Amidst these fast-waning days of Advent I received an email from a friend whom I have known and admired since college days. In his email to me, Jim related this serendipity experience. It occurred, he wrote, as he was reading on his computer screen the many SiriusXM holiday stations which he can play on his laptop. I quote him:
And among the offerings, like Hallmark Christmas, Holiday Pops, and Jolly Christmas is one that features Mannheim Steamroller… …Well, I clicked on it tonight, and, due to space limitations, here was the truncated title of the next song: Mannheim Steamroller – Have Yourself a Merry Little Christ…
Jim was quick to point out the that – in these times particularly – we all need a “Merry Little Christ” to come into our lives. Jim was not being disrespectful by the words “merry little Christ.” He was not thinking of Jesus as some twinkly-eyed little elf, but rather, pointing out the need for the happiness that a new-born Jesus and his way of life creates.
I could not more fully agree!
In a world of unrelenting and variant-producing Covid, we need a little Christ. In a country where too many of us think that Covid is a government-devised hoax to get control of people through vaccination, we need a little Christ. In a time when reports of mind-numbing failures in moral behavior abound, we need a little Christ. In a time when far too many of our political leaders (and persons campaigning to be political leaders) purposely lie, mislead, distort all for political gain, we need a little Christ.
OK. We all know this. Why re-state the obvious?
I lift up what we intellectually have known for a very long time because saying or writing about such things helps me get the deep frustration and anger-engendering feelings I experience OUT rather than allow them to maintain a corrosive residence in my mind and spirit.
But this holy season has far more meaning, and offers far greater spiritual value, than providing occasion for spirit-cleansing venting.
In Luke’s first chapter there are the stories of the totally improbable pregnancies of the senior citizen, Elizabeth, and the reportedly sexually inactive teenager, Mary. The meaning of those two stories is not supernatural obstetrics but a life-altering experience of being chosen.
When Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptizer) and Mary learn of their respective pregnancies, both women are astonished and wondering how such a biological reality has occurred. But that said, Elizabeth and Mary are even more astonished to have learned from God’s angel, Gabriel, that in a time when women were considered as property and not nearly as valued by God or society as a man or boy, that God is favorably disposed toward each of them.
Do you ever wonder WHY?
What did Elizabeth do to receive God’s favor? What about Mary? Why were they favored – picked out by the Creator – and otherwise recognized as one chosen to embody God’s love and deliver that love in human form?
Over the centuries human theological minds and the institutional church have tried to give the reason for Elizabeth and Mary finding favor with God. But, the reasons given have all been a human attempt – like so much doctrine, literal biblical interpretation, and accepted institutional theology – to gain power, enforce rules, and make human defined differentiation between the believed to be saved folks from those said to be damned. All that this has accomplished is to mess up God’s wonderful story.
The Gospel of Luke never tells us what Elizabeth and Mary did to gain God’s favor. They were just chosen. They did not earn God’s favor. They did not act in ways to get divinely noticed, whatever that means. They were just chosen and for reasons known only unto God, found that they were in God’s favor. Their response? THEY WERE SURPRISED!
What might this mean for us?
The surprising Christmas message, year after year and time after time, is this: no one earns God’s favor. No one, not Elizabeth or Mary or any person ever just DOES something to merit being favored and therefore become a self-made, perfect “womb” in which love can be conceived and made flesh. But we are favored ANYWAY! It is God’s gift.
In this world where our being favored seems so often to depend on status, rank, luck, and being in the right place at the right time with all the right credentials, here comes the astonishing news that being in God’s favor does not work that way.
There is joy in believing that like Elizabeth and Mary, each of us can experience God’s unearned favor. We don’t earn it. That favor is not for some more accomplished person with a far greater number of “likes” on his or her Facebook posts. God just “likes” us. What an amazing grace.
In a society where put-downs are common and depression, as well as crippling feelings of self-deprecation so common in young and older people alike, it is spiritually healing to think, in spite of what value we may think the world assigns to us, that we are in God’s favor. It is spiritually healing to believe that no matter how many opportunities we may think we missed or how many times we may think we have been overlooked, edged out, pushed out or otherwise gone UNNOTICED, when it comes to being a vessel for God’s love each one of us can be – in any pregnant moment – God’s choice. Just like Elizabeth and Mary, we are profoundly altered in spirit and SURPRISED!
Indeed, God’s love growing within us always surprises, frequently overwhelms us and many times makes no earthly sense. It is the season for celebrating that God does the choosing for reasons only God knows. We are reminded that we are favored. We are favored with God’s grace. We are favored with God’s mercy. We are impregnated with God’s love in the hope that we will carry that love to term.
So have yourself a merry little Christ…right now!