Christmas will be on a Sunday this year. We will gather in a smaller than usual Sunday worship service and celebrate that the greatest Christmas gift was in a manger and not under a tree. All will seem right with the world.
Yesterday, we gathered in worship and the past entered our present on the fifteenth anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Having just moved from Orlando, where we worshipped a mile and a half from The Pulse night club where 50 of God’s children were shot and killed, I was suffering from some pastoral ptsd yesterday as I stood in front of our congregation, thinking of New York, Orlando, and Babylon as I shared how Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn’t bow to Nebuchadnezzar’s terrorizing fiery furnace or whatever fear they held within their own hearts. They stood. Across the country, yesterday, people stood. Across the world, people continue to stand and not bow to terrorists. Some from those outside their countries, some from within, some from outside their houses, some even in their own homes facing abuse by those who are supposed to love them most.
During Christmas, we’ll read from Luke’s version of Christmas with shepherds and angels. We’ll ignore Matthew’s story with the Nebuchadnezzar type of ruler in Herod and his terrorizing soldiers that tried to kill Jesus by slaughtering babes in Bethlehem two years old and younger. At Christmas, we’ll dream of a fairy filled world of babes, angels, and flying reindeer until some other holy day reminds us that the world we live in is not the world God dreams about, which is why Jesus came, which is why those who claim his name, or at least his title, are sent outward into the world that can be often dark and full of terrors.
The language of faith is not a promise of impenetrable safety but a daring leap into an unknown but certain risk. I often think of Moses who stared down Pharaoh not one time but ten telling him of God’s relentless dream of his children’s freedom. Moses didn’t back down. He went repeatedly into his encounters with Pharaoh that could well have resulted in his own demise. I think of the three who stood in the fields of Babylon while not only king but neighbors demanded they cower before the power. Their future’s were uncertain. God being the I AM was not one for testing or serving as someone’s body guard. “We don’t know whether our God can or will save us,” Shadrach, Meshach, or Abednego confessed to the accusing Nebuchadnezzar. “Regardless,” they continued, “we won’t bow.” They didn’t. Nebuchadnezzar carried out his promise and then, to the surprise of all, God showed up in the fire. While the three survived, I’m sure they were impacted, cringing any time a match was struck, standing back a bit farther from the smallest camp fires. No matter the result, those nightmares stay with us. That’s what we do, carry our past terrors into our futures no matter how hard we try not to think about them.
We all want to be safe, but the world won’t let us be. Sometimes a lone gunman or mad king, sometimes it’s simply gravity and the frail formed bodies that carry around our souls. Safety would be great but anyone that promises it to you is selling you something and likely not lived much or read much of the Bible. It is our big temptation. Martin Luther said that security can be our greatest idol. Acts of horror challenge our fantasies about safety. We try and proclaim faith as our get out of pain free card, but the storytellers, the prophets, and the poets tell us that all our great virtues, from love to hope, come with a required risk and sometimes a world of hurt.
During the Christmas season of 1940, one of the greatest terrorists in recorded history was urging the most powerful military across Europe and into Asia fostering genocide along the way. In that time of great anxiety, poet W.H. Auden encouraged faith, not an immature faith fostered by Macy’s, but a mature faith that fostered living into God’s dreams for the world by facing all the nightmares the world could generate. Auden observes that the courage to live out the virtues can take us beyond our fears, beyond the tragedies of yesteryear or fears for what might be into something greater, something of God’s design. All we have to do is leap.
Leap Before You Look by W.H. Auden
The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.
Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.
The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.
The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.
Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.
A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.
Last night at our youth group, Garrett Campbell, our youth leader, asked whether the world full of more evil or good. The general consensus was that the answer was undetermined and left up to how we decided to respond, and ultimately, how God responds. After all, following Christmas, Jesus heads to that terrible day when Rome showed the world what it did to any perceived threats by nailing Jesus to a cross. What should be called, “Horrible Friday,” we call “Good Friday,” April 14th in the new year to come. “Good Friday.” Apparently God, and God’s people, can take the greatest acts of terror and bring good from them. That’s quite a leap of faith, but worth the risk.
