Waiting, Christmas, Corona, and Despair

Is anyone else tired of waiting?  

For instance, I just got finished waiting for spring.  Since I’m a west coaster, my physical calendar expects green leaves and flowers to happen earlier than they do in MInnesota.  For myself (and my daughter), the month between March 15 and April 20 was quite possibly the longest month of the year.  Not only were we full into social distancing mode, but the signs of spring just weren’t coming.  In spite of the fact that the birds were back, and the snows were melting soon after they fell, a normal spring involved warmth, sunshine, and plant growth, preferably in rapid succession.  We knew that spring had to come; it just hadn’t yet.  Now it’s here, and I’m thick in the middle of laying out my garden.  

Waiting for spring as a transplant is a lot like waiting for Christmas as a kid.  Everyone says that it is coming.  Your experience says that it has always come before.  But the wait just seems so long that doubt begins to creep in.  I, myself, have heard kids say, “What if Christmas doesn’t come this year?”  or “It feels like Christmas is never going to come.”  And yet it does.  Always.  

As adults, we tend to smile at these feelings.  We’ve got enough life experience stored up to know that feelings don’t alter the natural course of events. “Summer and winter, springtime and harvest shall never cease” (Genesis 8:22).  But the waiting periods of adult life aren’t so regular: finding that job, kicking that cancer, waiting out a political election, seeing our children out of some danger, or watching our spouses deploy.    The end result of these waiting experiences isn’t so predictable.  And so we as adults get to experience that same feeling of “I just can’t see the end of this” or “I don’t see how this is ever going to get better.”  It’s easy to lose hope. 

 As a Navy wife for seven years, I struggled through a lot of waiting.  In the middle of a deployment, it’s easy to forget what life with one’s spouse is like.  The time in between gets monotonous; it feels heavy and unreal.  One loses sight of the end and begins to think, “Even when they do come back, that can’t possibly make this better.  This is just too hard.”  

On the surface, that sounds a lot like, “Christmas is never going to get here,” but there’s a difference.  Christmas always comes, and while waiting for Christmas or for spring doesn’t leave any lasting scars.  But in adult experiences, waiting can tarnish hope.  And when hope gets tarnished, our expectations change. Our happiness gets tinged with cynicism or fear or despair.  We might become afraid to spend money, like people who lived through the Great Depression.  We might go through life expecting to be physically or emotionally assaulted, as many combat veterans or victims of abuse can testify.  Or we might become irrationally afraid that our spouse will depart for good, as I was for years after Seth got out of the Navy.  We aren’t able to enjoy what we’ve received.  Our capacity for hope has been depleted by overuse.  It’s worn out.  It’s broken.  

I think a lot of people are experiencing this now because of the CoronaVirus, but it’s hardly new to human experience.  It’s easy to be overwhelmed when your spirit has to do a lot of heavy lifting all at once.  We have a lot of fears to balance right now.  Will someone we love get sick?  Will there be medical treatment for my problem?  Will the economy recover in time to keep my business from going bankrupt?  Will I be able to feed my family and pay my rent this week?  Will we still have religious freedom when this is all over? Are my kids getting the education they need?  That’s a lot to lift, and it’s no wonder than people are getting tired of it.  

The Holy Spirit has been pushing me toward the book of 1 Peter during this crisis.  Peter was writing to a bunch of Christians in an uncertain place.  They were being persecuted, but in a way that still allowed some of normal life to go on.  Historical sources tell us that when Christians weren’t being fed to the lions, they were still facing things like being turned out by their masters, losing their jobs or their homes (if they were renting), being turned away from certain services, and being the last to receive aid in times of crisis.  This slow-burn persecution still happens today, and it creates a lot of uncertainty.  Maintaining a strong front in the face of an immediate enemy is one thing, but how do you resist unspecified enemies that could come at any moment or slow deprivation stretched out over a long period of time? 

Suffering, uncertainty, and helplessness tend to assault our sense of self-worth.  When we feel like we can’t do anything about a situation, we begin to question how effective we are in the world in general.  Suffering induces shame, whether we deserve shame or not. Isolation leads us to question ourselves, our friends,and our government.  Exile is hard.  Man is born to trouble, just like sparks have to fly upward.

In the midst of this, Peter reminds his beloved friends to take an eternal perspective on their situation.  Not all suffering is connected to shame, and their self worth does not lie in their social efficacy.  They are not made of perishable things but imperishable.  And these struggles have come so that the imperishable cord that runs through their lives, the faith in Jesus Christ that God has sown into each one of them, can be refined, strengthened, and matured.  They were chosen before the creation of the world, they have been purified by faith and obedience, they are united with Christ Jesus in their suffering, and they will be shielded by God until they receive the inheritance that is in heaven.  

