The Hint Half-Guessed: A Christmas meditation

In the womb of a mother I was molded into flesh. And my first sound was a cry like that of all. I was nursed in swaddling clothes. For there is for all humanity, even a king, one entrance into life (I).


The above quote sounds like words to a familiar story. Immediately a scene pops into our head. We could easily guess the person who is being described, right? The hints are all there. Mother. Birth. Swaddling clothes. King. A few words and our imagination see the bright star overhead. But, we had better be careful about jumping to conclusions. Sometimes, we hear what we want to hear.

It's like the Christmas story. We have heard the story repeated over and over so many times that we have trouble really hearing it. Hearing the story of the birth of the Christ child can be like having the answer to a riddle before it is told or knowing the punch line of a joke. And if you heard the plot of a mystery novel told over and over again, it would tend to lose its mystery. We are all too familiar with the Christmas story---census, Bethlehem, inn, manger, shepherds, star, magi, angels, baby, swaddling clothes.

We know where the story is headed and that it is really a king who lies in the hay. And we come to the same conclusions each time we hear the story. Just like we probably concluded that the opening quotation about a king in swaddling clothes was describing the baby Jesus, when in fact the words are from a book known as The Wisdom of Solomon written about 30 BCE and is speaking of king Solomon. Who would
have guessed?

In order to hear the Christmas story afresh, our preconceived notions need to be tossed out the window, if only for a moment; even if our conclusions are correct. We must approach the story as if with virgin ears. Only with a new hearing will the baby begin to stir once again.

Walk with me as we peek into the manger. Listen to the crunch of hay beneath your feet as you come to the opening of the stable carved out of a hill, a womb in the earth. Outside the artist moon outlines the hills and cypress trees with a silver pen. Your hand touches the rough rope tied to the wooden beams of the mouth of the cave as you turn to enter. There is a rustling of animals, skin to skin,as they notice you have intruded into their quiet sanctuary. The air inside is cool. It smells of hay and animals. You can see the foggy breath of the sheep, whose bell clinks as she turns to look at you. You take another slow step closer into the stall.

The shades of light are brushed with the golden glow from an oil lamp, like in a Rembrandt painting. The silhouette of a person lies in the hay near the flickering light. It is a young girl. She couldn't be more than fourteen years old. Her lips are dry and stick together. Her breathing comes in short gasps. She looks exhausted. In her arms is a small bundle wrapped in strips of cloth. Next to her is a man with a peppered beard bending over the mother and child and speaking in a hushed tone. He turns to you and smiles proudly. The mother pulls back the strips of cloth to reveal to you the face of. ... a baby, as earthy as the ground beneath your feet.

Who among us, looking into the fresh face of that baby, would have guessed that a king had been born? Who would have guessed that his squalling cry would one day proclaim words of hope to the hopeless? Could anyone ever have looked upon those tiny hands and guessed that they would touch the sick and make them whole? Given the hints, who would have guessed that this child born in the rags of poverty would someday be proclaimed the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords?

Caesar Augustus never would have guessed that the Savior of the world was born. For he was the one proclaimed "Savior of the whole human race." He was the ruler to be honored as a god. Why would Caesar be looking for good news in a Jewish baby, seeing that it was decreed of Augustus in 9 BCE that "the birthday of the god ( Augustus) has been for the whole world the beginning of the good news."

Emperor Augustus would never have guessed that this child in the manger was to become the Prince of Peace, when it was the Caesars who had brought in the Pax Romana, a peace imposed by the might of Rome? It would be ludicrous to think: that a savior, a king who brings good news and peace, would be born under the thumb of Rome. Caesar was too busy taxing his subjects to death, squeezing tribute from them like blood from a turnip. Tribute must be paid to the king. But, the real tribute will be rendered to another king by strange travelers from the East. Caesar never could have guessed that a poor Jewish child born under his oppressive reign would someday be a ruler mightier than all the Caesars.

