Blue Christmas: The Cure for Christmas Melancholy

I imagine everyone has something that epitomizes their Christmas experience. It’s often a song or a movie. For me, it’s that moment in A Charlie Brown Christmas when Linus and Charlie Brown are discussing the meaning of Christmas. “Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy,” Charlie Brown complains. “I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess.” A little later, after Charlie Brown selects a scrawny little Christmas tree that drops its needles for the pageant, he laments, “Everything I do turns into a disaster. I guess I don’t really know what Christmas is all about.”

I first saw A Charlie Brown Christmas on television in 1965, when it aired on CBS. I was twelve years old at the time, and it captivated me. I loved everything about it: the music, the animation, the storyline. But most of all, I loved its honesty, because even at that young age, I had already noticed a connection between Christmas and melancholia.

A famous song, performed by just about every musical artist who has ever released a holiday album, describes Christmas as “the most wonderful time of the year” and the “hap-happiest season of all.” But many people have a different experience. Theirs is more like Charlie Brown’s. Like him, they wonder why they don’t feel the way they are supposed to feel. Their Christmas experience is tinged with longing and sadness, and they blame themselves. Or the universe. Or maybe God.

I notice it in myself, and I’ve concluded that Charlie Brown is asking the wrong question. Instead of wondering why we don’t feel the way we are supposed to feel, we ought to ask what it is about Christmas that causes us to expect to feel something remarkable to begin with. The answer to this question is more complex than you might expect. It’s not just one thing—this feeling of seasonal melancholia springs from multiple sources.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

One reason our feelings tend to fall short is that we expect Christmas to match our memory. This expectation is infused with nostalgia. I don’t think that it is an accident that the first spirit that visits Scrooge in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol comes to remind him of his past:

“Who and what are you?” Scrooge demanded. “I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.” “Long Past?” inquired Scrooge observant of its dwarfish stature. “No. Your past.”[1]

This is Dickens at his best, functioning as the master psychologist. He understands that what we are is the sum of what we have been. This does not mean that we cannot change. The possibility of change is the promise that lies at the heart of his story. But the fact that the first Spirit to appear to Scrooge is the ghost of his past is a signal that change is unlikely to occur before we have understood the forces that have shaped us.

Take a careful look at your Christmas tree, and you will find that it probably says as much about your past as it does Christmas. If your tree is like mine, it is as layered as an archeological dig. Most of us aren’t just celebrating the arrival of a new holiday; we are celebrating the past. What is more, it isn’t some biblical past that moves us but our own. As Christmas draws near, the collective weight of every Christmas we have ever known bears down upon us like a demanding parent with impossible expectations. We aren’t merely trying to celebrate something; our aim is to recreate.

This is a vain hope for two reasons. First, because the conditions that made Christmas Past have dissipated. Time has moved on. The children have grown. People have moved. Some have died. Even the same ingredients, after we have measured them with meticulous accuracy, take on a slightly different flavor. Try as you might, you will only be able to reproduce an echo of what you think you remember.

All these things point to the second reason for our failure. The Christmas you recall is probably not the one you experienced. What you are feeling is nostalgia, not memory. The term comes from a compound word formed by joining the Greek noun meaning “return” with the noun meaning “pain”. In other words, to the ancient mind, nostalgia is the pain of longing to return. It is an acute case of homesickness.

Unfortunately, the vision of the past that nostalgia provides is one that has been enhanced by distance. It is a picture of our experience with the sharp edges worn down by time and forgetfulness. I am not exactly saying that it is a lie. But it is not exactly the truth either. It is a softer version. As if this version of our reality had been reproduced by that artist who called himself the “painter of light.” I don’t mean Rembrandt or Turner.