Three things struck me about this letter as I read it

1. How many times Peter refers to the divine seed of the people he is writing to.  He speaks of their salvation as a concrete fact, one that should be built around and planned on.   The immortality of his readers, by the grace of God, is the central fact of this letter, and it shapes everything else.  
2. That immortality makes them different from the people around them.  They are a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession that [they] may  declare the praises of him who called [them] out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (2:9)
3. That difference is manifested in hope that other people don’t understand.  “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give a reason for the hope that you have, but do this with gentleness and respect” (3:15).  Peter is assuming that their hope will be obvious.  People are going to see it and say, “How can you have hope like that right now?”  And they’ll have to explain.  

Hope is a strange thing. It is an enjoyment of a possibility that isn’t proven yet.   Hope can only really exist in uncertainty, but it literally breeds miracles.  Hope for a better life inspires immigrants to leave family, property, and community and move to another country to start all over again.   People who continue to hope in the face of impossible circumstances have regained nations.  Hope allows people to resist tyrants and die knowing that they  will leave a better world behind them.  Hope of the Resurrection changed the world.  Great things happen when people can hope for great things.  

Faith is the certainty of what you hope for.  Peter and his readers were hoping for their own holiness (purification) and the glory of God.  And they were so certain of it that they were able to do great things like love when they had nothing, submit to unfair rulers, and suffer cheerfully in full view of an incredulous world.  

So in this time of uncertainty, what are you hoping for?  

That’s a big question, isn’t it?  There are a lot of great struggles being waged right now.  Human wisdom and scientific innovation are wrestling with death.  The human spirit is wrestling with isolation, fear, frustration, and a general feeling of invalidity.  The economy is wrestling with government restrictions, supply chain disruptions, and consumer panic.  Justice and freedom are wrestling with the concentration of emergency powers.  That’s a lot of uncertainty.  It’s a breeding ground for despair, but it’s also the perfect soil for hope.  So what are we hoping for? 

If we are hoping for a vaccine or a quick and effective treatment for the CoronaVirus, we may or may not be disappointed.  If we are hoping for a new embracing of the Constitution as it was originally written, I think we’re barking up the wrong tree.  If we are hoping that the economy will bounce back like a rubber band, and six months from now neither our children nor our bank accounts will remember this economic shutdown, I think we’re being unrealistic.  Things will get better for most people;  they always do.  But they will never be the same.  If our hope is that things will go back to the way they were, our hope will fail.  We can hope for better, but if that hope depends on human function, whatever comes is going to be a mixed blessing.  

However, if our hope is in God, then we already have one certainty.  We know that difficulty, shame, and death are in the long run irrelevant.  “Death, where is thy sting,” is just a fancy way of saying, “Is that all you’ve got?”  Is watching your family struggle hard?  Is postponing medical treatment risky?  Are our fears legitimate? Yes because they are painful, and it is natural to recoil from pain.  But at the same time, no.  And this is something that we need to wrap our heads around:  Suffering the way Jesus suffered is an honor. It is a direct connection to Jesus Christ, and it is the fastest way to get sin out of our lives. We may not  be able to take up a literal cross, but we can take an eternal view on the frustrations and dangers that the current crisis is pushing on us.  We can pour our frustrations out  to God instead of hurling them on Facebook.  And when people notice our silence, they will ask us why we can bear this with equanimity, and then we say, “Because death doesn’t scare me, and I know that God can make good things out of this.“ 

Why is this happening to us?  “These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith -- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though it has been refined by fire -- may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed”  (1:7)

Remember what Christ has done for you, rremember what He deserves from you, and also remember that the work of our hands is not the only way God makes his kingdom come.  Sometimes it’s not what we do but how we handle what happens to us that brings God the most glory. Somehow, somewhere, the Kingdom of God is advancing because of the CoronaVirus.  Can we be glad about that?  

Can you see it in your own life?  Maybe you’ve had to give up something that was coming between you and your Heavenly Father.  If so, don’t look back.  Maybe you’ve become more humble, more conscious of your neighbor, more sensitive to your spouse, more involved with your kids.  If so, thank God and pursue that.  Maybe this will make us all more patient and less selfish and more aware of how the economy works.  Maybe our lives will become simpler so we can give more to those who need it.  You know your life better than I do.  But in the midst of all this, remember to keep an eternal perspective.    You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.  Your inheritance in heaven is secured by Jesus Christ, and your soul  is shielded by God himself for the duration of this trial, however long it may last.  Your loved ones are in his hands, and his hands never let anyone fall.  Let that be the anchor that you hang all your worries on.  It can support them.  And if your divine identity makes you feel less afraid for the future, don’t be afraid to say as much.  People should have a reason for asking you why you have hope. 