How strange are the words spoken of this child: "He came unto his own, but his own received him not." Surely those who longed for the Coming One would have guessed that their hope lay in the hay. They had hints of the Messiah's coming inscribed in their papyrus scrolls. Their eyes squinted for signs of Christ's coming. This blessed hope kept them going as their bodies bent beneath the yoke of Roman oppression. But, no sage in his musings could have contemplated that such Wisdom would spring from a mother's womb. No prophet could have envisioned the reign of peace that was nestled in this child's bosom. No scribe could have deciphered that this baby would become a human scroll upon which God would write the Living Word. No Pharisee could have read in the eyes of this frail one and seen that he would speak to the deadness of the law and cause it to have new life. No zealot could have known that revolutionary words would come forth like swords from the tiny lips of the babe. No Essene, tucked away in their antiseptic, desert community, could have believed that this child would turn dining with sinners into an art. Who would have guessed from the hints given?

The most obvious hints came to some peasant shepherds and not to the power brokers of the day. They got the "inside line" on the babe. The hint was a shout from heaven. An angel brought the hint with these words:

I bring you good news of great joy,
which shall be to all people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David
a Savior, which is the Messiah, the Lord (Luke 2: 1 0-11).

And if that wasn't enough to give it away, a whole platoon of angels came to announce, not the Pax Romana of Caesar, but to proclaim the peace this child would bring as they sang:

Glory to God in the highest.
Peace on earth
to those whom God favors (Luke 2: 14)

This blatant blast from heaven's horn sounds like a hint that no one could miss. But, let's remember that faith shouts what grace has whispered. Remember the voice at Jesus' baptism? Some thought it was thunder. The light that struck Paul on the road to Damascus and the voice from heaven went unheard and unseen by those accompanying him. Angels are messengers who shout what God has whispered. They come to us like excited children telling us the end of the story. They trumpet what is only a hint.

Be honest. Who would have guessed that this was the Christ lying in the hay with only an empty sky overhead, a sweaty young girl, and a babe in a barnyard? We hear the real hint, a sign, that is given to the shepherds. And the hint is as bare as the baby.

You shall find a baby
wrapped in swaddling clothes
lying in a.manger (Luke 2: 12).

There you are standing in the hay squinting at the newborn, looking as if with a third eye. You look for something that might mark this baby as different from any other ordinary infant; maybe a faint golden halo. The sky with pinholes for light does not tip you off, even though one star seems brighter than the others. This king has no royal bassinet, no kingly robe, no jeweled crown. You listen for the flutter of angels, but there is no sound of flapping in the air. Only the buzzing of flies around fresh cow dung. No flash from the heavens. No cracking apart of the sky. All that you have is the sign, a heavenly hint; a baby wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a feeding trough. With those hints, could you have guessed that the glory of God was resident in that child? With only a whisper of grace and the sweet breath of God fogging the air?

Finding God hidden in the hints of the human is the task of the seeker of the Sacred. For there is nowhere else we will find God, except in the utterly human, the profoundly earthbound. The pulse of God beats beneath the skin of life. It is there that we must peek for the hints and guesses of the Sacred. Poet T.S. Eliot has movingly spoken of this truth in lines from his poem Four Quartets:

To apprehend the point of the intersection of the timeless with time
something given and taken, in a lifetime death in love,
ardor and selflessness and self surrender
a shaft of sunlight
the wild thyme unseen or the winter lightning
or the waterfall or music heard so deeply
These are only hints and guesses
hints followed by guesses; and the rest is
prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action
The hint half-guessed, the gift half-understood
is Incarnation
Here the impossible union (2)

The Word became flesh ... and dwelt among us. Incarnation. Heaven wedded to earth in an impossible union. That is the mysterious plot of the incarnation. God in Christ. Christ in the world. The Holy in the mundane. The extraordinary in the ordinary. And we have been guessing ever since. For the hard lines between the sacred and the secular have been forever blurred. For the Mysterious God of the ages has come to us in this vulnerable Jewish baby. The divine has enfolded the human in an eternal embrace. That is why the hints of God's presence among us are stuffed in life, like fortunes in cookies, like leaven in bread. And the hints of God are all wrapped up tight in that child in the manger. Hints and guesses.

