Irreverin
I’m going to have to call the police on my neighbors.
The liturgical police, that is.
Their house is covered with Christmas lights. That’s fine. I love Christmas lights! Also, on their porch, they have a giant, hand-painted wooden sign. (When I say ‘giant,’ I mean huge. I mean Santa could see this thing from space). And it says “JESUS IS THE REASON FOR THE SEASON.” Yes, the all caps seem a little aggressive to me, too. But the sign alone is not my gripe, exactly.
What I’m liturgical policing is the OTHER sign in their yard. Placed just in front of their porch, where the huge ‘reason/season’ sign resides, is a wooden cross that proclaims this message: “He is Risen!”
Every time I drive by that house, I rend my garments and shout to the heavens, “How can he be risen if he isn’t born yet???” The Easter message alongside the Christmas one is just more than I can bear. It’s like the time I had a summer deadline for an Advent project I was working on, so I wrote the whole thing during Lent. It just nearly made my head explode. The weather was all wrong, the hymns were all wrong, my wardrobe was all wrong. And heaven knows, I do like to have the right outfit, always.
Clearly, I value seasonal-appropriateness in all things, down to what scents do and do not belong in certain times of year. (I have a seasonal Yankee candle rotation that is not to be messed with!) And I know my neighbors are just excited about Jesus coming–whether he is coming as a baby, or rising from the grave, or staging some sort of Left Behind comeback like the prophet Kirk Cameron has foretold. And of course, I appreciate their enthusiasm and am not *actually* going to say anything to them. Although I have composed a letter in my head–to them, from Santa–that would be hilarious. But also bitchy. So I shall just smile and wave, even though I really want to punch an elf in the throat.
Anyway. The fullness of the liturgical calendar displayed on my neighbor’s lawn got me thinking about our Lent worship series from this year, on the theme of time. I think it was some of the most meaningful preaching I’ve ever taken part in, and we could easily have extended the series to last a whole year.
Because time is always with us. The weight of it, and the promise of it; our anxiousness and our hope; our faith and our fretting; it is all wrapped up in time.
In 6 weeks, we covered quite a bit of theological ground. But there are 3 truths about time that keep coming back to me:
1. We have all the time that we need. (As we tell our children in Worship and Wonder).
2. God’s time is different than our time.
3. In God’s time, two things can be true at once.
It’s that last one that’s getting me today. Two things can be true at once.
As much as I find my neighbor’s decor both seasonally incorrect and aesthetically appalling — I guess Jesus IS both risen, and not yet born.
Because I know, in this season of waiting and hoping, that so many other seemingly-disparate things are true at once.
It is true that our churches are filled with people who anticipate the holidays with great joy; and others who are weary with the weight of illness, loss, or painfully broken relationships.
It is true that my newsfeed is filled with pictures of friends’ newborn babies, seeing their first Christmas lights; and sonogram pictures of my niece, who will be born this spring. At the same time… other friends post updates from the hospice house, where they are slowly releasing their baby daughter back into the arms of God.
It is true that yet another community is grieving a horrific mass shooting; it is true that our outrage continues to fall on deaf ears and it is true that people still continue to worship guns as gods in this country. But it is also true–I have to believe–that through our shared grief and hope, through the faithful work of peace, however fruitless it may seem–God may be making a way in the darkness, even now.
It is true that God works through our best human efforts of love and service to transform the world in ways we cannot imagine. But it is also true that God works in darkness; that even the most evil, deluded perpetrators of violence are children of God, and not beyond the reach of grace.
It is true that Jesus will be born in a stable, in the still of a starry night, to a loving mother and the adoration of a heavenly host.
But it is also true–so painfully true–that Jesus is a two-year-old refugee boy, lying facedown and dead on a Turkish beach.
We knew that was him. The minute we saw that picture, and the way it filled all time and space, we knew who he was. Our hearts were burning with in us.
Darkness and light. They live in the world together, and our job is to live here too. Looking for God in both places. At the same time.
So I guess my neighbors are right. Jesus is the reason for the season–for the lights and sparkle, the singing and baking, the newness and the hope. But he is also the reason we sing in darker times. The reason we keep showing up, even when there are so many guns and so many hurting children and so much hunger and heartache. In God’s time, two things can be true at once; and we will wait for that great unfolding, that brings our own time into rhythm with God’s. If only for a moment, in some unknown place and season.
Come doubting, come sure
Come fearful to this door
Come see what love is for
Allelujah
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