Christmas 2020 was one for the books--the history books--pretty much like the rest of the year. Will anyone cry if the door hits 2020 in the backside on its way out? Usually we celebrate the New Year with the ball drop in Time Square. There were enough balls dropped in 2020 that I don't care to see another one, though.
I want to say a good word about Christmas this year, even in its "stunted" form, due to COVID-19. There is a poem attributed to author James Allen Francis that goes like this:
One Solitary Life
He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was 30. Then, for three years, he was an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.
Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned--put together--have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one, solitary life.
The object of the Christmas celebration was a little like that "Charlie Brown" Christmas Tree pictured above, as this poem reminds us. Even Isaiah 53 doesn't paint a pretty picture of the "suffering servant" we see in Jesus Christ. And yet, here we are--the reconciled, redeemed, empowered People of God--because of this one "solitary" life. I'm guessing that when we first run into Jesus in Glory we may just pass him by, because he won't stand out, and I'm also guessing that his being "seated at the right hand of God" will look a lot more like a child lovingly seated beside a doting parent. The great, great power of heaven is almost always understated. Burning bushes, pillars of clouds, sneaky angels, and a Jesus who heals a blind man by making mud with his spit and slathering it into the man's eye sockets--not exactly Hollywood stuff, at least until Cecil B. DeMille got ahold of some of it.
Maybe Christmas 2020 was a most fitting one to pay homage to the founder of Christianity? I know that around St. Paul's, as I take stock of the things we did to "rescue" Christmas of the "Grinch" that was COVID-19, I begin to smile! "Light Up Night," a video "Christmas Eve Service" that touched so many hearts and showcased the great gifts of God's people, a parking lot service on Christmas Eve with incredible music, honking horns, and a message of hope--these all certainly paid homage to a God born in a stable. In fact, as I sat in the "preachers' tent" during the parking lot service, with two soggy feet, cold to the bone, icy rain drip, drip, dripping onto the top of my head, and with wind whipping all around, all I could think of what it must have been like on that night so long ago on a Bethlehem hillside when that "one solitary life" entered our world. I could almost hear the voice of Jesus say to me in that blustery tent on December 24 of 2020, "My friend, this is the closest you have ever been to Christmas!" And to top it off, Pastor Karen used wonderful "food pictures" in her sermon that night, making us all so hungry that Dara and I went home and raided the 'fridge for a hearty snack! As we warmed up in the comfort of our own home, we watched the St. Paul's Christmas Eve video, and Ms. Erin's video she made for our church's children, and the "best Christmas ever" got even better! And given it was my last as a pastor before a planned 2021 mid-year retirement, I now have to say it was my most memorable.
Friends, it's time to count our blessings, even as we say a prayer of grace for those battling this awful pandemic, either personally, health-wise, or on the "front lines" of the hospitals and clinics. It's also a time to pray fervently for the world to be vaccinated, ASAP so we can put this Coronavirus to bed for good. And let us pray that the scientific breakthroughs made while "warp speeding" the development of these COVID-19 vaccines will usher in a new era of tools to fight back future viruses before they become an epidemic, or God-forbid a pandemic.
Let us also pray and work for the coming of God's Beloved Community. Each new crisis has brought us a sample of it--wars that brought people together to win over tyranny, natural disasters that mustered the best in us to give aid, the aftermath of acts of terrorism that gelled a nation (at least for a season), and great human accomplishments like the moon landing or the American Civil Rights Act of 1964 that signaled to us all how we CAN be better, as a people. Please, Dear Lord, help the lessons sink in without another pandemic! With God's help, may 2021 be the year when the Beloved Community begins to sink its roots deep into our hearts and across Planet Earth. And may it be a year of healing for all.
I don't think I've ever looked so forward to a NEW Year...a HAPPY NEW Year. And may it be for all of us, without conditions, other than the human one we all must bear. And for those of us who call upon his name, may Jesus be our "central figure of the human race" once again. Shalom, Yinz!