The hints of Mystery are all around us wrapped up tight in the swaddling cloths of the human. Even while the Caesars of this world oppress and make war, whispers of God's peace can still be heard by messengers with clipped wings. Even with the TV flooding our living rooms with the sewage of gossip, scandals, violence, and sexual titillation, the good news of hope and forgiveness still trickles from human lips. The hints are there in the pulpits and in the streets, the stained glass and the graffiti on the wall, the pipe organs and the blaring guitars. God is there in the old man rocking alone in the rest home, the laughing child, the black mother nursing her baby. God is hope in the presence of hopelessness, light in the pit of night, the glue that holds us together when all seems to have fallen apart. God is there hidden beneath the skin of it all. As hints and guesses. Just as God was hidden beneath the skin of that baby born in the stable.

Jesus is born. The hint half-guessed. The gift half-understood in Incarnation. And life will never be the same. God will never be the same. God has dwelt among us. God still dwells among us. In the laughter and tears, the hope and despair, the triumphs and struggles. There are hints of God's presence, if we but listen; to those solitary moments, when the silence screams; to the whispers of grace in the warmth of human companionship. The hints are there, human and vulnerable. As human and vulnerable as the baby in the manger. God is in the human. And who of us will dare to guess. No. More than that. Who of us will dare to believe?

_______________________________

(1) The Wisdom of Solomon 7: 1-6
(2) T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays, 1909-1950. (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955 ), 136.

The Virgin, the Baby, and the Christmas Sex Scandals: My last controversial Christmas sermon before leaving pastoral ministry 7 years ago

Believe it or not, Christmas in early America was a scandalous holiday. It was not a celebration for families and children, particularly since it had strong sexual overtones. Christmas as it was practiced in the 17th century so offended the Puritans that the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed its observance in 1659. The fine for observing Christmas in Massachusetts was 5 shillings. Most people did not celebrate Christmas for the first two centuries in New England.

Why was Christmas such a scandal? In his Pulitzer Prize nominated study Stephen Nissenbaum reveals how Christmas was once a peasant celebration marked by excess drinking, gluttony, carousing, cross dressing, and lewd sexual acts. In 1725 the Reverend Henry Bourne called the way most people commonly behaved during the Christmas season “a Scandal to Religion, and an encouraging of Wickedness.” Peasants practiced a kind of trick-or-treat. While “wassailing” they would forcibly enter the homes of the wealthy and demand to be treated to food, drink and money, or else. “Mumming” was a common practice at Christmas with men and women going door to door dressed in one another’s clothes. Singing Christmas carols was considered a “disgrace,” since it was generally performed in the midst of rioting, fornication and wantonness. No wonder Christmas was such a scandal!

By comparison to these early Christmas celebrations, our Christmases are pretty tame. Christmas has been domesticated into a sentimental season for children and for celebrating consumer capitalism. The transformation of the carnival of Christmas in early America was accomplished by some New York aristocratic gentlemen known as the Knickerbockers. The group included such men as Clement Moore, author of The Night Before Christmas, and Washington Irving, who popularized Santa Claus. These wealthy, elite men were politically conservative, fearful of the working class and opposed to democracy. In their hands the once wild and scandalous Christmas celebration was creatively domesticated.

Even as a religious holiday Christmas has become pretty tame. There is little hint of scandal in present day Christmas celebrations, if you exclude all the drunken Santas. Like sugar plums, Christmas card images of Christmas dance in our heads----humble Mary, wise Joseph, meek-and-mild Jesus in a manger, star with kite tail, three wise men bearing gifts to the baby in the manger , which is biblically inaccurate, and the snow falling gently on the ground. Just a simple scene of dad, mom and the newborn stranded away from home on the holidays. This Christmas scene would warm the heart of most red-blooded, middle-class, suburban American families. The whole story of Jesus’ birth has become a Hallmark snapshot of sweetness, nostalgia and wholesomeness. Christmas is pictured as American as apple pie and presents under the tree on Christmas morn. We can thank God that we don’t have to view scenes of lewdness on our streets or men dressed like Ru Paul showing up at our front door on Christmas day! Who would be so shameful as to include sexual scandals in the Christmas story?

Well, how about Matthew, the writer of the first Christmas story? In his telling the birth of Jesus was surrounded with scandal and strong sexual overtones. It all begins with the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew. Matthew traces the royal lineage of Jesus the Messiah all the way back to King David and beyond. Normally women were left out of the family records. Strangely enough, Matthew includes five women in Jesus’ genealogy----Tamar, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Not only is it unusual that these women are included as branches in the family tree of Jesus, but they all share in common the taint of some sort of sexual irregularity in their stories. There is scandal woven like a string of popcorn through this Christmas family tree!

