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This being
the Motor City, let's start with a pair of transportation
tidbits. Several years ago, I told you that since the gospel
makes nary a mention of camels, I was willing to speculate
that the three kings drove to Bethlehem in a Honda. For tradition
has it that "they were of one accord." But now I
am able to offer an eyewitness report that Santa Claus (or
his brother who dresses like him) drives an Audi ... a beige
Audi ... a beige Audi wagon ... complete with a cell phone.
For I followed Santa south on Southfield (from Lincoln to
13 Mile) at 1:15 on Friday afternoon. Full beard. Full suit.
Hat on dashboard. Phone in ear. Going over his list. Checking
it twice. So now you know. Mystery solved.
Would
that we could have easily solved the one that has consumed
our interest here for the last fortnight. Twelve days ago,
I found this rectangle of green coreboard on my desk. For
those of you who can't quite make it out, it has two hand-fashioned
cones ... green cones ... connected to each other by wire.
From the wire dangles a suspended ink cartridge. The lettering
reads: "On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave
to me." So what is it? A cartridge in a pair of trees,
of course.
On day
four we got four boxes of children's candy marketed under
the trade name "Nerds." Attached to each box were
several pieces of pipe cleaner which looked like spidery legs.
Giving us "four crawling Nerds," don't you see.
Sometime on Friday, we got ten Jesuses mounted on an arched
coat hanger ... as in "ten lords a-leaping." But
my favorite is the one that came last Sunday morning, wrapped
in a waterproof Ziplock bag. It was a block of ice in which
could be found embedded five playing cards from a poker deck.
Face cards. King cards. Get it? ... "five cold kings."
Every
day, a different piece of the puzzle. Every day, a different
part of the song. Every day, a different greeting in a different
location. My office. Janet's office. Front office. Church
kitchen. Men's room. Even the outside of my office windows,
from which hang eleven Pampers (as in eleven diapers diaping).
Did we get faster at solving the puzzles? You betcha. Did
we get any closer to identifying the sender? Not a prayer.
Until a couple of hours ago, when the mystery was solved.
It was the Hook family.
Everybody
loves a mystery. More to the point, everybody loves solving
a mystery. "How did you do that?" the child asks
the magician ... figuring if the magician would just move
slower, or let the child get closer, the child could demystify
the magic and be "let in" on the secret.
Most mysteries
are solvable with observation and information. If we could
just see a little more ... or read a little more ... we would
"get it." If you play the game Clue long enough,
and pay attention carefully enough, it will become obvious
that it had to be ... simply had to be ... Colonel Mustard,
in the drawing room, with the lead pipe.
And for
the mysteries that ordinary methodologies of investigation
can't solve, maturity comes to the rescue. Things you don't
"get" now, you may "get" later. How many
times were you told, as a child, that you were "too young
to understand something"?
When I
was a little boy, somebody told me about the pleasures of
kissing a girl. "Yuk," I said (the word "gross"
not having been invented yet). "Yuk, why would anyone
want to kiss a girl?" I really didn't know. And no one
could have told me in a way that would have made sense to
me. More information would not have helped. A lecture by the
older boys would not have helped. A book, supplied by my father,
would not have helped. I had to grow into the answer. Which
I did. Leading to "much gladness of heart" (as the
prophet Isaiah once said).
But there
are some mysteries that are not solvable with more information
or more time. In fact, the more we see ... the more we know
... the longer the "seeing and knowing" goes on
... the deeper the mystery grows. Science is like that. One
answer leads to 20 more questions. And 20 answers lead to
200 more questions.
The same
being true for human beings. If I know you only in passing,
it is easy to go home and tell my wife that I know all there
is to know about you. I can characterize, categorize and capsulize
you ... all after ten minutes. But if I spend ten hours ...
ten days ... or ten years with you, I may have to go home
and confess to Kris that I never really knew you at all. Because
every time the world turns, the light hits the prism of your
being and becomes refracted in wonderfully diverse and surprising
ways. Which I do not have to tell Kris, because it is from
Kris that I learned it first. That's because love is the ultimate
mystery ... followed closely by the personality of the beloved.
Ah, Krissy. So much to love. So much to learn.
God's
love is like that. As is tonight's story of God's love. You
know it. We've told it. There is not a piece of it which is
new. Or strange. Or changed. In fact, where details of the
story are concerned, there aren't many. And there are not
enough speeches to fill a one act play ... even a five minute,
one act play. So we take a few liberties and add a few embellishments.