Days of Future Past

What we experience as a longing for our past actually has to do with the future. It is what C. S. Lewis has called, in The Weight of Glory, a “desire for our own far off country” and “a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience.”[2] As James K. A. Smith similarly puts it, “We are always on the way; the Christian life is a ‘refugee spirituality,’ because we are longing for a home we’ve never been to.”[3]

As Lewis and Smith describe nostalgia, the feeling is not quite a distortion. It is more of an anticipation of the life to come. We experience the ache of nostalgia as a kind of pleasant grief, the sorrow for a bygone age that will never return. But what if it is the opposite? Is it possible that this longing springs from a desire for what is yet to come? If this is the case, then our orientation is all wrong. Instead of looking backward and trying to recreate the past, the purpose of this ache is to help us face forward. It was the disposition of the patriarchs, who the writer of Hebrews says were “still living by faith when they died.” According to Hebrews 11:13: “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”

During the holiday season, we feel obliged to be happy. I am not talking about the kind of happiness one sometimes feels in the ordinary course of events. What I am describing is more extreme. It is a sense that it is our Christian duty to have a transcendent experience at Christmas. When I became a serious follower of Jesus shortly after I turned 19, I can recall wondering how that would change my experience of Christmas. The honest answer was that it diminished it to some degree. Learning the truth about the Nativity of Christ stripped Christmas of its gaudier aspects. The things I loved most about the holiday season had nothing at all to do with the event it is supposed to celebrate.

The Myth of Christmas Magic

Christmas cards, carols, and just about every holiday movie we have ever seen have told us that the Christmas season is supposed to be magical and transforming. Scripture does, in fact, portray the Nativity and the incarnation of Christ as something miraculous and transformative. The birth of Christ was a singular event with cosmic significance, not only for “all the people,” but for creation itself. Yet describing it as magical is something quite different.

But the effects of Christ’s Nativity are not linked to a particular season, if by “season” we mean a specific month of the year. The idea of sacred time does not originate with the church. It was an essential part of the religious landscape of the Old Testament from which the gospel sprang. Yet the arrival of Christ so altered that landscape that the apostle Paul would later call those things: “a shadow of the things that were to come” and tell the Colossians their reality is found in Christ (Col. 2:17). The Nativity was a sacred event. Christmas, as we know and celebrate it–not so much.

Christmas as a season does not have the power to suspend the regular order (or disorder) of the fallen world. It does not possess magical powers to make all things whole. We see the evidence of this in the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s birth. Miraculous events do take place. There are signs and wonders. But, simultaneously with these remarkable events, we see that all the ordinary functions of the world, along with its failings, are also in full view in the Nativity story. Taxes must be paid. Governments rule inequitably. Joseph works away at his carpentry. The inn is so full that there is no room. The religious leaders who ought to know what has happened are puzzled. The world is indeed invested, but not with magic. It is visited by God, who has come in the form of a child. Creation itself will eventually be remade as a result, but that has not yet happened. Then, as now, “everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4).

The Great Reversal

It may sound as if my message is the gospel of “lower your expectations.” But what I have to say is really the opposite. The great hope of Christmas is that at the incarnation, God entered the broken world in human form. As a result of this act, a series of events was put into motion that have fundamentally changed us and which will remake the world. The miracle of this event was not only that God became flesh but that he also subjected himself to the brokenness of the world he entered. Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death” (Phil. 2:8). This is what C. S. Lewis calls “the deeper magic” in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

It is a kind of unraveling and drawing in. The curse of sin is reversed and for the believer, its consequences are drawn into the sphere of grace. To quote from The Great Divorce, another work by C. S. Lewis, it is what he calls the “retrospective” power of redemption. Lewis writes: “The good man’s past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven; the bad man’s past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. And that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say ‘We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven,” and the Lost, ‘We were always in Hell.’ And both will speak truly.”[4]

Of course, when Lewis speaks of “the good man,” he is not talking about goodness as an achievement. This is a goodness that comes to us as a gift. The theological words for this are grace and redemption. They are words that describe the great reversal that the preacher Phillips Brooks writes about in the carol O Little Town of Bethlehem:

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray;
cast out our sin, and enter in,
be born in us today.

