Christ Is Coming, Let Go!
The Rose Window, Notre Dame, Paris
On this Christmas Eve morning, I cannot resist one more reflection. Somehow this year through Advent I’ve been trying hard to wrap my head around this amazing thing that is happening: Come, Lord Jesus, come. Come this very day. This is the light of the world we’re talking about! Our dark world, in which we are so engulfed, is not the final answer.
Here’s the way Luke says it to me this morning:
For in the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from heaven will break upon us,
to shine on those who live in darkness, under the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace.’ Luke 1:78-79
I was reading recently someone who was agonizing over the distinction between being hopeful and optimistic. Somehow he thought he could not be both. For him the issues swirling around our world—he mentions in particular climate change and Covid management—made him quite pessimistic about things, and yet, he tells us, because of the coming of the Christ child, he feels compelled to remain hopeful.
I just don’t buy this distinction anymore. Why do we feel we need to maintain some skeptical edge, about everything, including our faith? Do we think this assures our place in the secular kingdom? Do we think it will put us in control of the issues? Do we think it brings us favor within the pervasive secular world? Why do we think we need it both ways? Either the Christ child makes all the difference or he does not. Why not go all the way?
Somehow this long-awaited child shines new light into the corners of what is real, what is true, what is good and worthwhile, what is beautiful. Throughout the history of our Christian faith, our writers have been trying to tell us that Jesus points the way to a whole other world going on out there, more real than the world in which we think we are entangled. He called it his father’s kingdom.
Two days ago the scripture in the liturgical calendar was from the Song of Songs, of all places, a strange choice I thought, for this fourth week of Advent. But the passage speaks in the love language characteristic of this book, emphasizing as it does, the startling ways the God who loves us so much is constantly beckoning us to come out, come closer, come away. New life is announcing itself everywhere, though we still think we’re mired in the dead of winter. If we look closely enough, winter is losing its grip.
Hark! My beloved! Here he comes,
bounding over the mountains, leaping over the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.There he stands outside our wall,
peering in at the windows, gazing through the lattice.
My beloved spoke, saying to me:
‘Rise up, my darling;
my fair one, come away.
For see, the winter is past!
The rains are over and gone;
the flowers appear in the countryside;
the season of birdsong is come,
and the turtle-dove’s cooing is heard in our land;
the green figs ripen on the fig trees
and the vine blossoms give forth their fragrance.
Rise up, my darling;
my fair one, come away.’ (Song of Songs 2:8-13)
I know, I know, this is decidedly not the bent of our world right now. Such claims will seem preposterous, naïve, childish. Come away to a radically different way of seeing things? Winter is passing, really? Yes, but look again. The rains are over. Flowers appear, birdsong rings out, the fig trees blossom. Rise up, come away. Take a chance. Things are different now.
As we feel the constant pressures weighing on our hearts and minds, so vulnerable as we are to fear, how can we possibly go all the way, come away, rise up, look again? How can we possibly let go our skepticism, our pessimism, our persistent desire to fit into a flat, hopeless world?
But of course we can. This is Christmas Eve. Something happened. Something is happening. Surely we can stop quibbling about the distinction between hope and optimism. Leave our skepticism behind. Let go. Hope changes everything. Come away. That’s what I want on this Christmas Eve morning. Come, Lord Jesus, come.