Emmet Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas. In fact, Christmas specials in general—especially if they’re commercial-free.
• Your favorite. What traditions or celebrations do you love? What do they teach you about God? Have you made your plans for doing them yet this year?
God, you can make anything holy. Bless my celebrations when they increase my love, make me generous, or open me to your world. If they do the opposite, make them go the way of last year’s fruitcake. Amen.
December 4
Evening
[Jesus said,] The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, because she came from a distant land to hear Solomon’s wisdom. And look, someone greater than Solomon is here....
...The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they changed their hearts and lives in response to Jonah’s preaching—and one greater than Jonah is here. (Luke 11:31-32)
Jesus isn’t as concerned with being Christmassy as you might think he would be. Sometimes, he is positively not in the holiday spirit. What about peace and goodwill to all? Talking stable animals and cuddly babies? Miraculous stars and angel choirs? Why you gotta harsh our mellow?
I’d hate to try to speak for Jesus, but I think if he were here, he’d say something like, “Yeah, but if you believe all that stuff happened, even if you believe it happened ‘metaphorically’”—I imagine him gritting his teeth a little and making air quotes on that last word—“then can you please explain the state of the world? Can you explain to me why you did what you did last Tuesday? If you believe all that stuff is true about me and about what God did, can you explain, oh, I don’t know . . . Duck Dynasty?”
Everybody always talks about how busy they get around Christmastime. You’d think with all those Christians going full steam ahead for a month, the world would take a giant step forward at the end of every year, that the planet would lurch a little closer to paradise each December. That it doesn’t seem to work that way might suggest that we’re not busy with exactly the right things.
So how about this: take some time right now, here at the beginning of Advent, and add a holy something to your to-do list. A volunteer gig. A sizable donation to a good charity. A visit to your ailing aunt. A little political action. It won’t save the world, but it’ll be a start.
Lord, take from me the busy-ness that does not signify, and fill my calendar up with work to save the world. Because the Queen of Sheba has been dead for a long time, and I do not want to meet her face to face. Amen.
December 5
December 5
Morning
John’s father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied, “Bless the Lord God of Israel because [God] has come to help and has delivered [God’s] people. (Luke 1:67-68)
So God tells Zechariah, who’s really old, that he’s about to have a son and that he should name that son John. Zechariah doubts that he and his equally old wife are going to manage such a feat. God tells him that he will be struck silent until the promise is fulfilled. When his wife, Elizabeth, gives birth and people ask them what the name will be, Zechariah writes, “His name is John,” on a tablet. Suddenly, his voice is freed. And his first words? One of the most beautiful songs of the Bible. The Benedictus, named for the Latin translation of its first word, later came to be recited at morning prayer by Christians the world round in the hopes that, by saying what Zechariah had said, their tongues, too, would be freed for praise each day.
Have you ever been silenced by what you didn’t dare say aloud? And did you one day find enough strength or faith or dire need to say it? And when you said it, did you find yourself unlocked, your voice loosed for prayer and praise, your life freed like a stone rolled away from a tomb?
What was it you said?
Was it, “I’m gay”?
“My husband hits me”?
“I love you”?
“I’m an alcoholic”?
“Will you marry me”?
“I’m not going to take it any more”?
“I believe in God”?
“Please forgive me”?
For Zechariah, it was, “His name is John.” For Mary, it was, “I’m pregnant.”
If you haven’t said yours yet, what are you waiting for?
Blessed be you, O God. Give me words like keys, and free my life for faith and praise. Amen.
December 5
Evening
You, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way. You will tell his people how to be saved through the forgiveness of their sins. (Luke 1:76-77)
Zechariah stops dead in the middle of his grand Benedictus, mercifully stops declaiming, and instead starts singing to Baby John. Picture him, the great priest and prophet, turning from his audience to his son, switching from oratory to lullaby, public to private. Picture him stroking his son’s face and choking up as he sings these words to him.
For my money, the image of this crotchety old priest singing to his boy is as tender and arresting a scene as a Madonna and child, all the more poignant for knowing where the tiny head resting in the crook of that bony arm would wind up in the end. (If you don’t know, Google John the Baptist to find out.)
That Luke recorded this song in such detail can only mean that it was intended to be used, said, and sung to other babies. Not everybody can be Jesus. But anybody can be John. Anybody can point to Jesus, tell the world that the dawn is on its way, get a glimpse of God on the road, and yell, “Everybody! Look over there!”
Apparently, Luke thought God wanted lots of other fathers to sing this song to lots of other babies besides John. I don’t know if you’re as lucky in your father as John was in his; too many people aren’t. But even if you aren’t, that doesn’t mean God’s not singing it to you anyway.
So before you go to bed tonight, take a few minutes to think about your day. Come up with one place—just one!—where you saw the hand of God at work. If you get stuck, look in the mirror.
Holy God, let me relax into your arms and into your lullaby. I’m not sure I have what it takes to be a prophet, but show yourself to me, and I will tell the world. Amen.
December 6
December 6
Morning
They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.” (Matthew 2:2)
Is there anybody else out there who hates tasteful Christmas decorations? Who’s appalled by genteel ornamentation? Who, when faced with a color-coordinated Christmas tree covered in matching ornaments, has to fight off the urge to set it on fire just to liven things up a little?
I mean, this is Christmas we’re talking about, people! Christmas! The day that unto us a child was born? The day that made all of heaven sing in wonderment and joy? The day the Creator of the cosmos entered history and changed it for-freaking-ever?