I think we sometimes misunderstand the preacher’s intent with these words. It is not Christ who is born in us. It is we who are born in Christ. To use the language of Jesus himself, we are “born again” (John 3:3, 7; See 1 Pet. 1:27). The Nativity of Christ was a singular and unrepeatable event. It may be reenacted in the Christmas pageant each season, but it can never be repeated. The new life that comes to us as a result of that act of God is something else. It is our repeated experience, but it has no season. The life we celebrate at Christmas is something that we draw upon every day and which is reproduced in others through the preaching of the gospel.

The cure for Christmas melancholia is not, as another song tells us, that we “need a little Christmas right now.” Nor is it necessarily Puritan austerity or renunciation of all observance of Christmas. The cure, strange as it may seem, is good theology. We should not expect from Christmas what Christ alone can supply. It is not a sin to look back, but we can become trapped there.

We need not fear Christmas melancholy. I think we ought to view it as a kind of signpost that points away from that which is not God and toward a life yet to come. It says, “This, not that,” and “Then, not now.” It ought to prompt us to say, “Even so, Come, Lord Jesus.”

[1] Charles Dickens, The Christmas Books, Vol. 1 (New York: Penguin, 1982), 69.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory (New York: HarperCollins, 1976), 29-30.

[3] James K. A. Smith, Jennifer Abe, John Swinton, Brandon Rickabaugh, and Michael Vincient Di Fuccia, “How to Inhabit Time: Understanding the Past, Facing the Future, Living Faithfully Now” Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care 16, no. 1 (2023): 90.

[4] C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (New York: HarperOne, 1980), 69.

Mary’s Lullaby: The Savior of the World

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

For many, it is now officially time to begin preparing for Christmas. Commercials are running on television. Inflatables are showing up on lawns. The city is putting up lights. The snowplow has already been out once, clearing the roads in the town where I live. It won’t be long before we start hearing Christmas carols on the radio. But I started thinking about Christmas in July because I was working on a new Christmas book. It was a little daunting to think about Christmas when the temperatures soared into the 80s and 90s.

I doubt I will get much sympathy (or praise) from my friends who live in warmer climates. Or from Mary and Joseph, for that matter. One of my favorite Christmas carols claims that Jesus was born in “the bleak Mid-winter” when “frosty wind made moan.” But the climate in Bethlehem was closer to San Francisco’s than to the Midwest’s.

I decided that the best way to deal with the challenge was to start listening to Christmas carols right away. I worried that it would feel artificial. Like visiting one of those Christmas-themed stores that stay open all year. Or tuning into one of those all-Christmas-all-the-time cable channels. I wondered how much of my sense of Christmas is merely atmosphere. The honest answer is that there is often more ambiance than ethos to our notion of the Christmas spirit. Much of what makes Christmas feel like Christmas is a combination of atmosphere, environment, and trimming.

Nevertheless, I felt something happen in my heart as I listened. It wasn’t just the air conditioning. It was undoubtedly the music. I am not saying that I was suddenly transformed, and like Scrooge, began to radiate benevolence towards everyone I encountered. Yet as I listened to carols, I was struck by the reality and the importance of Jesus’ Nativity. This was especially true of A Savior from on High. A lullaby carol by Stephen Paulus, based on a text by the Elizabethan composer William Ballet.

It’s not as though I had never given the incarnation or the Virgin birth any thought before. They are fundamental elements of the redemption story. Yet I was a little surprised by my reaction to this particular song. I had always viewed lullaby carols as somewhat odd. Why place so much emphasis on the baby Jesus? This song worked on my imagination.