Just look at the family tree of Jesus. On one limb we have Tamar. Quite an ornament. Her story sounds like some headline in a supermarket tabloid. But, there it is, right there in the pages of the Bible. Don’t let your kids read this stuff! It could corrupt their innocent minds. The story begins with Judah, who went out and got his youngin’, Er, a wife. Before he could have any children God struck poor ol’ Er dead as a door nail, ‘cause he was a bad dude. So, Judah told his other son, Onan, to go and sleep with Tamar, which was his brotherly duty according to the law. As weird as it may sound, Onan has sex with Tamar, his brother’s widow. But, he performed coitus interruptus. Let’s call it, in banking terms, an early withdrawal.

Onan knew that the child he would help create would not be considered his. That is why he did not totally fulfill his brotherly duty. Well, God bumped off Onan for not getting Tamar P.G. Then, Judah refused to offer his third son, Shelah, to Tamar, ‘cause he was only knee high to a grasshopper. Besides, Judah was afraid his last son might get iced by God. Judah said to Tamar, “Why don’t you go live with your dad awhile. Wait ‘til my son gets rid of his peach fuzz. Then, you two can tie the knot and have a kid.” Two dead sons at the hands of one God was enough to leave a bad taste in Judah’s mouth and make him just a little suspicious of Tamar.

As the story goes, Judah’s wife up and kicks the bucket. After the funeral and a lot of Kleenex, Judah heads off to a sheep shearers convention. Tamar hears about his away-from-home trip, puts on a sexy veil and a lot of red lipstick and heads off in the same direction as that there convention. She’s ready to pull the wool over some shepherd’s eyes. Standing alongside the road leading to the convention Tamar hides her sheepish grin beneath her veil. Tamar spots Shelah, who by now has growed hisself a full man-beard. Tamar looks at Shelah and remembers her empty crib.

Then, along comes big daddy Judah. He’s checkin’ out Tamar, thinkin’ she’s a lady of the evening, a “prostitory.” Judah propositions Tamar: Voulez vous couche avec moi, which translate loosely as “bleep, bleep, bleep.” They go get a cheap hotel room. He wants to pay with a sheep. She thinks that’s a ba-a-a-a-a-d idea. Tamar asks for his big man ring, the one with Judah engraved on it. Look out, man! To make a long and even more sordid story short, young Tamar ends up having a bun in the oven by her creepy old father-in-law. She also becomes one of the beloved ancestors of Jesus hanging around on his Christmas family tree.

Next, we have hanging on the tree---Rahab. She was a foreigner, a prostitute and a traitor to her people. Three strikes, you’re out. Or so you would think. As the story goes, Joshua sent out some spies to check out the land of Canaan. These spies end up checking out Rahab. I imagine her in a tight miniskirt, stiletto heels, trying to eek out a living by walking the mean streets of Jericho. Immediately upon entering the land of Canaan the Israelite spies spend the night at her home. Hmmmmm. Now, how in the heck did these upstanding young men know where a prostitute lived? What, in God’s name, were Joshua’s spies doing at a Canaanite brothel? I thought they came to check out the lay of the land. And I’m not referring to Rahab! Maybe Rahab was a counter intelligence agent and they were gathering strategic military information. Yeah, that’s the ticket! She hid the spies from the king of Jericho and her household was spared when the city was finally conquered. There she is, Rahab, in all her glory. A Canaanite prostitute. As proud as punch to be there on Jesus’ family tree.

On another branch of the tree is Ruth, another foreigner. She is a Moabite. Moabites were descendants of Lot’s incestuous relationship with his daughter. The scandal just gets thicker. Ruth is also a widow. Her husband and sons all died leaving Ruth with no social security. All she had left was her mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth hooked her destiny onto the tailgate of Naomi and they headed off for the land of Judah. Remember him…and Tamar?

