Keeping Christmas (Over the Rhine)

“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flock, the work of Christmas begins: 
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among brothers and sisters,
To make music in the heart."

-Howard Thurman

“Christmastide,” or the days that come after Christmas, always feel a little strange to me. I want to remain in the peace and joy of the manger, but find I am quickly pulled on as life rolls forward towards a new year.

But Jesus didn’t stay in the manger either. In fact, we lose the importance of Christmas if we forget that the baby of Christmas Eve grew into a man. The man Jesus took the peace, joy and love that are the banner over our Christmas manger and lived them in radical ways.  Ways of living that welcomed outcasts, advocated for the poor and upended the social order for the cause of justice; bringing him to a death, in the end, that's antithetical to the peace and love we celebrate at his beginning.

Today, Over the Rhine sings for us a common experience: our Christmas ideals, songs, tidings run headlong into the reality of our world. They sing (as do we in the traditional hymn) about the light shining in the streets of Bethlehem, while in reality violence and oppression now scar the streets of Jesus’ birth-town.  In the face of such conflict, we may be tempted to pack up our hope and joy with our Christmas tree and decorations, boxed in basements or attics til next year.

 

Little Town by Over the Rhine

Or, as the song suggests, we can follow the baby of the manger into adulthood, listening to what his life has to say to us. And like him, we can carry the light, in our hands, in our actual, tangible choices and actions. We cannot keep Christmas alive within us in the form of feelings or nostalgia or an ideal, but  we can live to build, in our world, the realities which Christmas proclaims: hope, joy, peace and love, here in our midst.

May we welcome the outcast, to make real our hope in this world.

May we stand with the poor, to make real our joy in this world.

May we surrender our power for humility, to make real our peace in this world.

May we open our hearts to be transformed, to make real our love in this world.

 

 

-Lindsey