Imagining Christmas

Dear Kate,

This Christmas has been one tough gingerbread cookie for many of our brothers and sisters, much of Christendom around the world indeed.

I don't know how you feel about Zoom, or if your vision of "the light at the end of the tunnel," your "grown up Christmas list" include one as beatified as our church community coming together again in words and flesh.

When you read the news about churches being fined for violating public health orders, I wonder what went through your head, your heart?

Maybe we are dumbfounded by such recalcitrance. Maybe we think these are backward yokels, stupid, disobedient, unscientific rednecks, having no excuse by now to not know and thus observe the "truth," that we are "in this together" and must do our part to stay apart as a way for our civilization to not come apart. Maybe we think they are not "giving God a good name."

I am sure we all judged. Being their brothers and sisters, I hope we did judge, discern wisely in the Spirit.

Last Christmas I wandered into an Orthodox Catholic Cathedral, and found brothers and sisters coming from all around BC, every week, many driving hours, just to see the face of Jesus in the face of each other, as Jesus casts His everlasting loving gaze on them. It was a transcending experience. I walked out of there feeling the "reality" of the street and the mall and even Sinatra's Christmas crooning all too ordinary--not that they cannot be sanctified, but desecrated as they often are and to that same end.

Trust me, you will have no problem being taken up by Paul's cosmic vision in Ephesians if you've been in the presence of the Christ Pantocrator there. At the end of the service, they invited me to go back that very night. For a feast and a dance. How very Christian. These folks knew Christ and Christmas.

Here I have no intention to open up a discussion on the aforementioned news item or church's relation to secular order in general (maybe I did already), but I wish we are all asking ourselves the right questions, such as:

Why is it that the malls are allowed to open, with virtually no social distancing enforced (come on, admit it, we've been there and seen how it was), but the churches are not, even if we are to follow strict health guidelines? Could it be we are worshipping something else, deeming our inviolable doctrines the market principles and divine sanctuary the marketplace?

I think these are worthwhile and necessary reflections, ones that I hope we are asking ourselves and to the benefits of those brothers and sisters who are "violating public health orders." Could it be they are longing for a presence that we are not? Could they be in possession of something we deem disposable? One thing for certain, the news media did not represent them faithfully. I've read statements from some churches, but they were almost never reported. And you won't see their face, that of Jesus, on your many screens soon. They are faceless religious people. (How ironic for ourselves to think that, if we do, considering our own Zoom etiquette.)

Here I would like to invite you to tonight's one-hour Bible reading together.

I find it regrettable that, of the many colorful Christmas characters, in our church, almost none has made any significant appearance so far in our conversation this Christmas, of all Christmases. Maybe we've impoverished our lexicon as we disposed of our lectionary, dimmed our vision as we lost sight of icons. Let's reclaim our imagination together.

Oh come, all ye faithful, for a mere hour, to read the Christmas story together, one small part of it. We will be listening to no less than the Man in Black, Johnny Cash, reading Luke 1 for us, as we try to read ourselves into the story of two lowly, insignificant women, through the dark vessels that they were God was ushering in the Light of the world.

Where are you in this story? Where are we as a community of disciples? Let's listen together and wait on our Lord.

Christmas blessings, Alex