What does Christmas have to say to the CoronaVirus?

Has anyone else found their lives to be a bit chaotic lately?  I mean, I only have one kid at home, and she's pretty independent.  And as a pastor's wife, my "work schedule" hasn't shifted that much.  And I live in a small country town where the streets are almost empty during the day.  Chandler on lockdown looks a lot like Chandler at normal times.  

And yet, in spite of that, everything feels different.  There are restrictions, which means we have to work around those restrictions to do our normal duties.  Nothing is convenient.  Local commerce seems to be in danger.  Everything seems to require twice as much thought as it used to.  Even a normal head cold has to be checked against the CDC website to make sure it is nothing more than a head cold, and it's hard to know the best way to serve our families, our neighbors, and our communities. 

I think the word that most people would use to describe these last few weeks (and the next few weeks) would be uncertainty.  I don't think anyone is certain of much right now, and the more certain people sound, the less I am inclined to trust their opinions. 

So what does Christmas have to say to all this? 

I know that a lot of you are experiencing spring.  We have two inches of fresh snow at the moment, so it at least "looks like" Christmas here for the time being, but last week the farmers got some planting in.  This is not a time when people think about Christmas as it is stereotyped.  Only the most die-hard Christmas folk were gift shopping before self-isolation drove them in to use Amazon, and summer vacation is the next big event to plan.  But there is something that right now does have in common with Christmas:

Upheaval and uncertainty.  

Picture it.  Thousands of people all over the Roman world were commanded, not to shelter in place, but to get up and go be counted.  They had to shutter their homes and businesses, disrupt local economies, deal with temporary labor shortages, pack enough food for a journey, and probably endure unscrupulous entrepreneurs.  People on the leaving end of the journey would have to prepare for a long absence, and people on the receiving end of the journey would have to prepare for a large influx of people.  Hoarding was probably an issue. There was significant government presence, for good or for ill, and most likely plenty of opinions, information, and misinformation about the government’s intentions.  People are people.  Above all, there was inconvenience and people responding to inconvenience in their various ways.  

The original Christmas time probably looked a lot like the novel CoronaVirus.   People were not settling down for a long winter’s nap.  They were not relaxing for a couple of extra days around a national holiday.  They were not watching breathlessly for a divine beacon of hope and grace.  They were more likely racing around serving the extra people in their homes, grumbling at the government, getting the supplies that they needed by hook or by crook, and  dealing with all the little emergencies that seem so much worse because the framework of normal life isn’t there. Is it any wonder that Jesus ended up being born in a stable?  

It was in real life like this that Jesus chose to make his appearance. The Gospel is not averse to chaos.  Confusion is not a sign that God has abandoned us.  Sometimes it’s just a sign that life is moving forward on a grand scale.  

Is there an overall plan or reason behind the CoronaVirus?  Well, it’s not going to bring about the redemption of the world.  And the overall reasoning hasn't been revealed to me, so don’t expect an overarching explanation.  

Two things I know:

God is still in control, and He doesn’t just control the situation.  He also guides us in the best ways to deal with the situation.  

Says St. James, “If any of you needs wisdom,” Don’t we all in this situation? 

 “If any of you needs wisdom, that person should ask God.”  That person is you because this situation is new.  Go ask.  

“Ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault.”  There is no reason not to.  He knows that if we are asking for wisdom, we are trying to mature in the situation He has given us. This is a good thing.  Maturing is exactly what He wants for us.  

 “And it will be given to you.”  Expect to be answered, because like the coffee that we ordered last week which arrived this morning, it will be there when you need it.  In fact, it might have been dropped off right outside your door.  

Also, God is involved.  God is here with us.  God came to ride the waves of uncertainty as an infant.  Emmanuel means that we are not alone.  So don’t live as if you are alone, even if you are in quarantine.  Trust that there is meaning in this.  Hope and pray that it will pass quickly.  And rest in the presence of God.  He is with you.  "Cast all your worries on God because He cares for you." (1 Peter 5:7)

Need a Little Christmas

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes. . .  The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. . . . They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator -- who is forever praised.  Amen. ”

 ~ Romans 1: 16-25   For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to seaprarate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8:38

Hello from a piece of frozen tundra.  In a lot of places that have extensive winters, the real storms come in January and February.  I’ve seen this in Michigan and Minnesota so far.  Even in places like these with a reputation for snow and cold, residents wonder if it’s going to be a white Christmas, but they know that it’s going to be a white Valentine’s Day.  The cold, the wet, the dreariness of winter really sets in at the beginning of February and reminds us that we really have no control over what goes on out there.

