Sat Dec. 24 - Things Hold Together (Dave Matthews Band)

Joseph went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.              -Luke 2:5-7

(Anna) Maybe this isn't the most reverent thing to say on Christmas Eve, but babies often remind me of Cracker Jack boxes. They may not all look the same, but there's really no telling what they'll become. Reprobate, saint, mediocre wishy-washer... they all just start out as, well, babies - complete with personalities but not yet shaped by the marks of fate upon their skin. So pause the manger scene for a minute and flash forward thirty or so years: what do we see now? Does it even really matter on Christmas night?

Yes, it matters, because if I can't get it in my head that I'm welcoming a child who isn't just going to sit quietly in a crib forever, but will one day be the pushy, annoying, rabble-rouser that doesn't just implicate people I don't like but who pushes back on me as well, well then I might as well just open my gifts and be done with it. But, if even for a fleeting moment, I can hold on to the fact that there is both something real and pure about the lavish gift of love and peace offered in that silent night in the manger, AND that there is something complicated, messy and uncomfortable about this baby's birth that will (and already had) upset the order of the world -- then I've truly held Christmas in my hands. When it feels almost impossible to hold this paradox in mind, I just remember that the almost-impossible and the nearly-incredible are what lie at the heart of the Christian faith - as this night where God who comes as a human and showers us with 'love, love, love.. all around' so wonderfully proves.

(Lindsey) Every good story has a conflict. Great works of literature, Disney movies, the good story of a friend, they all have something with which the main character must contend: bad guys, hardship, or even her/himself. But this story, this baby, brings our literary preferences pretty close to home. It flips the script. Jesus (as baby, man, God)  is the conflict, the scandal, the sticking point upon which the world's way of being trips and topples - and is the conflict over which we still trip and tumble and are upended.

The story of this night unfolds into the life of Christ - among a long list of characters: 'less-informed authorities,' cynics, jeering neighbors, demanding family members, those who seek violence as a means to peace, people who love their traditions more than anything, and those who will not risk. I have at times inhabited many of those characters in the stories of my own life. But this story is not (only) a great literary work, a moralistic tale, or the story of a friend - this story is more. It is an axis of wonder, a place that we return to year after year, a mysterious truth that we spin round and round. The wonder of it is this: that the conflict and chaos, the resolution, the love, the frailty and the fear are all present as God's grace embraces the world. That in spite of (or, I believe, because of) this complexity, both present in the world and present in us, the Creator came to walk among these 'characters' -- and comes still to walk with us now: the uninformed, the violent, the cynical, the fearful.

And so we fall silent on this Christmas Eve in the face of a love that is bigger than we understand. And we dwell for a moment in the wonder that God, in whom all things hold together, became a small baby and reached out to embrace all things in the hold of grace.


May we be embraced by wonder as Grace is born again to us tonight.

                           - Anna and Lindsey