Lullaby carols highlight the humanity of Christ. They remind us that he was so fragile and vulnerable that he had to be fed and carried. He needed protection from his enemies. Their lyrics underscore the duality of his nature. They contrast the irony of his real identity with the humbleness of his position. Jesus was the infant king who had come to give us life, but for whom death awaited. Lullaby carols also help us see Jesus through Mary’s eyes. He was Mary’s joy as well as her sorrow. As Gillian Leslie has put it, “the gentle charm of such songs conceals the sword of Simeon” (see Luke 2:35).[1]

I see something of what Leslie describes in A Savior from on High. As the piece begins, the female voices in the chorus sing the opening phrase. The men join in, and the first statement resolves on a slightly discordant note. It is both pleasing and a little unsettling. There is an edge of sorrow in the melody. I was surprised to hear the male voices take the lead in singing the actual lullaby for the first time. I suppose I am reading too much into it. It may only have been a practical result of the song’s performance by a mixed choir. Maybe it was a simple matter of balance. But I’d like to think that this is a subtle nod to the fact that Jesus came for all people. As the angel declared to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10).

After the opening lullaby, the voices share the burden of the song’s chief message. They remind us that this child is also a Savior. They share the lullaby until the end of the piece, when a single, female voice rises hauntingly above the rest. It is the voice of Mary, rocking her child to sleep. The child is hers and, in a way, he is not. He is her “sweet babe.” But he is also the Savior, “given from on high to visit us that were forlorn.”

The Mary pictured in this song is not the icon that most of us know. It is Mary, the peasant mother, who is little more than a child in her teens. She knows the babe’s true identity. Mary knows something about what he has come to do. He has come, as the song’s title proclaims, to be the Savior of the world. But at this point, she doesn’t know how he will accomplish his task. This is Mary, the mother, quietly rocking her baby to sleep like so many other women before her. This is Mary before she has heard Simeon’s mixed blessing that will cut her heart: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35).

The day will come when Mary will watch as her son bleeds out on the cross. She will hear as Jesus points out the beloved disciple John. He will say, “Woman, here is your son.” He will tell John, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27). These words are not a disowning. Far from it. But they do reflect a kind of distance. It is not unlike what every mother feels when she must share her child with someone else. What mother hasn’t felt a stab of grief while watching their child recede from view? They move out of the house or go off to college. When they walk the aisle at the wedding, the tears are not all tears of joy. The difference, here, is that Mary must share her child with the whole world. For that is why he has come.

Mary must have realized what every mother eventually does. The sweet babe in her arms, although her son, was not really hers to possess. At the same time, the words the angel first spoke in annunciation proved to be true for Mary. God did indeed show her favor in a way that no other woman has experienced or will again. For the briefest time, a matter of months only, Mary was a kind of tabernacle. One that contained the glory of God in bodily form.

This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the best lullaby carols. They do not exalt Mary. They celebrate the honor that God granted to her by enabling her to serve Christ in this singular way. Such carols are also a demonstration of Christ’s humility in submitting to this service. He was born of a woman and born under the law^“to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Gal. 4:4-5).

I admit that these thoughts did not come to me all at once upon my first hearing of Mary’s lullaby. It was something that I had to dwell on. I listened repeatedly during the steaming months of July and August, then into the chillier winds of fall. I am still thinking about it. Perhaps I would still have seen all this if I had waited until December to listen. But by then, I wonder if it would have merely seemed like background music to me.

I am afraid that what we call Christmas spirit is hardly more than atmosphere. I realize that Christmas lullabies are not everyone’s taste. As my father used to say when I grumbled about the music he liked, “De gustibus non disputandum est.” It means, “In matters of taste, there can be no disputes.” Most of us are not in the mood for Christmas carols in July. The Nativity of our Lord, on the other hand, is something else. Ambiance is merely manufactured. String the lights, light the candles, and maybe we can celebrate Christmas in July after all. But the truth of the Nativity of Christ is something more. We ought to meditate on it throughout the year. It is theological, not seasonal, and our salvation depends upon it.

[1] Gillian Leslie, “At the Heart of Christmas: A Theology of The Christmas Carol,” The Living Pulpit 4, no. 4 (December 31, 1995): 9.