After getting their suitcases unpacked and pots and pans in the kitchen, they went to work in the fields of a rich dude by the name of Boaz, kinfolk of Naomi. Ruth caught the wandering eye of Boaz. I guess he liked the way she gleaned. He invited her over for lunch. Bread and wine. Later Naomi tried to play the matchmaker. She told Ruth to go get spruced up, put on a nice dress, fix your hair, and go down to Boaz’ bread factory. Naomi says to Ruth, “After Boaz finishes eating and drinking, watch where he goes to bed. Then go uncover his (snicker, snicker) “lower parts,” and lay with him. He’ll know what to do.” Unmarried and sleeping together. Scandalous! Shame on the family of David, husband of Bathsheba. I’m getting ahead of myself.

From a roll in the grain, Ruth has a bun in the oven. That bun would grow up to be king David’s grandpa. A Moabite widow not only gets a book written about her, she has her name proudly hung up there on the Messiah’s family tree.

Then, there’s the wife of Uriah. One starry night king David takes a stroll along the palace rooftop at just the right time to see a lovely young woman, Bathsheba, taking a bubble bath. He gets all hot and bothered. This married man, this king of God’s people, has his servants go fetch her. As if she would refuse to come. She is a pawn in king David’s game of lust and power. David commits adultery with her and murders her husband. Bathsheba’s unwitting husband is a foot soldier in David’s army. David tries to get Uriah sauced so he will have sex with his wife and cover up David’s dirty deed. Uriah is too loyal a man to leave his post to be with his wife, so David has him put on the front lines in the heat of battle. Uriah finally comes home….in a body bag. David now has this poor man’s wife dangling on his arm. Bathsheba is a victim of sexual lust and political power. She’s an angel with a crooked halo on the Christmas family tree of Jesus, the Messiah.

Finally, we come to Mary, the mother of Jesus, the shining star at the top of the tree. I should say “virgin” mother of Jesus. Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t recollect meeting any mothers who were virgins. And you can bet I would bust a gut if some teenage mother with a baby perched on her cocked hip said to me, “You got it right, Jack. I’m still a virgin. And guess who the pappy is?” Virgin and mother? Yeah, right! And you’ve been smokin’ what?

Well, check this out. This is how the birth of the Messiah happened. Mary, a teenager, is engaged to this old geezer Joseph. He finds out (maybe through one of those home pregnancy tests) that Mary is “with child.” And old Joe know it ain’t his. Divorce court would only cause this scandal to hit the headlines. Can’t you just see it, right there next to the headlines of Elvis sightings and the three-headed alien? It reads: Virgin teenage mother gives birth to the savior of the world.
Joe had a good heart and wouldn’t put Mary through that kind of public scandal. On one of those tossin’-and-turnin’ nights an angel sneaks into a weird dream of Joseph and says, “Go tie the knot with Mary, ‘cause that baby’s real daddy is the Holy Ghost!” Ooooookay. Sounds like a Clinton spin doctor at work. Later, some rumors spread around the gossip mill that the father was really a Roman soldier by the name of Pandira.

Anyway, as the story grows, Joe and Mary head off for the chapel. A wedding snapshot might show old Joe at the altar dressed in a tux with graying temples with his blushing bride, a round yon virgin, at his side dressed in a white wedding gown and the unseen father, the Holy Ghost as best man. It all seems to fit the family tree. The Messiah, born of a virgin mother, comes from a long line of sexual scandals and irregularities. And believe it or not, this is the child who will be called “Immanuel, God with us.” Lord, have mercy.

Amid all those scandalous incidents, sexual innuendos, and social embarrassments, Jesus is born. Immanuel, God with us. And isn’t that just the way Jesus would enter the world, right smack in the middle of the messy human predicament. Not like some scene on a Hallmark card with pristine snow, proud papa, haloed mother, and neon-glowing baby, but in a barnyard of bleating sheep, steaming cow dung , sweaty teenage mom, and a family tree with bent branches. It all fits.

That child in the manger would grow up to carry on his offbeat family heritage. Jesus stepped right into the muck and mess of human life, not fiting in, breaking custom and tradition, for the sake of sharing the love and grace of God with all people regardless of their gender, sexual history or orientation, social class, or failed moral lives.

He welcomed those who didn’t fit into the social and religious boxes of his day. Jesus was known to talk publicly with women about God and truth. Scandalous! He even let one woman intimately bathe his feet with her tears and hair. Blush, blush. He wined and dined with tax-collectors, prostitutes, and sinners. Shocking! Hesus preferred to be with the poor, sick, lepers, lame and blind, than to hob nob with the religious elite at the temple. In the end, this child from a broken family tree would die a scandalous death on the cross.

