Category: Pondering Peace
Christmas in a Season of Darkness
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
(Luke 1:78-79, NRSV)
Many of us are in the midst of a flurry of activity getting ready for Christmas, doing all those things our culture says we should do to be prepared – decorate our homes, buy and wrap gifts, bake, send greetings, and much more. Wherever we go there are decorations and music – “Deck the halls with boughs of holly… ‘Tis the season to be jolly.”
Yet, it isn’t jolliness that I feel. Rather, I feel a heaviness of heart that comes from looking at the reality of our world in contrast to what divine love created it to be. In this season of merry making, my feelings are often tinged with grief and sadness. Perhaps this is true for you as well.
Having been a pastor, I am familiar with how the loss of a loved one casts sadness on the Christmas season. I have been a part of facilitating services of remembrance and grief group opportunities to share sorrow and support among those going through grief during the Christmas season.
But many of us are experiencing a different kind of grief this year. It is grief over all the children and family members who have been killed and maimed in Gaza by Israeli forces using American weapons. It is grief over the escalating wars in many places around the world causing death, destruction, and unfathomable suffering. It is grief over the direction our country has taken with its sharp rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric. It is grief over species extinction, weather disasters, and the relentless march of global warming and climate change as we continue our record pace of greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels. It is anticipatory grief of the loss of life, the degradation of our beautiful earth, and the suffering and harm to God’s creation yet to come as a new administration pulls back on climate action and encourages the growth of fossil fuel energy.
If we look back at Matthew and Luke’s stories of Jesus’ birth, we see that all was not calm and bright, jolly and light. Jesus was born in an occupied nation suffering under the oppression, violence, and repression of Roman military might. Mary and Joseph were poor people, forced to comply with this oppressive power’s edict to leave home and family to be registered, make a hazardous trip, and without adequate shelter deliver her baby alone. Then fleeing violence and massacre, they became refugees and aliens in a foreign land. This is the experience of so many families today as they seek to survive in the midst of oppression and war.
Under the grinding boot of Roman rule, it would seem that hopelessness emerging from a sense of helplessness to change things would dominate this biblical narrative of Jesus’ birth. But that is not the case. Rather the words of Mary and Zechariah are filled with hope as they dare to see the possibility of a different reality than that which they were experiencing and proclaim it as already beginning. How could such hope spring out of such circumstances? How can it still? Although in the midst of dire situations, each one kept trusting God and experienced God’s presence in unexpected ways.
Hope is like a baby, full of potential, holding our dreams, eliciting our love and joy, needing our nurture and care, and requiring us to treasure and delight in its presence and growth. Hope is especially this baby – the Christ Child, Jesus. Born into a world of oppression, violence, and poverty, he brought such hope that Old Testament prophesies were pinned on him. He lived out and taught the values and practices that we must hold on to – love, justice, peace, the value of every person, compassion, nonviolence, and trust in God. We need to embrace and stand firmly in these while fanning the flame of hope.
Hope is what we need in order to have the energy and vision to move forward in caring for our earth and all its creatures and in alleviating the suffering of our sisters and brothers throughout the world. As people of faith, we need to offer others a renewal of hope – not through a denial of the reality we are facing but through the sturdy assurance that God has not abandoned us, but remains at work with us and within our world.
Perhaps our feelings of grief and distress can be held as an authentic part of Christmas, maybe even more so than feelings of jolliness. At its heart, the Christmas story is about God’s love and presence being born and bringing new life into very dark places. This being so, we have reason for hope. We can choose to love in the midst of hatred and violence. We can seek to stay focused on Christ’s peace in the midst of the upcoming storm. And we can offer ourselves to be bearers of God’s dream for our world. With Mary, may we hear the message that nothing is impossible with God. And with Mary, may we respond, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”
Rev. Ruth Rosell, Ph.D.
Director of the Buttry Center for Peace and Nonviolence
Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology Emerita
Central Seminary, Shawnee, KS
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.
Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash