So this is Christmas. And, asked John and Yoko, what have you done?
Well, we shut, opened, shut, and opened again, bore each other’s burdens, adapted, zoomed and zoomed once more. We prayed, baked and broke bread, kept on keeping on, cried, laughed, kept our distance, were closer than ever before, and combed regulation after regulation. We nursed the sick, sat with the bewildered, and filled the hungry with good things. By contrast, at other times, we had to get used to doing very little, a state unfamiliar to some, and all too familiar to others. We practised Advent virtues: waiting, lamenting, and hoping in equal measure. In the wider world, we saw the pandemic ravage individuals and society.
It’s been wartime, a war against the virus for sure, but also a war against our more ancient and implacable enemies – despair, suspicion, fear.
But, you see, I think John and Yoko get Christmas exactly wrong. Christmas isn’t about us doing anything. And, this year, perhaps we have a chance to live and understand Christmas all the better.
We don’t get Christmas because we deserve it for our great deeds. We probably don’t even get it to solve our misdeeds. We get Christmas because God’s nature is more powerful than the most tyrannical politician, more infectious than the virus, a light more brilliant even than science because it heals more than bodies. Christmas comes because God’s nature breaks through to wherever we are, whatever we have done and whatever we have left undone. It broke through at the stable in Bethlehem. It breaks through now.
We have all fought the good fight. But, for now at least, hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing. It is accomplished. Victory is ours through him who loves us.
Happy Christmas.
Chris Braganza