While Shepherds Watched their Flocks

December 24, 2018December 24, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Two shepherds were seated before a small fire. They alternated between making small talk and sitting in silence, like those who are long acquainted. There beyond the glowing rim of the firelight, the flock was huddled in congregation. The men too were huddled against the chill of night, wearing wool and leaning into the flames.

High above, the wheeling stars winked in and out, flickering like candles as they calculated the number of Abraham’s offspring. In the black distance beyond the flock, a night bird cried out in indignation, surprised by a wolf who had come near. He eyed the sheep hungrily. He had been watching them for two nights now. But when another figure appeared unexpectedly at the edge of the shepherd’s camp, the wolf turned and fled.

There had been no shuffle of approaching footsteps, only a sudden flare of light as if one of them had stirred the fire. The stranger stepped across the threshold, and the shepherds shrank back in alarm. One of them scrabbled for his staff and raised it in defense as the other cowered. But the stranger only laughed good-naturedly.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I come bearing good news. It is news of a great joy for all the people. This very day in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”

The shepherds looked at one another and then back at the figure, who by now was lit so brightly that they had to shade their eyes to see him. The light radiated from him the way heat does when it shimmers off the rocks in the desert sun. ”This will be a sign to you,” he continued. “You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

By now the whole field was lit so that the tiny camp looked like a city in flames. In its glow, the shepherds realized that the angel was not alone. There was a whole troop with him, standing in ranks. “Glory to God in the highest” they shouted. They sounded like an army cheering their captain after some victory. “And on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests!” The cry made the shepherds want to cheer too.

Then as if in response to some command, the angel leaped into the air and the rest of the host followed suit. In the space of a breath, they were gone. The winking stars appeared again. There was a pop as sparks flew up from their fire. And the shepherds were left staring into the night sky.

“Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about,” one of them said. The other grunted his assent. The flock had scattered because of the commotion. Their plaintive bleating could be heard in the distance. But the two men paid them no mind. They hurried off into the night, leaving their staffs behind.

Joseph’s Dream

December 19, 2018December 19, 2018 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Joseph was awake, just as he had been every night since Mary told him the news. He shook his head at the recollection, just as he had every time he thought about it. Mary was pregnant. He thought he knew her. He was sure he knew her. How could he have been so wrong?

Joseph considered getting out of bed and trying to work but it was late. The noise would surely wake the neighbors. Besides, he couldn’t concentrate. He had tried all day, only to realize that he was staring and shaking his head. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. Joseph was grateful for the distraction. But in a moment it all came rushing back. Mary came back to Nazareth after visiting relatives in the hill country of Judah for three months. The trip had been sudden, without explanation. Joseph hadn’t thought much about it at the time. Perhaps Mary had gone to see her cousin Elizabeth for advice about marriage.

When Mary returned, she was a different woman. She went away a virgin and came home pregnant. Of course, Joseph refused to accept it when he was told. How could he do otherwise? But Mary insisted. She did not blush. “An angel appeared to me,” she explained with a smile. Joseph could tell that she expected him to believe her explanation. “The angel told me that the Holy Spirit would come upon me and the power of the Most High would overshadow me,” she said. “And he did! The child I am carrying is the son of God!”

Joseph shook his head again at the memory. It wasn’t possible. How could it be? He was sure there was some other explanation. A drunken Roman soldier who overpowered Mary and took advantage of her on the road, perhaps. Maybe Mary had concocted this unbelievable story out of fear that Joseph would call off their betrothal. The pregnancy could not have been voluntary. Mary had been forced. He was sure of it. She must have been! The story she told seemed like something only a lunatic would say.

Joseph had said nothing to her at the time. He was afraid to. He simply turned on his heel and walked out the door. He spent the rest of the day working furiously. As if work could somehow make everything go away. He desperately wanted things to go back to the way they were before Mary’s trip. But things would never be the same between them again. How could they? People in the village were beginning to talk. There were awkward questions from some of his customers. Mary was starting to show.

