A Terrible, Beautiful World--December 17, 2021

A Terrible, Beautiful World--December 17, 2021

I went outside just before sitting down the keyboard to write today, just to stand for a moment in the breeze of a gray December afternoon.  It was a strange mix of the beautiful and the unlovely, to be honest.  The air was unseasonably warm in the mid-60s, but there was a wind strong enough to drag the neighbor's empty trash can across their driveway.  There were patches of green that seemed out of place given that it's just over a week until Christmas, but the ground was muddy and brown, too.  The cloudy sky wasn't threatening rain, but it cast a gloom over the bare skeleton branches of the trees in my field of vision.  And in between the sounds of the wind was a strange blend of birds chirping and traffic moving in the distance.

It was the juxtaposition of all those contradictory elements that stuck with me--the unexpected warmth with the ugly noises of dragging plastic on asphalt, the music of birds and the noise of human machinery, the bright and the dreary, all at once.  And in that moment, it occurred to me again--this, THIS, is the world God has chosen to enter, has chosen to be embodied into, and has chosen to redeem.  This world, in all its wonder and terror, all its excitement and all its ennui, this is the world into which God comes.  This one, and not another.  This one, with its indivisible mix of goodness and rottenness, is the world God so loves enough to have given us Jesus.

The biblical writers are honest in the same way about this world in which we live: it is both a magnificent masterpiece and a rubbish pile all at the same time.  It is full of the music of stars and sparrows alike, and it is also groaning as in childbirth, aching for newness and restoration.  Pretending you can only see one or the other is neither honest nor useful.  To see only the nice and pleasant things means turning your head to ignore what is unjust, mean, cruel, and selfish in the world and to just let it continue.  And if all one can see is the tragic and the broken, there is little reason to fight for it or to do the work of restoration.  If we only see the roses, we will miss the grace of a God who wears thorns for our sake.  And if all we see are thorns, we'll blame God for making a world that that only gives us pain and scars.  

This week, I've been listening again to a song from the Decemberists, written for this very day nine years ago, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.  In the song entitled "12/17/12," singer Colin Meloy reflected on his wife who was pregnant with their second son, while other parents were mourning the deaths of their children, murdered by a school shooter while the country as a whole seemed to shrug impotently over the tragedy.  And in that mix of hope and love for his own child and heartache for those grieving their children, Melloy sings in the last stanza, "Oh my God, what a world you have made here--what a terrible world, what a beautiful world--what a world you have made here." That line brings me up short every time I hear it.

That's the truth we have to reckon with, and the truth the message of Christmas has to address, as well: that this world in which we live is both terrible and beautiful. And yet this is the world into which God is born from Mary's belly.  The Christ for whom we wait didn't only come to the flowers and sunny Saturday mornings in June, but also into the dreary grayness of December.  The God who takes on our humanity at the manger enters into a world where empires oppress as well as where the lilies of the field are dressed more splendidly than Solomon.  And seeing the world truthfully that way is important.  It reminds us that God hasn't been fooled into loving creation without seeing the ugly parts.  Maybe that's part of why I secretly appreciate when we don't have a snow-covered "white Christmas"--because it's easy to love the world when it's all covered in a fresh blanket of uniformly pristine snow.  But God comes into a world with sloppy mud, jagged rocks, and dreary clouds, too--that, too, is the world God loves, and God doesn't flinch from loving it just because it doesn't look like the cover of a Christmas card or the scene in a song.

Setting aside a moment to take in the world around me, in all its mix of beauty and terror, of exhaust fumes and the smell of fresh pine, that helps me to consider just what it means that God has come into this world that is both beautiful and terrible.  So today's faith practice is just that simple--and just that difficult as well: go, spend a moment, or as much of your lunch break as you can muster, maybe, and be in creation, in all its ambiguity.  See the beauty of creation alongside the unpleasant things our mental cameras sometimes want to edit out.  See the lovely and be grateful. See what is heartbreaking and be brave enough to face it.  And know that this is the world to which Christ has come.  

And then, let that also direct your steps in the new day as well:  to be a follower of Christ means to go where he goes.  And since Jesus doesn't only keep himself to the pleasant and pristine parts of life, but into the dirty back-alleys, the garbage pits, and the gravesites as well, we are also called to meet--and to love--the people living in the midst of both.  We don't get to pretend the terrible things aren't there, since Jesus doesn't.  But neither are we allowed to give up on what is good and noble and true, either, since Jesus doesn't surrender to that cynical despair, either.

Step out into creation today, and see it for what it is... and then, let it move you both to praise of the God who loves it in all its messiness, and to be some of the hands and feet through which God's love restores it.

Lord God, what a world you have made and entered here in Christ--what a beautiful world, what a terrible world.  Let us see this world as you see it, love it as you love it, and be a part of your mission to restore it as well.