I know I ought to write more often. If it were not for a lack of inspiration, I would. As I have realized that it takes a lot of energy to write a fictional narrative that actually conveys a point, I succumb to writing more reflectively, unless I'm actually inspired to do otherwise. And I feel much better that way, as I probably will convey my thoughts more clearly. I never said I was very good at writing narrative...anyway!
Subject....subject....ah! I realize now, on this Christmas-past, how difficult it is to appreciate the spatial and temporal reality of the coming of Jesus Christ. I'm not speaking just to the fact that I have never been to Bethlehem, Israel, nor that I've not lived in 4 B.C. I'm talking about how easily story can cease to correspond to reality in my...and I'm assuming, others' consciences.
There is something about the retelling of this story for me that causes it to take on a mythic quality. I would not say, “fiction”. It is certainly not fiction…and yet the story is so familiar. I could hear the story a dozen times, and it might never occur to me that the legend of Baby Jesus was once flesh on wood and straw.
All history vaporizes with distance. Attempting to grasp at this history only wisps and whirls the smoke and dissolves it into the transparent air. Oh, that I could live that history forever in a single moment…or live it at all. Might it then smash me like a sledge hammer if ever I dare fail to witness? Might I choke upon that song, “Away in a manger…” “Away, Away, Away?! Nay, Here in the manger. Here!” But why bemoan the point? History is contingent. It suffers the observer and I am sadly not he. What good can Christmas be to me except an inspiration toward my own future? But I ought to hold the question…
Perhaps a certain political question might make a good analogy. That Great Emancipator, the Moses of our own history, Abraham Lincoln set off the liberation of the African slave. What a context?! It would be more than a hundred years before the black man would gain his freedom and the black woman her rights. Now we know. Racism, prejudice, and segregation are forever the scars of our context and will sting our consciences if ever we turn our backs to it. Yet who am I? I’m a white man. It was not my liberation. I’m a GenXer. It was not my crime. What can I do but be disgusted at this history and hang my sorry head in shame? What atonement could I possibly offer to this history? None. I haven’t enough sense to know the ugliness of racism. I hate racism because history said so, not because I’ve tasted its bitterness. Is that all that history is...a bunch of lessons that shape my worldview? Ought I to appreciate this history for its happening, and not just for its historiography--the interpretation of the significance of this history?
Me apologizing for U.S. enslavement of Africans is like bin Laden congratulating Bush on winning the War on Terror…it justifies nothing and the well-wishes are quite impotent to account for the damage already done. Such is the insignificance of my time and place in history.
And so it is…”Away in a manger”—a long, long, long way. No crib, even if I had wanted to give him one. Has all of the significance of that day dwindled to “Peace on Earth, good will toward men”? If history were only a guidepost, then maybe. If history merely defined me, then it might be that. If I adopted history, put it on or drug it around like an heirloom, then “Away in a manger” might be a simple lesson, a context, a knick-knack to hang my assumptions on.
But if I were a witness to this history, all of that vanishes. “Away” becomes “Here” and “a manger” becomes “the Manger”. Then history would transcend legend and well traveled story would be throbbing, fibrillating, pulsing reality! “Ah-hah”, I say with a nodding head and a resigning sigh fused with new conviction, “So that is what Faith is up to.”
To be continued…
1 comment:
Is it enough to celebrate an historic event for the sake of history or tradition or even in order to shape the worldviews of people? If that were indeed the prize that we seek, that would seem to suffice. But as followers and believers in the Christ who is one with the Father, who is risen from the dead, who is without sin, the celebration of history should pale in comparison to the hope that we have. Are we anxiously awaiting Christ's triumphant physical return and all that entails? Have we been making preparations (like following all that He has commanded, including the great commission)?
You do raise a good point - what is Jesus Christ's coming to me? Whether referring to His incarnation that resulted in His death and resurrection or to His imminent return, there's a lot to think and reflect on. So often we take it all for granted, as though we are obliged to reap the benefits on His atonement but not to consider the reality of what those actions by a real person (fully man, fully God) mean to the person who says that he or she believes.
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