The dog barked again. Then it yelped. Maybe some sleeping householder had thrown a rock to frighten it away, Joseph thought. The thought made him uncomfortable. He was a man of faith. He knew what the Rabbi would say. Joseph would have to divorce Mary. He also knew what kind of punishment the Law of Moses prescribed for Mary’s situation. Unless she could prove that the thing had happened against her will, Mary could be liable to the death penalty. A public divorce would lead to a trial and if Mary persisted with this ridiculous story of hers a public trial was likely to lead to death by stoning.

People would say that it served her right. He supposed that he should be angry. Maybe even pleased that such a fate awaited her. But he only felt helpless. He did not want to see Mary disgraced publically. He did not want her to die. So Joseph made his decision. He would divorce Mary. But quietly. There would be no trial. No public disgrace. He didn’t know how the two of them could continue to live in the same village. Maybe he would move. He would think about that later.

The decision made, Joseph lay in the dark as sleep finally overtook him. For the first time since he had heard the news, he felt calm. A night breeze stole in through the window, carrying with it the scent from a vagrant patch of daffodils which had sprung up nearby. Only then did Joseph notice the figure standing at the foot of his bed.

Joseph sensed more than saw him. It was shadow upon shadow. Joseph felt his presence but could not make out his face or form. Joseph tried to move but it was as if all his limbs were paralyzed. He tried to speak. But could not make a sound. Was someone there or not? Then the figure spoke. His voice was reassuring as if he had overheard Joseph’s tortured deliberation. “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” he said. “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

All the arguments Joseph had already marshaled against such an explanation rose up within him. He would have interrupted if he could speak. But he was still frozen in place. Unable to move. Unable to utter a sound.

As though the angel heard Joseph’s unspoken objection, he said, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.’” His tone was patient but firm. The kind one might use when explaining some simple fact to a child. The sort that a teacher uses to remind a student of something they should already know. At the mention of the child’s name, Joseph understood. The child that is to be born will be called “God with us.” Suddenly it all seemed so clear to him. And so obvious. Why hadn’t he seen it before?

At once Joseph was awake and alert. His heart felt light, like one who has awakened after a long illness and for the first time in weeks is feeling whole. Joseph leaped from his bed and dressed in haste, the first rose light of dawn just beginning to glimmer on the horizon. His plan had been to go to the Rabbi at first light. But instead, he flew down the path in the opposite direction. Towards Mary’s house. His steps set the dog to barking again. He could hear someone calling out Mary’s name over and over. Joseph laughed when he recognized the voice as his own.

Bethlehem Night

December 12, 2017 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

What makes this night

different from all others?

Our faces lit before the fire,

we repeat the old stories

and count the constellations.

Or we sit

in the habit of silence

like someone long married.

Until the angel appears

with its stab of glory

and we are sore afraid.

We hear his shouted greeting

at once so jocular and familiar

and yet so strange and unearthly.

We hear too

the beating of many wings

like the sound of many waters

and the bleating of the frightened sheep

who scatter in alarm.

But we cannot

comfort them

because we are struck

dumb with wonder.

Silent Night

December 15, 2016December 16, 2016 ~ John Koessler ~ 1 Comment

Now that Advent has arrived, I suppose it is time for my annual Christmas lament. I am reluctant to speak. I am afraid of adding another shrill note to the year’s collective shriek. Everybody, it seems to me, is up in arms. Every word is an affront. It is tempting to blame our national mood on the election, but I believe its roots go deeper. If the outcome of the election had been different, I do not think that the tone would have changed. It would only have meant that different voices would be singing the same parts. We are all outraged now.