From the scandal of the crib to the scandal of the cross this child, this messiah, revealed the presence of God with us, Immanuel. Into the brokenness, the scandal, the sexual irregularities, the untidiness of human life, God is with us.

Jesus, the Messiah, is born under a odd Christmas family tree. The needles are fallen off in places, like a dog with mange. Some branches are crooked, while other branches we would like to hide. The Messiah is born amid scandal, irregularities and the disorder that is humanity. Isn’t that the good news of Christ’s birth? God is with us in the muck and mess of it all. God dares to enter this weak, fabulous, frail, longing, lovely, hungry, abused, pierced flesh of humanity in a child born in a manger.

Now, we all have our scandals and irregularities in our own family trees. Neither our own families or our own personal lives are Hallmark cards. There’s the alcoholic uncle who embarrasses everyone at the Christmas get togethers. A grandma whose lately been saying some weird stuff that don’t make a whole lot of sense. The teenage niece who had the child out of wedlock and parades it around like a trophy. That adult cousin who acts like a 9 year old. The daughter who came out of the closet and her parents feel like hiding in it. They are all part of our family tree.

And still, we love them. Sometimes because they are family. Sometimes we love those who don’t quite fit the mold, or have messed up their lives, or have been messed up by life, not because they are family. We love them because we have been touched by the grace of God, a God who is with us and who loves us like a parent, even though we may not have fit the mold. A God who is with us and loves is irregardless of our own hidden scandals. A God who is with us and loves us with our own peculiarities and warped ways. This God, who is with us and loves us, has come in our own skin, into our own cockeyed history. That is surely the good news of Christmas.

God’s love and redemptive plan throughout the long stretch of history will not be thwarted by the scandal, the disarray and disorder of the human condition. Jesus, the Messiah, is born unto us. All of us. No matter who we are, what we have done, no matter how far we have fallen short of what we should be, or from what others think we should be.

God is with us and loves us, in all our humble and humiliating humanity. For God has chosen to come to us all wrapped up in that baby born in a manger bed. And God will continue to be with us in the vulnerability of human life….there….amid the sheep and the smell…in a makeshift crib….in a makeshift world….Jesus is born. Immanuel. God with us.

Four Alternative Books for Christmas

If Christmas has become too crassly commercial or sappily sentimental for you, I have several books to recommend that will sober up your Christmas spirit the egg nog of a churchified and commercialized Christmas.

The first book is entitled The First Christmas by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan. Borg and Crossan are premier New Testament scholars. They have also collaborated on a book about the end of Jesus' life----The Last Week. Their forte is examining the socio-political context of the birth narratives of Jesus in Matthew and Luke and painstakingly placing the texts in their context. The result is a clear-eyed presentation of the Christmas stories which point us to a new world of justice and peace. This is a more popular read.

The second book, The Liberation of Christmas, is one of my favorite Christmas books written by one of my favorite biblical scholars, Richard A. Horsley. Like Borg and Crossan, Horsley places the infancy narratives in their socio-political context, but with much greater historical detail. The reader will soon see how these texts present Jesus as an alternative to the Roman Caesar, who was depicted as the "savior of the world." The ruthlessness of King Herod is heightened by historical background. We learn more about the peasant society, women's roles, popular resistance to Rome, Mary's song of liberation and social transformation, and modern analogies to these narratives in their socio-political contexts. This is a more scholarly presentation, but worth the effort.

Another book, edited by Richard Horsley and James Tracy, is Christmas Unwrapped: Consumerism, Christ, and Culture. The essays included in this book cover the history of Christmas in the U.S., the culture of Christmas, social, historical, and political contexts of the biblical birth narratives, and theoretical and theological relections on Christmas. This easy read book will get you to re-examine the cosumerist wrappings of this holiday of excess.

The last book I would recommend about Christmas was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The book is The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nussbaum. This study is an amazingly detailed historical analysis of the emergence, or should I say "invention," of Christmas. He tells the story of Christmas once celebrated as a kind of scandalous, bawdy type of Mardi Gras to its domestication and commercialization by a group of New England businessmen. It's a tale filled with intriguing history and origins of cultural icons and practices like Santa Claus and wassailing across racial lines. You will never look at Christmas the same way again.

