A Christmas Eve Reflection
Recently it seems that I sleep through things more than I did in the past. Not that I have ever been too easily disturbed in my sleep. It is just that some things need to awaken a person, like an infant needing help or an urgent issue in your household. I remember an early morning years ago, when we lived in a MUCH colder climate, being awakened by the distinct sound of gushing water. It was instantly that I knew something bad had happened.
All this is to say that I do not want to get to a place in life where I sleep through things that should awaken me. This brings me to the narrative of Christ’s birth. The clues we have in the biblical text suggest that Jesus was born at night. It doesn’t explicitly say that, but the fact that Mary and Joseph are looking for lodging and the angelic announcement to shepherds portray events at night. The image is quite appropriate: the light of God coming into the darkness of the world. The accompanying element of the story, though, is that the light comes when many people are sleeping, leaving me to wonder how many people missed this world-altering event simply because they slept through it.
This Advent season seems to have flown by. It provokes us to say things like, “it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.” This is a natural feeling. For many, Christmas is a season of traditions, and it doesn’t feel right if the busyness of life has disrupted those traditions. Perhaps we can take measures to recover the sense of fulfillment we want during the season. But there is a greater danger than our sense of unfulfilled tradition. It is the risk of missing the revelation of God in our midst.
Consider another piece of the birth narrative: the arrival of the Magi (told in Matthew 2). An entourage of wealthy nobles arrive from the Far East saying they have come to worship a newly-born king. The current king, Herod, along with the population in general, seems to be taken aback. Why? The two best reasons I can offer are 1) they missed the news in the first place, or 2) they forgot the news soon after receiving it. To put it another way, they either 1) slept through the event, or 2) were temporarily awakened and fell back asleep.
The Christian group Casting Crowns has a moving song of the season called While You Were Sleeping. The lyrics begin as follows:
O little town of Bethlehem, looks like another silent night.
Above your deep and dreamless sleep a giant star lights up the sky.
And while you’re lying in the dark, there shines an everlasting light.
For the King has left his throne and is sleeping in a manger tonight.
O Bethlehem, what will you miss while you are sleeping.
That’s the question, isn’t it? What will we miss while we are sleeping? What IS our sleeping? Maybe it is being overwhelmed by busyness. Maybe it is being overcome by the darkness that weighs on our spirits and our minds. Maybe it is being lulled into ordinariness, or locked away in hopelessness. It is the influence that leaves us to awaken tomorrow morning (Christmas Day) believing that nothing has changed. I prompts us to greet the morning with the curious question, “Did I miss something?”
Friends, don’t get caught sleeping. God has come in the person of Jesus Christ, and because of that things are not the same. May the Spirit of Christ awaken you to his self-revelation at this Christmas time.
The Winding Path 