What Now?

What Now? It’s time to begin to make plans to put Christmas away. Some of you have already done this. It is the tradition in some families to being to de-decorate the house Christmas afternoon. There is a desire to “get things back to the way they belong,” to put the furniture that had been moved to make room for the Christmas tree back in the proper spot. We need to throw all those wrapping paper and gift bags piles away.

I am not that kind of person. I’m not as bad as the choir director who served a church with me in South Carolina, who would keep his Christmas tree up past Valentine’s Day.  

It feels like those who want to get things packed away run from the manger too quickly, something along the lines of a spiritual Scrooge. Get it over with and get back to reality! In that way of thinking, those of us who like the trappings of Christmas to stay around just a little longer feel a sense of running from the sacred, the mystical, the spiritual and back to business as usual.

Something amazing has happened and we need to take time to process it. We would be the disciples who would stand with Peter at the transfiguration, hammer in hand, and agree that the three tabernacles should be built as soon as possible and that we conduct regular pilgrimages to the spot and bask in the glow and weight of Divine history.

To those on the other side of the de-decorating issue, Christmas is a day. That day has now passed us and we need to get back to living the life that surrounds us. We feel we are more practical. Jesus didn’t come into the world to keep the shepherds at the stable forever.

No, they returned to their flocks that very same night, glorifying and praising God all the way. The purpose of the birth of Christ is not to draw us out of the world to dwell in some spiritual dream land. It is to equip us with the spiritual, that we might take the wonder of the Christ with us into the world, not hide from the world in our ritual.

The key is somewhere between the rush to take things down and the desire to leave them all up until they are totally irrelevant. Maybe the shepherds had the whole thing right. Get back to work as soon as possible but go as a totally different people from this point forward.

Pastor Craig