Now You Can Stand Up and NOT Be Seen!
Last week I began the day listening to a grumbling Abby – “So what’s wrong with you?” (She barked) “Aren’t you disturbed by all the Christmas music, Christmas movies, Christmas ads and sales and specials, and Black Fridays etc etc? We’re hardly past Halloween and not even near Thanksgiving yet.” And Abby can be a loud insistent and at times utterly annoying border collie whose observations of the American scene can be both humorous and troublesome.
The day continued. I went down to our Diocesan Convention and caught up, in between sessions, talking with old friends, classmates, some former students and parishioners from all over this Episcopal Diocese of New York. And I listened to so much complaining: “Aren’t you disturbed by all the Christmas music, Christmas movies, Christmas ads and sales and specials, and Black Fridays etc etc? We’re hardly past Halloween and not even near Thanksgiving yet.” They didn’t bark. They just grumbled.
Maybe it’s me, but I often see things from a different perspective. Young (and now, often, not-so-young) adults who walk into a church hoping to have their child baptized or wanting to be married but who have had no connection to any church in years, if ever, are not to me, objects of contempt but rather souls to be won for Christ. To be welcomed home with love and respect and seen as the future of the Christian community, not to be ridiculed for their past.
So I am grateful for this now this seemingly almost complete victory of the forces of secularization in capturing the so called holiday (not Christmas) climate. And “why?” you might ask. Because this now gives us time to use and choices to make. I can purposely NOT participate in this shopping rushing about “holiday” madness and share with anyone (or no one) who listens why I choose to be different. You can bow and worship before the altar of Black Fridays and overindulgent parties. If that really makes you happy (and I am still searching for evidence of this), then good luck to you. Eat and drink to excess. Deal with church stuff only when you want “warm fuzziness.”
But that doesn’t work and it’s not real. Now I see our time, like the Christians of an era when such an identification led to not only scorn but possible arrest and execution, to stand up and stand apart. I choose to make the season of Advent (in terms of my reflections, my readings, and my personal prayer) a time of preparation and longing for what (and WHO) is truly important. I am not going to succumb to the enticements of so called “instant gratification.” I am going wish folks “the peace of God that passes all understanding” and not waste my time with the culture war of “Merry Christmas” vs. “Happy Holidays.” Let those who have taken the religious dimension from this season think they have won. I will witness and testify to the opposite and let the “evil of the present age” simply know what I stand for. No Abby, I am not grumbling at the season. I am just rolling up my symbolic sleeves and getting to work for Christ.
Fr. Joe