A bit of the blue sky we are enjoying.

As I look out my backdoor today, I feel adventurous enough to handle that unknown.  Actually, the sun is shining today, and it’s a balmy 25* Farenheit.  The snow has been melting for the last five days, and the snow mound on our deck is almost gone.  This is apparently what one of my friends, a Minnesota native, calls “False Spring.”  It happens every year, and it’s a very good thing.  I don’t think I could have endured another six weeks of early February.  The first two weeks of February were a perfect combination of striking cold, chilling winds, fog and clouds all at once that made me wonder if I would ever want to go outside again.  Even the jaunt across the street became a chore. 

I’m not alone in this observation.  February has a nasty reputation in literature too. Check out these quotes from famous authors on Goodreads.com.  

“I used to try to decide which was the worst month of the year. In the winter I would choose February. I had it figured out that the reason God made February short a few days was because he knew that by the time people came to the end of it they would die if they had to stand one more blasted day.”

― Katherine Paterson, Jacob Have I Loved

“The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?”

― Alice McDermott 

“Why does February feel like one big Tuesday?”

― Todd Stocker 

See, we have half a deck.  

Death, despair, Tuesday . . .  Maybe we should move Christmas to February.  Of all the months in Winter’s repertoire, the first two weeks of February most remind me of Tumnus’s lament, “Always winter, but never Christmas.”  What better time for celebrating the possibility of something new than just when it starts to feel like nothing new will ever happen?  (There was actually a celebration of Christmas on January 26 in some parts of the world before the Church universalized December 25th.  In Ethiopia, they still celebrate something like Christmas called Timkat on that day.)  

 I don’t know what winter was like for the Ancient Romans, Celts, Babylonians, Jews, or Vikings, but this notion of celebrating something new in the middle of winter seems to have been a universal thing.  Once again I have been perusing the excellent Encyclopedia of Christmas by Tanya Gulevich.  This time I’ve been reading up on the ancient pagan holidays that could be considered precursors to Christmas and finding some interesting trends.  All of the Ancient European peoples (and I’m going to include Babylon because they go right along with the trends) had some major festival between the winter solstice and January 15th.  This festival would last several days and some of its dominant attributes would be greenery, feasting, small gifts, mischievous spirits, the hope of good luck or abundance for the coming year, and some notion of the supernatural invading the here and now, whether for good or for ill.  Fire, either in the form of candles and lamps or bonfires shows up in all of these festivals.  And in almost every instance, the festival celebrated the beginning of something new, a turning of the wheel (“Yule” literally means “wheel.”), a change from old to unknown.  

These festivals were more than just New Year’s festivals the way we celebrate New Year’s today where we pretend that we are going to reset our lives.  They were seen as a kind of resetting of the world.  In Ancient Babylon, during Zagmuk (you can’t make this stuff up), the king would renew his oath to the gods and figuratively go down to the underworld to help Marduk defeat the forces of chaos and destruction.  During Zagmuk, as well as the Roman Saturnalia and Kalends, slaves were released from their duties during the length of the festival and allowed to interact with their masters as equals.  They were encouraged to mock and ridicule their masters, and sometimes slaves or criminals were even set up as mock kings to reign over a little bit of chaos themselves before the world became normal again.  (Note the underlying classism there -- kings create order; slaves create chaos.)  Men and women switched clothing, and people masqueraded as all manner of things, carousing through the streets of the major cities of these empires.   Almost universally, the world went nuts for a while during the darkest time of the year, and the people clung to their rituals, praying either that the gods would be pleased or the gods would be strong, so that spring, with its growth and blessing, would follow in the new year.  

One of the little tidbits that I loved most from my research this time around was the hypothesis (because nobody wrote down their reasons at the time) that the Ancient Norse lit their Yule bonfires to help strengthen the Sun as it fought to come back from the realms of darkness.  In the Mediteranean areas, people seemed to use this time to indulge in the chaos and let free their inner angst and id.  They also gave gifts to the poor, but in the north, where the dark was much deeper, colder, and longer, the community united around the celebration of helping the world become what they wanted it to be.  

They have caves like these in the mountains, just much bigger.

