December 2023
Dear Church Family,
We are entering into the Christmas season! We are well behind WalMart and Costco, but I think we do a better job of it so that’s just fine. The weeks leading up to Christmas we recognize as the season of Advent - a time of waiting, when we are intentionally considering what Jesus’ inbreaking meant for our world. There is a tradition which originated in Spain and is familiar to many in Latin American worshiping communities called Las Posadas (‘The Inns’). It is an interactive story telling immersion, where onlookers journey with Mary and Joseph on their way to try and find a place to stay for the night. Santa Fe celebrates this every year - visitors can watch as the couple knock on doors around the main square, and playful devils are to blame for the challenge of finding lodging. The story illuminates the difficulty the couple have finding somewhere to receive them, and pushes all observers to consider what it means for us to truly make room in our hearts and lives for the incoming disruption of Jesus. I have a kids book I read to my children every year exploring this tradition, and in it there is a line that sticks with me, ‘my heart will always be open to you so that the Holy Child will have a place to be born.’
Do we usually think of Christmas as disruptive? Do we make room for Jesus to be welcomed fresh in our hearts, or is he another ornament for the tree? The season holds its own sense of chaos, and it can be hard to set apart time to be thoughtful about what the gift of Christmas really is. Advertisements and decorations tell us it’s about giving and receiving, it is about light and joy and connection. Those aren’t wrong, but I think it is interesting how Christ’s inbreaking - God coming in the form of a human baby - is such a mixture of joy and grief. Of hope and sorrow. We celebrate his birth because of his death and resurrection. This expectant family, an unwed pregnant teen and her partner, struggle to find hospitality. After Jesus is born, the words Simeon holds for Mary speak of God’s promises fulfilled alongside the opposition he will face. The frailty of a baby hardly seems like it can carry the weight of the world, and yet that is exactly what Jesus did.
There is something comforting in the full complexity of this seemingly familiar story. We are invited to hold space for joy and sorrow, and to make room for Christ to enter into all of it and let him lead us in a way forward. He is the deep comfort of holding a newborn baby, amidst the disruption of knowing everything will be different now. I hope you can find some time to make space to consider the disruptive nature of God - who enters into the messy realities of life so that we each might find hope and renewal in Him. May the following words aid you in your contemplation - Kate Bowler has written a few books, and this Blessing comes from a recent favorite of mine. I hope her words find ways of kindling the Spirit’s work in you!
A Blessing: for Christmas Eve (but we will use it to frame the whole Advent Season)
By Kate Bowler (The Lives We Actually Have)
Jesus, this is the great inversion
I would not have known
had you not appeared and made yourself small.
Jesus, I would have been satisfied
with the God who moves mountains
and whose breath imparts life
but who never cried in his mother’s arms.
The world whispers to me about
what must be done.
About empires and war.
About efficiency and strength,
but there you are.
A refusal.
Your fragility, a witness.
Your dependence, an invitation.
Your cry, a reminder.
Our finitude is not an embarrassment,
because neither was yours.
Blessed are we when we see love,
at long last,
in every small and tender thing,
stealing into our world
to change us all.
Many blessings in this season of waiting,
Pastor Becca