Outrage, of course, is often appropriate. It was the chord struck by the biblical prophets. An ancient aphorism often attributed to St. Augustine says that hope has two daughters: anger at the way things are and courage to see that they do not remain the same. Without a doubt there is much in the world that deserves outrage. But I am struck by how little modern outrage is able to accomplish. For all its heat and fury, it has not proven to be an especially powerful engine for driving change. Perhaps this is because we are really enamored of a different set of twins. Proverbs 30:15 declares, “The leech has two daughters. ‘Give! Give!’ they cry.” The cry of our age is not the cry of love or even of justice. It is the cry of “measureless ambition,” a voice which says “me first” and “I’m here now.”

I cannot help being struck by the difference in Jesus’ tone. It was predicted by the prophet Isaiah who declared, “He will not shout or cry out, or raise his voice in the streets” (Isaiah 42:2). Despite the shout of joy that Heaven uttered at His birth, Jesus came into the world in relative obscurity and deliberately refused the limelight. When they tried to make Him a king by force, He opted for the path of solitude and suffering instead (John 6:15). This was not because He shunned royal office. Jesus knew it was His by right. Rather, He took this route because He knew that the only way to put things right was to take the wrong upon Himself. The beauty of Christmas is not the romance of a babe in a manger but the mystery that poet Richard Crashaw celebrates when he speaks of “eternity shut in a span.” It is the astonishing fact that God became flesh and lived among us in order to take our sin upon Himself, working justice by His own death and resurrection.

I realize how foolish such measures will seem to those who are focused on tales of power. Yet it is God’s own self-admitted folly, designed for those who would rather exclude Him from their world than make room for His definition of justice. As for me, I will kneel in silence with Richard Crashaw and wonder at the sight:

To thee, meek Majesty! soft King

Of simple graces and sweet loves,

Each of us his lamb will bring,

Each his pair of silver doves;

Till burnt at last in fire of thy fair eyes,

Ourselves become our own best sacrifice.

Still Wonderful

December 22, 2014 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

A popular song calls Christmas the most “wonderful” time of the year. But some pastors might be tempted to use a different word to describe the season. Christmas is to churches what Black Friday is to retailers. It is the busiest time of the year, when attendance reaches its peak. Church’s Christmas services are viewed as the most important of the year. Pastors feel pressured to exceed last year’s numbers and to tell the familiar story in a way that is bigger and better.

Unfortunately, this often leaves us feeling exhausted, depressed, and cynical. Attendance may reach a high point at Christmas, but when January comes it dips again. The visitors who showed up at Christmas will not reappear until next December. The heady excitement generated by families coming together at church is mixed with a dash of melancholy for many pastors who serve at a distance from their own extended family. Consequently, we go about our business grumbling like Scrooge, reciting Paul’s warning in Galatians 4:10 about observing special days, and reminding people that Christmas wasn’t actually celebrated by the church until the fourth century. Humbug!

Perhaps this is a good time to remind ourselves of Jesus’ affectionate reproof to Martha in Luke 10:42: “Only one thing is needed!” The wonder is not in the day or in the season but in the birth that they commemorate. We do not need another extravaganza. We do not need to tell the old story in a new way. There is enough wonder in the story of Christ’s first advent to last for eternity. Perhaps we have grown jaded because we have co-opted the story for our own purposes and turned it into a marketing tool. We have allowed our voice (and our interests) to drown out the song of the angels. This Christmas, do not be afraid to say it simply and to say it again: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).

The Myth That Became Reality

December 23, 2012December 23, 2012 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time there was a young girl who lived in a small village. She was poor but virtuous. One day, shortly before her marriage was to take place, she was startled by an unexpected visitor. “Do not be afraid,” the visitor said. “I have good news for you. You are going to have a child. He will be a great king.”

Sound familiar? This could be the beginning of any number of stories. But it is the beginning of one particular story. None of the Gospels opens by saying, “Once upon a time….” Yet when we read them, we get the feeling that they might have. The mysteries and wonders they describe are the sort one reads about in fairy tales. A peasant girl gives birth to a miraculous child. A star appears in the heavens and announces his birth. Magi travel from a distant land to pay homage to him. The hero descends to the realm of the dead and returns.