This calls for tinsel.
It calls for projects made in first grade, with gobs of hardened glue and glitter. It calls for colored lights—big colored lights, ideally with water bubbling in them. It calls for motorized tree stands and blinking stars and construction paper chains and singing ornaments.
Christmas is not a day for restraint; it’s a day for blowing the doors off their hinges. I’m not saying you have to decorate your house. I’m just saying that if you’re going to decorate it, you best make it look like a party. When God decided to decorate for Christmas, God hung an enormous star in the heavens, not a string of demure white lights. No doubt the neighbors were appalled, but it sure did draw a crowd.
So today, celebrate the God who didn’t hold back anything. Be unrestrained. Put on some music, loud, and start decorating. Make it look like a party up in here, and praise God’s holy name.
God, grant that I might decorate my life so outrageously that wise ones come from all around to learn what I know about you. Amen.
December 6
Evening
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn’t extinguish the light. (John 1:5)
I know what I said a couple of days ago about decorations and about the nighttime being scary, but still, sometimes all the light can get to be a bit much this time of year: blinking lights, bubble lights, icicle lights, blue-light specials. What about those of us who like the dark sometimes? You know, those of us who like to sit outside at night, who relish sitting in a dim bar sharing a drink with a friend, who appreciate a snuggle with the lights off.
For those of us living in modern, industrialized societies, where everything is spotlighted or fluoresced to within an inch of its life, dimness can be hard to come by.
God shined bright when he entered the world, but it couldn’t have happened without the holy darkness of Mary’s womb, without the darkness behind the closed eyelids of a laboring woman, without the darkness of the space between a baby’s skin and swaddle.
The wise men would never have been able to see that star if they’d been standing in the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour Walmart.
So tonight, in honor of the good darkness, the holy darkness, spend some time with the lights off. Look out at the world or just at the backs of your eyelids. Pray to be protected and nourished and formed by the God who swept over the face of the waters before there was light. Pray for the darkness to become like the womb that bore the world. Pray for gestation. Pray for birth.
God, thank you for light and dark, bright and dim. Whether I am in shining or in shadow, let me show you to the world. Amen.
December 7
December 7
Morning
I rejoiced with those who said to me, “Let’s go to the Lord’s house!” (Psalm 122:1)
Funny thing about this time of year: suddenly, everybody wants to go to church. Say, “Let us go to the house of the Lord,” in December, and all the world’s your friend. Say it in the middle of July, and all the world rolls its eyes at you as it heads out to the beach.
Even you. I bet we’ll see you at church on Christmas Eve, even if we never see you any other time.
Why is that? Why that night instead of some other? Yeah, your mom made you go, I know. But she tries to get you to go lots of other times, and it doesn’t work then. Why this holiday and not some other one?
Just what is it about this time of year that makes people start going to church more? Is it habit? Some ingrained cultural thing? Are we making up for lost time? Is it because the children’s programs ramp up? Or because we really like the music? Or because the parents of the world really double down on their wheedling?
Or is there something about lengthening nights and colder days and death in the garden? Isn’t there something—some need or fear or longing—that shrinks away in the long hot sun by the pool but which grows as fall turns to winter, until even you can feel it? That becomes large and threatening in the backseat when you’re driving home from work in full dark at 6 p.m?
Now’s a good time of year to find a churchgoer you know and get him or her to invite you to a service. And if you are a churchgoer, keep a lookout for a friend who might be nudging for an invite.
Because this time of year might come as something of a relief (even though you pretend it doesn’t) when someone says, “Let’s go to church.” Because don’t you know that there lies reassurance that whatever it is following you around in the backseat, there’s no way it’s going to beat you to Bethlehem?
God, let me long for you summer and winter, light and dark, and let me always be glad when someone invites me to visit you. Amen.
December 7
Evening
“What do you think? A man had two sons. Now he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’ ‘No, I don’t want to,’ he replied. But later he changed his mind and went.” (Matthew 21:28-32)
By now, regular churchgoers out there will have noticed the pews in your church beginning to fill up. If your church is like mine, attendance will continue to grow right up through Christmas Eve, when your sanctuary will be fuller than at any other time, except maybe Easter.
You people who don’t get to church that often will find yourselves making an extra effort to show up in the next few weeks. If you don’t go often enough the rest of the year to have a regular pew, you might slip into the back row. Maybe somebody will recognize you; maybe not. Maybe you’ll care; maybe not.
Regular worshipers will rejoice in all the extra people; they also might be tempted to look cynically at the C&E (Christmas and Easter) Christians with whom they suddenly find themselves sharing their pews.
Against any who would be too hard on those who only manage to make it to church on the big days, Jesus tells this parable. One son says he won’t go work in the vineyard when their father asks, but then he does it. Another son says he’ll go but then doesn’t. Even Jesus’ adversaries have to admit that it’s the first son who does the father’s will.
C&E Christians may not make it to church much, but Jesus points out that God cares more about what we do out in the vineyard than about what we do when the authorities are looking. Who knows what miracles of grace were born this year through that guy sitting next to you whom you haven’t seen since last April?
This year, if you’re an every-Sunday type, give C&E churchgoers a break. Welcome them without cynicism. Thank God for bringing you together. Be sure to invite them back.
And if you’re a C&E type, or one of those lightning-will-strike-if-I-set-foot-in-a-church type, don’t slink into the back row; walk in like you belong there because you do.
God, however often I find myself in church, help me act like I’m yours when I’m outside it, too. Amen.
