Christmas Imposition

On the 16^th of November, waiting in my favorite coffee shop for the arrival of my venti bold with a little room, I found myself humming along with the music wafting from the speakers in the ceiling. Before I even realized what I was doing my mind caught up with the words of the song:

Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plains…

Yikes! Mid-November and the Christmas season was imposing itself on me, sneaking up so stealthily and unexpectedly that I didn’t realize it until the angels reached the refrain to sing their glo-o-o-orias o’er the espresso.

I know that this early advent of Christmas carols in a coffee store is, in some ways, not much more than crass commercialism working to get me in the mood to rescue the economy by spending more than I should this Christmas. It’s as if the mermaid on my coffee cup was singing a siren song sweetly and subliminally underneath the angelic refrain: “Gloria! Buy early and often!” (Believe it or not, that actually works with the rhythm of the refrain; try it.)

Yet, I wondered as I wandered across the city sipping the hot java: Might this also be a sign of the impatience and persistence of Christmas?

The world and I yearn, we ache, for signs of God’s nearness, of God’s steadfast love and transforming presence. We cry out for rescue, relief and redemption, sometimes with sighs too deep for words. And this healing, this relief, this new life is precisely what God promises to bring through the babe born in Bethlehem. So urgent is our need and so sure is this, God’s promise, that the promise imposes itself impatiently and persistently on our days. It sneaks in where it can, rises up from unexpected places, swoops down from unimagined heights to draw near and sweetly sing God’s steadfast love to our aching hearts: Come to Bethlehem and see!

This is the gladsome tiding that inspires the heavenly song that imposes itself on our days. God is near in the One wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger, stripped and strung on a cross, and who left the swaddling clothes behind on the floor of the empty tomb for us, for the world, right now, today.

Look for this Emmanuel, listen for the angel song announcing his nearness, this holy season and always.

Gloria in excelsis Deo!