We stick in animals that weren't there. We create characters
who weren't there. We write lines (sometimes, whole speeches)
for the characters who weren't there. Because without them,
the story seems too spartan ... too simple ... too severe.
Yet we
keep coming back to places like this, on nights like this,
to hear it and sing it ... over and over again. Because deep
within us, we can't abide any thought that it might not be
true ... or that God's gift might have every other name in
the world on it but ours. As Peter Gomes once said: "What
interests the populace is the mystery of the manger. But what
interests the philosophers is the legacy of the mystery."
Why does it last and grow? Why can't we let it go? Or why
can't it let us go? Even the skeptic finds it hard to resist
the magnetism of the manger on Christmas Eve. Or as George
Santayana once said: "I believe that there is no God
and that the Virgin Mary is his mother."
So what
is the message? Is it that love comes down ... that God breaks
in ... that light trumps the dark ... that holy things and
common things can meet somewhere out back and coexist? It's
all of that and more. It's that the world is an acceptable
place for deity to do business ... and that human beings are
acceptable creatures for deity to do business with. For if
Easter is about the next life, then Christmas is about this
one ... and that we shouldn't be in all that big a hurry to
get from one to the other.
For if
God can live here, so can we. Albeit differently than we have
done so far. Because we've got a baby to take care of now.
Whose name is Love. And it would be shame to drop it or walk
away from it ... having seen what it looks like ... and having
felt what it feels like.
Which
is why Christmas, which begins with a visitation (God's),
is ultimately about a transformation (ours). Peter Gomes returns
to ask: "Have you ever noticed that most secular stories
about Christmas are conversion stories?" Either somebody's
heart is changed, or somebody's outlook is changed. We love
reading Dickens' A Christmas Carol because, at the
end, Ebenezer Scrooge finds that he need not be as cold and
cruel as he was. And we love watching Frank Capra's It's
A Wonderful Life because, at the end, George Bailey finds
that his view of the world need not be as cold and cruel as
it was. Leading Scrooge to come home to the Cratchit's and
George Bailey to climb down from the bridge. And in a world
that resigns itself to the mantra "The way things are
is the way things are always going to be," we'll light
a candle in any place ... on any night ... to any suggestion
that the world (and we) could be different.
Earlier
this morning (along about 11:35), one of you came into my
office to tell me about your psychiatrist ... your highly-credentialed
and widely-acclaimed psychiatrist ... your highly-credentialed
and widely-acclaimed Jewish psychiatrist. And you told me
that in your most recent session, the subject of church had
come up ... this church ... our church. To which your Jewish
psychiatrist said:
Ah yes,
that church. I went to a funeral at that church recently.
And I couldn't get over it. It was an incredible experience.
The preaching. The music. The way everybody treated the
family ... treated each other ... treated the outsiders.
In fact, I came back and said to my administrative assistant:
"You know, if it wasn't for that Jesus thing, I'd join
that church in a minute."
I ask
you, my friends, could it be ... I mean, could it possibly
be ... that if it wasn't for "that Jesus thing,"
he might never have heard what he heard, saw what he saw,
or felt what he felt on one of the sadder Saturdays of his
(or anybody's) life?
*
* * * *
Christmas
Eve, 2000. My 60th, personally. My 36th, professionally. Colder
than most. Whiter than most. Busier than most. Yet softer
and sweeter than most ... even though Julie got here late
and Lauren got here early.
Julie
is my 26-year-old daughter who got stranded for an extra day
in Newark. But at the darkest hour (when what seemed like
her last, best hope as a "stand-by" had gone by),
Kris (my wife of 34-1/2 years) went on the Web and got her
out. And Mesaba, flying out of White Plains, got her home.
Whereupon we all went to see Lauren Elyse ... my nephew's
first ... taken a few weeks short of her due date by a C-section
on Friday (because of some conditions that were threatening
the well-being of her mother). For at 1:01 Friday afternoon,
Lauren Elyse became the first birth on the Ritter side in
26 years. Which I know because Julie ... my Julie ... was
the last. In between, far too many people have died. But we've
reversed the flow now. Or somebody has. Praise God.
Soon this
night will be spent ... you will be gone ... and I will be
home. It will be time to relax ... repair ... relish ... and
remember. Along with a little soup and bread ... or, more
to the point, a little bisque and baguette. But I suspect
that when I finally kill the lights, bank the fire and wend
my way to bed, it will occur to me that I have been loved
by two beside me ... .you around me ... and the Lord above
me.
Which
is a mystery I can't explain. But which is the mystery that
explains me.
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