So, if your egg nog notions of Christmas have become sickeningly sweet and you can't stand listening to Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" another time, put on your pajamas, light a fire, get one of these books to read, and get your hair singed (from the books, not the fire).

The Word Became Flesh: A Christmas Poem

Jesus Christ,
where do we begin?
In the beginning,
which wasn’t a beginning.
At a time
when there was no time.
Long before the morning stars sang together.
Before God’s body
warmed the cool air of stellar space.
Before the world was hung
on invisible string
and spun like a top on its axis.
Before the seas roared in angry voice,
and the trees laughed in the wind.
Before the mountains proudly lifted their heads,
and the deserts cried out in thirst.
Long before an Unseen Hand
scooped up a batch of clay
from a muddy stream
and molded a living sculpture
that caught the breath of angels.
Before pain was etched on the brow
of a solitary face,
or a tear dropped crystalline
from a single eye.
Before the first cry was heard to burst forth
from between a mother’s legs,
or a note was plucked
upon the string of an angel’s lyre.
When the world was but an egg
incubating in the mind of God.
In the beginning.
When all there was
was silence….
and the Word.


The Word.
In the beginning
without beginning.
Eternity spinning in upon itself
and out again.
The Word was as timeless
as God,
as a clock with no hands or face.
As endless as Life.
Without lips to loose labials
or tongue to grunt gutturals.
Without teeth to sing sibilants,
or mouth to speak it into being.
The Word was.
Logos,
Theos,
Reason,
Thought,
Intelligence,
Wisdom.
Ready to communicate
Being.
Ready to speak
the first stammering,
s…s…stuttering syllables.
The Word hung on Sacred lips,
puckered
for the moment it would speak itself
into words that form sentences of reality.
Then, the silence will be broken.
The Word will speak universes, galaxies,
a tiny rotating blue orb,
and finally….
a word of skin and speech
not unlike itself….
a babbling being.


Imagine
the Word as
Woman.
Sophia.
Divine Wisdom.
She waits to woo and win the world,
even before She walks
into the room of time.
One with God,
like two peas in a pod,
twins who wear the same clothes
and think the same thoughts.
Sophia.
Over,
under,
alongside,
around,
through,
behind,
between,
with,
within,
alike,
distinct from,
yet, fully God.
Sophia.
Very God of very God.
One with the Word.
And yet, other.
As other as the babe nestled in Mary’s womb
waiting on the edge of the world
to be born.
In a word,
to be heard.


Without throat, teeth, or tongue,
the Word spoke….
And silence shattered
into a billion stars,
like broken glass
from an opera singer’s high note.


A world was expelled
by a cough from the lungs of God,
spoken into being.
Tinier than a mustard seed
caught in God’s teeth,
it was flung into space
by one able to move mountains
with the blink of an eye,
fill seas with her tears,
create canyons with her footprints,
who says “Be!”
and it is.
After speaking a six-day sentence,
the tongue of the Word rested,
then tasted what She had made
with one luscious lick.
The Word said,
“It tastes mighty good!”
And the Word became
silent….


One day in time,
in eternity
spinning in upon itself
and out again,
Adam’s hand
snapped the string that held the world.
The wobbling world
fell from Eden’s perch
with a CRASHHHH!!
and cracked like a fragile vase
from a Potter’s wheel.
In pain and anguish
the Potter spewed forth colored words
over the broken, gray world.
The words landed
on the tongues of poets and prophets,
who cried out
in the desert
of punctured promises,
wilderness wanderings,
corrupted kings,
tainted temples.
God’s tongue
tasted the nation of her choosing.
It had gone sour.
The Word kept crying out
word upon word upon word.
Holiness,
righteousness,
justice.
The stammering, stuttering Word
stuck on the same sounds,
a broken record,
playing over and over
for a broken world
lying on the dying floor.


From deep within the bosom of God
the Word prepared to speak
a word unlike any word
that ever fell on human ear
or rolled off prophet’s tongue.
The Word rumbled around
in the belly of God
awaiting
a mouth to speak it,
a tongue to articulate it,
a body to dance it,
a womb to birth it.
Then, the Word found
an open door into the world,
the only way to enter
the blood and bone sanctuary.


