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I’m Over It

I’m over it.

For twenty-five years as a pastor, I’ve been trying to figure out what to say about Christmas. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I believe in Christmas. I believe that as we gather around the manger and celebrate the baby, as we follow Joseph and Mary to an overflow space in Bethlehem where there are animals and some kind of bin that holds their food and ends up doing double-duty as a bassinet, as we find the shepherds outside of town, and witness the brilliance of a star, we find God-with-us. We find Emmanuel.

How many more ways are there to say that this discovery should totally rock our world?

It did rock our world. And then we got used to it.

Two thousand years went by and the baby in the manger became cute and sweet and meek and mild and the shepherds became quaint and the angels became just a beautiful heavenly choir in really, really clean white clothes, surrounded by light.

I’m over trying to preach “real Christmas.” I’m tired of scouring the internet for a new idea and, instead, finding the same things I've been finding for twenty-five years. I’m weary of reminding people for the zillionth time that the shepherds were the poorest of the poor, that Mary and Joseph might or might not have been poor or middle class but they probably weren't homeless as the “let’s exaggerate the poverty” folks keep wanting to say, that it wasn't all clean and antiseptic and Christmas card-y, but maybe it wasn't as smelly and messy as the story-correcters want to make it. I’m over making the distinction between sentimentality and love. I’m over making sure we “keep Christ in Christmas” and making sure we know “Jesus is the reason for the season.”

And I’m over the spending and the shopping. I’m over feeling guilty because I actually like my family and don’t consider spending time with them torture. I’m over making sure that people realize that Church-Christmas and Secular-Christmas are really two separate things and reminding them that we need to remember the Meaning of the Season.

I’m over thinking the people who go to my church don’t get it.

I think they do.

I think they are smart enough to hold the paradox. They’re smart enough to love the fable of Santa Claus and the spirit of giving and the Norman Rockwell-ish warmth of “the season.” And they’re smart enough to know that Christmas is more than that. They’re smart enough to know that the power of the Magnificat and the toppling of the mighty from their thrones that we talk about on the Fourth Sunday of Advent is what comes into being just a few days later. So I’m over beating them over the head with it.

I don’t know how to preach on Christmas Eve. So I don’t, mostly.

We tell the story. We sing the songs. We light the candles. We pray. And most of all, we hope.

 
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