It’s easy to see a lot of these things bleeding forward into Christmas, though I think we in our stable, “scientific” world have lost the urgency that a true pagan believer would have had at this time of year (and there were both cynics and scientists in pagan societies too). We are not afraid that spring will not come.  It always comes.  But we are still afraid of chaos, and if we haven’t given in to the despair of the winter of the soul, we still hope that God will bring about growth and blessing and order of some kind.   Christmas boasts a King who arrived in one of the lowliest positions possible: a peasant born in a stable in a conquered nation.  Quite apart from his own supernatural deity, the

supernatural in the form of angels invaded earth on that very night.  This King went on to wage war against the forces of darkness and chaos, both in this world and in the underworld, purposing to free slaves, undo illness and death, confront the Destroyer, and construct a new kind of society in which slave and master would interact not only as equals but as brothers and sisters.  We can definitely identify with waiting for that kind of spring.

I have heard that some people/scholars use these common urges of humanity to debunk Christianity.  If we had anything new to offer, our holidays would look different from those of the religions that we say will not lead to salvation.  Well, that’s one way of looking at it, but think about this.  God doesn’t change.  He wrote these currents of eternal life, the equality of all humanity, generosity and abundance, and the triumph of life over death into the fabric of creation.  (I’m making a theological assumption with that last one.  I’m not sure how death was a part of the initial picture.)    Human beings are intelligent.  We can pick up on persistent trends in nature and history.   Moreover, human beings are spiritual.  We long for equality, abundance, and eternity almost universally.  

As the Apostle Paul says at the beginning of Romans, “What may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities -- his eternal power and divine nature -- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse.”  We know what God wants, but very often, we don’t want to give it to Him.  And that is where a lot of our chaos comes from.   “For though they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. . . .  Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts . . .They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator -- who is forever praised.  Amen. ” ~ Romans 1: 16-25  Note the word “darkened” there.  Where is our darkness?  It’s in our hearts.  

The average Christian doesn’t perceive winter as a serious threat to the structure of Creation.  “As long as the world endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease” (Genesis 8:22), and we know that.  What we are hoping for is a brightening and restoring of hearts, so that masters want to free their slaves and slaves don’t want to mock their masters, so that men and women of all types feel like they can express their full God-given nature without envy of any other, and people would feel free to revel in the worship of a God who really did and does go down into the chaos to wrestle out growth and honor and strength and security and all those other things that the ancient pagans prayed for.  

The spring of the soul, the spring of the kingdom isn’t wholly here yet.  Different places get spring at different times (Oregon has tulips right now, or so I’ve heard.).  And that’s why we really need Christmas celebrations.  We will see many pockets of false spring, when the snow melts, and both grass and people poke their heads up to absorb as much sunshine as they can get.  We will see moments of justice and equality and progress and blessing, both in our own lives and in a random headline about some country on the other side of the world.  But the fact of the matter is, the world as we know it is under the influence of chaos, and humanity is really good at making it worse, often in spite of our best intentions.  We need a divine champion.  Life, growth, and blessing do not happen unless God really does go down and wrestle with the darkness.  That is the heart of Christmas: peace (justice, shalom) on earth, and good will toward men on whom His favor rests.  

See, there's life under the snow.  

So that really is why we need to celebrate Christmas, and it is also what we need to celebrate in Christmas.  Christmas is a little bonfire that we light in the darkness, not because it actually helps the sun burn brighter, but because we are called to watch, pray, and follow, and sometimes in the midst of watching, praying, and following, we get discouraged and need a regular (not ritual) reminder that underneath our struggles, God is wrestling too.  Christmas is one of those reminders (the season of Lent is too). Even as we take a day to celebrate the Peace of Christ, God is still working to a new and glorious harvest.  

If the struggle seems long, remember a couple of things:

• 
  Chaos is not a threat to God.  Chaos, winter, and darkness are all created things, and as such are tools in God’s hands.  The word  in the Bible that could most closely be translated chaos is tohu vabohu, which means wilderness.  The wilderness is a place of testing, forming, and repentance.  Yes, the forces of winter are strong.  They can be deadly.  But even death can serve good and worthy purposes in God’s plan.  
• As Julian of Norwich reports, Our essence is bound up in God, even as God is present in us.  If chaos and winter are not a threat to Him, then ultimately, chaos and winter are not a threat to us.  There is a part of us that nothing, and I mean that nothing that is not God, can touch.  No matter how much despair we feel, we are not destroyed.  
• We have no idea when spring will come.  We can’t see the roots and seeds developing underground.  But they are there.  Never doubt that they are there.  Rest in the knowledge that they are there.
• Life is unsuppressable.  When spring comes, you may well have tulips in your garden and dandelions in your sidewalk.  Life, growth, even weeds are symbolic of God.  He pops up in completely unexpected places, spreads in unexpected ways, and never, ever quits.