“I’ve got the baby here,” Imogene barked at the Wise Men. “Don touch him! I named him Jesus.” ? Barbara Robinson, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

It has happened once again. For those who find a home of one ilk or another in the Christian household, a certain experience that comes around is the inevitability of the yearly Christmas pageant. Today, in the faith community in which I have planted myself marked that day when the children and youth gather in various costumes and characters to tell the ancient story of the birth of Jesus. Depending on who is doing the telling, the various characters can be decked out in costumes simple and ordinary…think a bathrobe and a dishtowel for a head piece…to more lush and lovely gowns of blue(Mary) and white(angels)…and of course wings. Throw in a crown or two or three and Magi can be imagined traveling from the East. Yet the costumes are insignificant in many ways to the actual telling of the story. 

Those who have spent any time in Sunday School can tell you who the players are and what those players are meant to do, meant to be. It may appear that the lead characters…Mary, Joseph, the Baby Jesus…are all that is important. But tell that to those playing shepherds, angels, the innkeeper, the Wise Ones. They know that without them the story cannot be fully told. Which is the true joy of telling this story over every year. Those who once played a shepherd may in a couple of years grow into portraying Joesph or Mary. Someone who wore the ears and tail of a sheep may graduate to be an astronomer following a bright star.

Every year as I watch this pageant unfolding I am struck with the fact that we never, year to year, hear this story in the same way. Each year we carry with us our very lives and all that the world has dished up for us. While one year we may hear the telling of Mary’s being told by an angel that she is going to have a child with a certain innocent detachment. And yet if a baby has been recently born or is coming into a family, we see, we hear Mary’s story with different ears. We sense her vulnerability, her fear, her overwhelming joy and anticipation. We can embrace a greater empathy for dear Joseph and his confusion and deep sense of responsibility at the surprise of this child.

In Jan Richardson’s Night Visions: Searching the Shadows of Advent and Christmas she writes: “Any story can be told innumerable ways, not simply according to who does the telling but to where that person is on the journey. As my life unfolds and my perspective changes, I realize that each telling of a story reveals part of the whole, but does not contain the whole story in itself. The stories I tell are continually shaped by my changing understanding of events, conversations, feelings, influences, the people around me, and my own self.”

This year as I am present to this story, one of the anchors that holds the larger faith story I’ve hitched my heart to, I cannot encounter it or hold it without thinking of the scenes that happen after the Star bathed image in a humble stable…how the Wise Ones were warned to go home by a different way as they feared the tyrant king Herod. And how in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ parents are told in a dream to flee with their child because this same king was searching for them and would kill the baby. What fear must have gripped them. How they must have known they would do anything, anything, in their power to get him to safety. 

This year I am reminded again that this story told through the innocence of children’s voices is both ancient and new, is being lived out by so many in our world. A story filled with hope of birth, miracle and wonder, joy and promise. And also fear of those who would do even the smallest and weakest harm. Fear that sends people into hiding and fleeing for safety.

It is an ancient story. It is a present story. May we see it with new eyes once again.

It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness…

These are candle lighting days and nights. Darkness comes in late afternoon and lingers till the coffee is cold and the breakfast consumed. It is Advent and each Sunday we light one more candle to affirm that, though the people may walk in darkness, a light is emerging. It is balm on these now cold, snow covered times.

Recently at a women’s retreat I attended, one young mother told of how her family lights a candle at night and does bedtime stories in the light of candles. I have thought of that often over these last days. The warmth and ritual of it. The beauty of light streaming on the faces of mother and child. (I mean, doesn’t everyone look lovely in candlelight?) Surely this is something this wee one will carry within for a very long time…may even repeat when they have children of their own. 

Every morning while the coffee is brewing I light a candle to begin my morning. Its light means much…the day is beginning…the darkness will recede…the Spirit of All Light is present…a connection with ancestors who gathered around fire…a recognition of the beauty and power of that fire. And so, the morning begins. Whatever happens that day it began in the flicker of hopeful light.

In Advent waiting we are reminded of the longing that rests at our very core. We retell the story of a world filled with injustice and those who traveled to be named, to be counted, to give birth in humility and peace surrounded by strangers who offered sanctuary. It doesn’t take long for the realization that this story is still played out, is being played out, in our world, in our country, in our city, in our neighborhoods. The waiting and longing still stir and our hearts are still hungry. 

And so we light a candle…or many candles…to remind us that one light added to another, as the Advent candles teach, bring greater light and lead us toward some better, brighter place of hope and wholeness, a place where love leads the way. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” spoke Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In the Twin Cities area, I am witnessing human candles standing up and shedding light on the dark path that been shed over our Somali neighbors and others who are being targeted by hate and injustice. With voice and body and action, people are saying “A Light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.” 

The Advent waiting continues. The expectation quivers within. The hope remains bathed in the light of each of our candles…those with wicks and hands and feet and hearts hungry for a time when Love leads the way.