Sacred Cynicism

Last night I heard a depressing story from one of my students. Last year one her friends lost a 4 year child to cancer on Christmas morning. Let that sink in for a moment. I cannot imagine the horror of watching a child die at any time, but not on Christmas! This is the day when we are supposed to feel joy, and be uplifted. If a tragedy like this is to happen, why can’t we not magically move the clocks ahead to 12:01, just so we can say that the death happened on December 26^th. If memory serves me correctly, there was once a M*A*S*H episode where this very situation happened. A soldier was shot on Christmas Day and fought a losing battle with death. Hawkeye moved the clocks ahead the moment he died so they could list the date of the soldier’s death as December 26^th.

After I hear a story like the one my student told me yesterday, I am once again confronted by the age-old problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to the innocent? This is not a new problem, nor a new question. It is as old as humanity itself. Yet what is God’s answer to this problem? Why do these things happen?

Christmas is part of the answer to this old question. I know there are people who scream in frustration, “why doesn’t God stop this from happening?” I understand that question, and we cannot avoid it. Yet Christmas still gives an answer to this question. While we can be frustrated that God did not stop evil from happening, you cannot say that He avoided the issue. In coming to our world, Jesus confronted this dilemma head-on, and I think that was part of the plan. There was no palace or scene of comfort for His arrival. Rather, God came to us in the most difficult and harsh circumstances imaginable. In the midst of poverty and hardship, God shared those experiences with us.

Through His life Jesus experienced rejection, hardship and persecution. He knew what it was like to be marginalized, ignored and ridiculed. And in the middle of those times, God blessed these experiences with His presence. Jesus even knew what it was like to feel the worst of pain, experience the grief of loss, and die an outsiders shameful death. In all of these circumstances we can now find the presence of God. Christmas is part of the answer to our struggle with a world that is not right.

The rest of the answer lies in Easter and the Resurrection. The promise that all is being made right, and being made new. While we still may suffer from time to time, we do so with a new confidence of Jesus resurrection, and with the comfort that the God who has promised to go with us, has already been through the things we suffer now.

Yet let me return to the sad story with which I started. My heart breaks for the family that lost a 4 year old, but perhaps Christmas is a day that gives us hope with this tragedy. Instead of seeking to change the clocks in order to somehow protect Christmas, we need to see how Christmas is a part of the answer to a world that is full of tragedies. God came, and walked with us. Even more, he walked through the worst of it while He walked in our shoes. The good news is He remains here, and has promised to never leave us nor forsake us so He still will walk with us through the worst of things today.

So if this is a sad Christmas, it is OK. There have been sad Christmases before. There was the Christmas along the trenches in World War 1 when both the German and British soldiers came out of their positions to sing Christmas carols together. Joy in the midst of desperate conditions. It seems there was also a Christmas where a teenage mom was forced to give birth in a stable, and looked what became of that sad time.