On Not Cutting to the Chase--December 21, 2022

On Not Cutting to the Chase--December 21, 2022

"[The angel said to Joseph in a dream:] 'Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.' All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,' which means, 'God is with us'." [Matthew 1:20b-23]

Maybe it's really God who is the Patient One in all of this, even moreso than us.  And perhaps that is worth spending a moment to think about.

In these weeks before Christmas, we church folk often talk about our own patience--how we deliberately take these weeks called Advent to slow the pace down and wait for Christ's coming.  In many churches we hold off on singing "Christmas" songs until Christmas Eve itself. We wait to put baby Jesus in the creche set until the proper time.  We listen to cranky old John the Baptizer scolding us for our sins rather than only talking about cute baby Jesus and his animal friends around the manger.  And all the while we're telling our children and grandchildren to wait, wait, wait for all they are looking forward to with anticipation, from cookies to school vacation to visits with family to presents under the tree.  We can really work ourselves up patting ourselves on the back for being so good at being patient [sort of] for this season.

But what about God?

Seriously.  Even though God's experience of time is surely different from ours, the same God who has known and set into motion the great arc of redemption that culminates in Jesus has had to endure all of our complaining throughout the centuries that God wasn't moving fast enough.  God has been willing to let things unfold in their own time, in their own course, over generations and centuries, all leading up to an engaged couple from the backwater of the empire from a town so small they didn't bother to put it on ancient maps.  God has been willing to be patient to let things come to fruition--all the while, bearing plenty of accusations from religious people lamenting that God didn't seem to be acting in the ways they wanted, or at the pace they wished for.

And yet, God sticks with this deliberate, patience pace.  Somehow the waiting--the simmering, even--is important.  I don't know that we give much thought to that.  We church folks have a way of wanting to rush right to the adult Jesus, preaching, teaching, healing, and saving.  We are quick to move right from "he was born" to "he died on the cross for our sins," as though we could skip the rest of the lifetime between those moments.  Even the old Apostles' Creed itself moves from "born of the virgin Mary" to "he suffered under Pontius Pilate" in the same breath.  But God didn't.  God chose the pace of an actual human lifetime--which meant that God was willing, not only to bear the humbling humanity of being an infant in diapers or bleeding out in shame on a Roman cross, but everything along the way from being potty trained to learning to eat solid foods, to going to school, to making friends, to even grieving over them when they died.  God didn't just skip from the creche to the cross with the snap of a divine finger--God chose the same speed of life as we live it... which, to be honest, sometimes feels like it is crawling by through ordinary days and tedious routines.  All of that is what God chose to go through in Jesus.  Somehow all of that is important to the Incarnation.

All of this is to say that whatever else it means to say that Jesus "saves us from our sins" is more than just six hours of cross-born pain on Good Friday--it is Jesus' whole life that redeems our lives.  It is a whole span of years that God spends entwined with our humanity, not just a single night in Bethlehem while the angels sing in the background.  It was ordinary Wednesdays... and overcast Thursdays... and weeks that blurred into months that blurred into years.  God has shared all of our human life and experience, and apparently all of that is important.  After all, you have to imagine that if God had wanted to, God could have just "beamed down," a la Star Trek, onto the scene as a fully adult Jesus and just skipped right to the story of Holy Week, if all God needed was a cross and Easter morning.  But God doesn't choose that, which say something about the meaning of even the days that seem too plain to have any meaning to them from our vantage point.

And that also means God chooses the way of patience rather than following our impulse to cut to the chase.  God is willing to steep in our humanity rather than be a flash in the pan kind of presence.  When we think and talk about Jesus coming to be our "Savior," we would do well to remember it's not merely a day or a moment that makes it all happen, like a transaction or a magic spell.  Jesus' death flows from the same impulse of love that animates his whole life.  Jesus' cross is of one piece with his whole human life--and what he saves is the whole of our lives, not merely the "what happens to me after I die" part.

Today, then, that means that there is no part of our lives that God does not value and cherish.  There is no moment in our lives that makes God yawn, or that God would choose to fast-forward through.  There is no part of this day that is unimportant, even if we cannot see the significance of individual actions and choices.  All of it is precious, and all of it counts.  In these days before Christmas it is easy to feel like the 25th is the day that "really" counts, while everything else is just a blur of busyness to get to the finish line.  But I think God's own choice to come among us in Jesus pushes against that.  There's no single day we've got to get magically perfect.  And we aren't supposed to rush through this day or the next day or the next to get to Christmas as quickly as possible.  Today brings chances to embody Christ for others around us--let's allow those to happen without rushing through them to get to Silent Night and stockings.  Today brings its own gifts of grace; we don't need to skip ahead to the ones under a tree.  All of this is to say--let each day take its own time and be its own chance to be present to God.  Taking that seriously will probably slow our days down some--we will see purpose and possibility in every encounter, ever conversation, every choice.  And maybe we need to be slowed down like that--after all, God seems to think it is worthwhile to take things at a pace that requires patience.  Perhaps by slowing down, even today, we will find ourselves more intentionally in good company as we walk.

Lord God, slow us down to walk with you through even the days we find ordinary or insignificant.