Our Advent theme this year is a beautiful question: “Where is your gaze?” And as I have been pondering that, I have found my heart, as I often do in the Advent/Christmas season, yearning to be beside those who are going through deep pain and suffering. Part of this is because I have a huge pastoral heart that would love nothing more than to throw all the business of my other pastoral duties away for a week or two before Christmas and just go and have “Christmas Tea” with any and all who have lost loved ones this last year. But I don’t think this yearning to be with those in pain during this season is only that, I think it’s also an internal voice in my gut sensing that Christmas comes, ultimately, from this place, from and through this dark lens of grief and loneliness.
I once heard a biblical scholar speak, I can’t’ remember just who it was just now, but he shared that in order to understand the Bible, you had to understand that the overall lens in which it was written was ultimately through the lens of the pain and suffering and angst of the writer of the book of Job. That the overall message of the Bible, in the end, is a message that is trying to wrestle with Job’s wonderful gut-wrenching question: “where is God in times of incredible pain and suffering?”
I don’t know if I have an answer to that question (I’m always out there trying to find it though), but I do know one thing that I am theologically and experientially grounded in concerning suffering and God…that almost all of my most memorable parts of my Christmas and Easter story have to do with times in my life that I have been thrown into the abys of and fire that happens when life fits you with Job’s shoes. And in those moments, I have often found that this God that I thought was, was indeed completely different than what I thought.
One of those stories has to do with a story I tell about Mrs. Skorpik, and a time my family decided to go out caroling at her place. Now as I tell the story I tell it in such a way to make Mrs. Skorpik out to be kind of a modern day Scrooge. And for me as an 11-year-old boy, she was! But, in the story I’m not sure I tell you why she is so grumpy. You see Mrs. Skorpik has just lost her son, Tony. He had died of a massive heart attack. I didn’t tell you that Tony was her main support system. And so, when we go out to sing to Mrs. Skorpik, some of the reasons she is so “grumpy” and reluctant to hear our carols is that she is sitting in a pile of grief. This is her first Christmas without Tony! I wouldn’t want to hear any Christmas Carols either.
I also don’t tell you that the McBride family was sitting in its own pile of grief that Christmas. Our dear sister, Rachel, had died in a tragic car accident traveling home from DWU, our family university. And this was our first Christmas without her. No wonder none of us wanted to go out to Mrs. Skorpik and carol! No wonder I hid in the basement hoping Dad and Mom and crew would go out there without me! None of us wanted to go caroling. There wasn’t an ounce of Christmas spirit to be found that Advent/Christmas season.
But out we went on a cold winter’s night, whether we wanted to or not. Probably more out of our dad’s duty than anything. And as Dad forced me to ring the doorbell, and all of us listened as Mrs. Skorpik vocally made her way to her front door with her walker (and yes there were a few 4 letter words involved like “Who the blankety-blank would knock on my door at this hour of the night on Christmas Eve!”) I think the reason we were all so taken by her grumpiness that night was the fact that that wasn’t just Mrs. Skorpik coming to the door…that was each of us…our whole family! We were all as old and bent over as she was. Grief had bent us that way! And watching Mrs. Skorpik come to the door with her walker was like looking in the mirror and gazing at ourselves.
And so, when she opened the door and sneered as we made a dismal attempt at Christmas cheer, we all knew what we were doing. We were faking it. We were going through the most miserable night of our lives. We were each holding that lousy lump of coal called grief in our Christmas stockings.
But then Mrs. Skorpik did it. She requested Silent Night. And as we sang that song…not one of us dare look up…we didn’t think it was possible for Christmas to come that night…but for some reason, it did. And when I looked up who would God deem me to gaze upon…the eyes of another weary traveler…Mrs. Skorpik. And as our eyes met, one tear…the same tear I think…travelled down both of our cheeks. And suddenly we weren’t alone anymore. God, Immanuel, with us, had found a way through grief, and coal, and cold, and guilt, and shame, and loneliness and had gently nestled between Mrs. Skorpik and me.
And that, my friends, is what Christmas is really all about. A God we can’t possibly totally get, getting each of us.
Your friend and pastor, wishing all of us in the wilderness a moment of Christmas cheer, Brook