The Word became flesh.
Not like the putting on of clothing
to walk into the cold of winter.
Nor like an ancient actor wearing a mask
that displays personae and hides identity.
The Word became flesh,
vulnerable and vexed,
weak and wearied,
finite and fragile,
flesh.


Just to speak the word
grates across the tongue.
Flesssshhhh.
Paraded and pink
on long legs looking for lonely lovers,
pleasure for pay.
Flesssshhhh.
Tan and taut
as leather stretched over a cage of bones
lying on the streets of Calcutta.
Flessshhh.
Bruised and battered
by angry hands
in a home bittersweet home
where Sophia cries.
Flessshhh.
Pale and pocked
By a four-letter disease
that numbers your days.
Flesssshhhh.
Wrinkled and wormed
lying in a satin-lined box
dust to dust.


The Word became flesssshhh.
Tormented and tempted,
tried and tested,
troubled
and tight enough
to be pierced
and hung out to dry
on two crossed sticks.

The Word
packed up its heavenly tent
and moved to a new home
sweet home
in the belly, of all things
…. a virgin.
From flesh came flesh.
In a barnyard of beasts.
Pushed out onto the hard earth
like raw meat
hanging in the window of a butcher shop.
The screaming wonder
wrapped in strips of cloth,
a mummy for the tomb.
The Word entered the world
of babbling beings
unable to speak…a word.
While angels bent over the earth
silent as a whisper.

Wrapped up tight
in the humanity of that child,
a future of unborn days,
when that fine hair will glisten
with water from the Jordan river,
when those tiny hands will scoop up mud
and heal hollow eyes,
when those lips will drip words of honey
on the tastebuds of hungry ears,
when those two round eyes,
as big as worlds,
will look upon the multitudes
hungry for more than bread,
thirsty for more than wine,
longing for true communion.
The day will come when those small ears
will hear the whispers of heaven
and clothe them in words.
The Word pitched a tent among us,
stretched out the cords of a sacred temple,
nailed them down,
and made our home his home,
our sod his sod,
our God his God.
Even death,
the end of speech,
could not silence him.
The Word still speaks.


The Word that was
and is
and is to come,
is with us.
When we toss and turn
in the sheets of pain,
sit in solitude,
hold the crumbs of our future
in our trembling hands,
or when life bursts through our door
with party horns blaring
and rainbow streamers flying
curly-cue in the air,
or when sitting
on the edge of the world
watching the dying sun
paint the sky with invisible brush
colors that pale the palette of Picasso.
The Word is with us,
when little ones make their singing debut
in the maternity ward,
or when a wrinkled hand drops limp
at the side of a rocking chair
in a rest home,
sweet rest, home.
The Word still speaks
in words wrapped in the swaddling clothes
of the human .


The Word became flesh.
With human face.
Have you seen the Word?
Cardboard-sign-carrier,
broken smile,
broken spirit,
begging near the freeway off ramp.
Shopping-cart-pusher,
looking for cans in the park,
a sleeping place in the dark.
The Word with a face
seen between empty spaces
of iron bars
or at empty places
like local bars.
To miss the face,
the other,
the Word,
among the least of these,
is to stop the ears
to the sound of sacred speech,
and to end up as guilty as a goat
on judgment day.


O, Wondrous Word,
Let us see your face.
As black as night
in a Savannah swamp,
as pale as the moon
on Chesapeake Bay,
as red as mud
on an Oklahoma road,
as brown as earth beneath
Mexican sandals.
O, wonderful Word,
Will we listen for your voice
only in soaring song and silent sanctuary,
in petitioning prayer and preacher’s proclamation,
in bound Bible and believer’s bosom?
Or will we tune our ears
to listen for the Word
in the lost and lonely places,
the forgotten and forsaken places,
the marginal and manger places
of this turning orb?


The Word still speaks
from as far away as forever
or as near as a neighbor.
The Word still speaks
louder than dividing walls that fall.
Quiet as a flower budding
on April’s first birthday.
The Word still speaks
in eternity
spinning in upon itself
and out again
and in the still, small voice
of this moment….
The Word
is with us.
And we behold the glory,
full of grace and truth.
Amen.