This is the stuff of myth and fantasy, except the Bible does not call it by either of those names. The Bible does not even call it a story. Not really. According to the Scriptures it is truth. It is “good news.” The Gospels do not spin tales, they bear witness. Yet the Gospels’ embodied and historical nature does not negate the mythical quality of the real events they describe.

In an essay entitled “Myth Became Fact,” C. S. Lewis described myth as “the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with the vast continent we really belong to.” Myth in this sense not a fanciful story although, as Lewis observed in An Experiment in Criticism, myth always deals with the fantastic. It is an account which connects our experience with a realm of truth that would otherwise be out of our reach.

But the historical events the Gospel’s describe go beyond myth. “The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact” Lewis explains. “The Old Myth of the dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history.” In the fantastic but true account of Christ’s birth we meet the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. Although He is “not far from each one of us,” without the Gospel record of these events He would be forever beyond our reach. No wonder the ancient church sang:

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

Thanks be to God.

The Announcement to the Shepherds

December 21, 2012 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

We were taken

by surprise

when the light broke.

Blinded and afraid

we cowered

and the poor

sheep fled

into the hollow.

“Do not be afraid”

the angel said.

But we could

not help it

and we could not

follow the flock

that had forsaken us.

So we just stood by

in white light

and trembled hearing

the angel trumpet

his good tidings.

And then we too

like scattering sheep

fled among the hills

of Bethlehem.

Until we came to

the place where

the Child lay.

Echoes of Heaven

November 30, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

In his latest book entitled Wonder Reborn: Creating Sermons On Hymns, Music and Poetry, Thomas Troeger describes the effect the hymns he learned as a child had upon his imagination. While Troeger was raised in the northeast, his mother came from South Carolina. She often complained that churches in the north did not sing the hymns she knew. When they did, they did not sing them with the same warmth.

Troeger writes that this difference was typified for him by the contrast between the two hymns In the Garden and O God of Bethel by Whose Hand: “As a child I recognized immediately the difference in sound, and with a child’s sense of knowing, I sensed two different musical characterizations of God in the contrasting tunes and rhythms.” In the Garden always made Troeger picture his great-aunt’s flower garden. While the hymn O God of Bethel By Whose Hand made him think of the New England pilgrims. The contrast between these two fascinated Troeger, who could not figure out how they fit with the pictures he imagined of the biblical stories.

In his book Troeger cites the research of religious sociologist Robert Wuthnow, which reveals the importance of childhood experience on our spiritual lives. According to Wuthnow: “Looking at the data the childhood experience that matters most is not attendance at services but the subliminal contact with the holy that comes through hymns and other religious music, pictures, Bibles, crosses, candles, and other sacred objects.” This observation is enough to make any good Protestant wince–especially one whose children progressed far enough in the AWANA program to earn the Timothy award. Wasn’t the Reformation precisely a reaction against this sort of thing?

Yet as someone who grew up in a religionless home, I can testify to the truth of what Wuthnow says. My earliest memories of an experience of transcendence and my longing for God inevitably revolve around Christmas. The music of Christmas captivated me, along with the Christian images on the few Christmas cards we received and by the Christmas story itself. I stared at those pictures for hours, meditating on their meaning and wishing that I had been alive to see those ancient events unfold. I gazed into the night sky hoping to see some faint glimmer of the Christmas star. I played with the figures of our nativity set, something that was more of a cultural artifact than an object of devotion in our household, and imagined myself traveling with the magi as they traversed “field and fountain, moor and mountain.”

No wonder, of all the varieties of the church’s musical forms, it is the carols that I love the most. I loved them all growing up. But I loved the old ones the best. Indeed, my favorite may be one of the most ancient. Its words, attributed to the Roman poet Aurelius Prudentius and dating back to the fifth century, still have the power to transport my imagination:

Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!

As a child those ancient carols sounded to me like something from another world, an echo heaven come down to earth. They still do…evermore and evermore.