Christmas is past. For most, that means the holiday season will begin to wind down. Yes, one more less than routine week remains between Christmas and New Year’s Day, but the gift returns and exchanges are already planned, the decor will soon come down to be stored for another year, and life will return to “winter normal.”
The Sunday after Christmas is a sort of “let down”. The pews are emptier, the spirit less buoyant, the Nativity all but forgotten. What should one say on the Sunday after Christmas? What can be said after all of the happy experiences and the excitement of Christmas?
Listen carefully. What I want to say is in the form a question, and then more questions. “What if there remains a mystery we cannot explain?” The Christmas story we know, but what if we don’t understand? What if familiarity has blinded our eyes? What is this process of a divine Word becoming flesh, a divine Being emptying himself to become human? What kind of God penetrates the human experience once for all with his own presence, fully participates in what it means to be human (including death), and blasts open the God-human, Creator-created barrier to restore full fellowship? What kind of transformed life is made possible when those trapped in human experience, temptation, and disgust are allowed to become participants in the divine nature?
What if we don’t have it figured out? What if 1+1+1+1+1=5 doesn’t reflect the whole truth? What if S+P+P+C+G=W is technically correct but practically lacking? (Singing, Praying, Preaching, Communion, Giving = Worship) What if it is more than H+F+R+C+B=S? (Hearing, Faith, Repentance, Confession, Baptism = Salvation) What if the older version which includes life applications is more accurate? (F+R+C+B+LF=S, that is, Faith+Repentance+Confession+Baptism+Live Faithfully = Salvation)
The Supper is a good time to ask such questions. What if there remains something mysterious that is beyond comprehension in the three-dimensioned existence of this world? Something that has been revealed, but remains in the “not quite” category? “This is my body….this is my blood.” Do this, declare my death (not life) until I come? Something strange is going on here! Will you take a moment to touch the strangeness, or are you already back to the routines of a “check list” Christianity?