In my imagination the scene always opens in the same way
A wingback chair
And a fireplace
Maybe I’ve watched “Holiday Inn”
Or “White Christmas”
Too many times.
Or is it A Christmas Carol,
as Ebeneezer Scrooge sits in his chair?
Perhaps is it Father Christmas.
Whoever he is he is wearing that same stocking hat
And smokes that same pipe.
He knows nothing of no-smoking laws.
And cardigans are never out of style.
The fire warms the room
as he begins the story.
That same story.
One.
More.
Time.
“And in that region there were shepherds living in the fields…”
No surprises.
Nothing new.
Shepherds, angels,
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus…
…the babe, the Son of Mary.
The animals are there, the ox and the ass have put aside their burdens.
No surprises.
Nothing new.
Just God.
The sameness is relentless.
It undermines my sense of novelty,
My insistence that Christmas is just for children…
“But that’s the point,” says the old man.
His eyes twinkle in the firelight.
“The true beauty of Christmas is not found in novelty,
or newness,
but in the consistency of the promise of God’s Peace.”
As much as I love the gifts
And the wrapping
And the surprises inside
As much as I know that
God’s birth in the midst
Of our world is also a gift
As much as all of this is True and
Joyful, and Hopeful, and Loving
It’s the Sacred Predictability that I have come
to depend upon the most.
Herod will lose his mind.
There is never room enough in the inn.
The angels will sing “Gloria!”
In the beginning of all things
Before all time
Was the Word,
Was the Story.
Was the Babe, the Son of Mary.
Word, Story, or Babe, they all say the same thing: “Peace.”
It has to be the same.
Don’t you see?
For Peace to work…
...for the angels’ Gloria to take hold
with each successive generation
The story cannot change.
The Story must re-sound.
Peace.
Good will.
The Peace of God is relentless
In its sameness
The same refrain
The same lyric
Peace to all the Earth and
Gloria, Gloria, Gloria!
Slowly but certainly
(I have to believe)
God’s Peace erodes the stone
Of our hearts
Relives our fears
And undoes the damage done
Victim no more
Brute no more
We have become like the angels.
Singing.
Proclaiming.
Bringing Peace.
Relentless as God.
Storytellers
with only one Story.
one Word
From the beginning to Bethlehem
To our own towns, families, and nations
An angel went to Galilee
And Mary said, “Yes.”
Joseph had a dream.
Angels sang when the Babe arrived.
Emmanuel. God is with us.
The animals are there;
the ox and the ass have put aside their burdens.
No surprises.
Nothing new.
Just God.
His eyes twinkle in the firelight.
The true beauty of Christmas is not found in novelty,
or newness,
but in the consistency of the promise of God’s Peace.
And so we,
We Storytellers
Tell it again, and again, and again,
“Peace on Earth and Good will to all.”
