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Have you ever noticed every Christmas movie is really about the disaster the season is? No Christmas movie that’s left its mark is about how effortlessly the holiday season goes!
Charlie Brown is really about how unhappy Charles is! It’s a Wonderful Life is all about how poor George Bailey can’t catch a break—even on Christmas! A Christmas Story is about the near psychic break young Ralphie has trying to get that red rider BB gun! And National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is… Well, a smorgasbord of disasters!
And even those movies that subvert this trope, like the Grinch and A Christmas Carol, are still about the disaster Christmas can be for people of all strips! No one is safe! Not even those bah-humbugs out there! Despite the best-laid plans of those scoundrels, the Grinch and Mr. Scrooge, the spirit of Christmas descends upon them nonetheless!
And we love these movies. Don’t we? Probably because some part of us recognizes how true they ring to life. And yet, despite that, when that same sort of Christmas disaster lands on our plate, WE hate it!
Like miffed diners, we tell our angelic host to send it back.
…Well, I may not be Gabriel, AND you may not be Zechariah, but let me tell you to zip it!
That’s a reference to the annunciation of Jesus’ cousin, John, by the way.
When the angel Gabriel visits John’s daddy, Zechariah, to tell him he and his wife are going to have a child, Zechariah asks for a sign. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are too old to have children anymore. So Zechariah wants some surety. A guarantee.
To which Gabriel promptly tells the man to zip it. Gabriel strikes Zechariah mute right there!
Now, remember, Zechariah is told this news in the temple. And what’s more, Zechariah’s a priest! It’s as if Gabriel is saying to the old man, “here you are in the one place God’s deeds of power are spoken of, and it’s your job to speak of them! But all you’re interested in talking about is bonds and contracts! So you’re better off staying silent."
Now, perhaps you’re protesting at this. You point out, Mary too asks, “how can this be” when Gabriel delivers the news to her. But Mary isn’t asking for proof! She’s asking for particulars! She believes what Gabriel says is going to come to pass. She’s just not sure how!
It’s the difference between asking to see their bank account or asking what day you should expect the payment when someone tells you they’re about to give you a million bucks!
And Mary’s the latter! But she’s not even a church professional. She’s just a young woman trying to make her way in the world! That’s why all generations call her blessed!
…But that’s not the only reason.
We don’t know a lot about Mary, but we know she was a peasant in a world that valued the rich. That she was young in a world that valued the mature. And that she was a woman in a world that valued men. And despite all that, when the angel Gabriel comes with news that disrupts what meager life Mary had managed to eke out, she doesn’t ask for proof or protection! She just asks, “how.” That’s why all generations call her blessed!
And those aren’t even all the reasons, either!
By the time Mary makes it to Elizabeth’s and sings her now-infamous canticle, it’s clear Mary regards her disaster as GOD’S powerful hand at work in her life!
All generations call Mary blessed because she believes what we so often fail to, that our disasters are really God’s cup of tea! Or, better yet, God’s eggnog with a little something splashed in there.
That shadow hanging over you this Christmas, and we all have plenty, is really just the power of the Most High overshadowing you! Unlike Mary, though, it’s not so easy for us to see that when we’re under the shadow. Is it? That’s why Paul says we see through a mirror dimly.
So, let me be your own personal Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come; perhaps one day you will look back on the disaster of this Christmas and remember it fondly…
Or, maybe you won’t. Maybe you won’t because your Lord and Savior hasn’t come to give you fond memories or a Hallmark Christmas. God has come to give you something infinitely better! Something a million times more real!
God has come to be God FOR you! Emmanuel, God with us. God with you! God incarnate. God-in-the-flesh! God right next to you through it all! God so close, salvation itself comes within grasp at long last!
…So here’s the deal; at this point, it’s too late to correct course. Whatever trajectory your Christmas is on, that’s how it’s going to crash land. The smart money is to stop fighting it. Say farewell to whatever white Christmas you’ve been dreaming of, and go limp to the whole affair. That’s the only chance you have at surviving this Christmas anyway.
Better than any survival plan, though, is the promise HIDDEN amid the wreckage: Your disaster is God’s Christmas feast of Good News of great joy for all the world!
So say it with Mary, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Or how about just, “let it be.”
Those three little words will serve you well in the days ahead. As everything comes to pass at it was going to all along anyway, may your world be flipped on its head. And may you be open to it, too! May you be open to it so you might receive all that Mary prophesied in that lovely song of hers!
May you be humbled. May you be humbled so you might be relieved of the burden of your own false pride! May you be sent away empty. May you be sent away empty so you will have room for more than money can buy!
And then, once you’ve been laid low, may the Lord to raise you up! When you have nothing left of your own to go on anymore, may you be filled with every good thing the Lord has prepared for you from the foundation of the world!
This is God’s upside-down POWER at work! The disaster that’ll leave you, like it did Mary, truly blessed this Christmas.
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