THIS YEAR: "Incarnation Sobriety"

Thanksgiving 2023

Friends in Bethlehem (Palestine, not Pennsylvania) tell us that it'll be a very different Christmas this year--not the Christmas of tinsel and trees, but one of prayer and fasting; not the usual tourist flow and carols stirring, but grief and lamentation.  "O come, O come, Emmanuel!  And ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here..."  They counsel solemnity.  And there's a word not often associated with Christmas in the West.  Solemnity.  "O come, O come, Emmanuel!  And ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here..." 

Exile now means war and catastrophe--not just for some, not just for one tribe; but for them all, for all the peoples of a land that is (like all lands) holy.  In Tel Aviv, they are exiled, profoundly, from peace and joy and security.  In Hebron, they are exiled, and have been for so long, from neighborliness and trust and shared futures of promise.  In Sderot, they are exiled, some still held hostage, fearing the worst and hoping for reunion.  And in Gaza, they are on the run, north to south, south to who-knows-where, exiled again, this version of their nakba.  Leaving homes and pictures and children and elders behind.

I wonder now what our Advent might look like, what our Christmas might mean.  This year, 2023.  Can we celebrate with strings of cranberry and popcorn?  Can we splurge at Macy's or on Etsy?  Or does Advent suggest a kind of penitence, confession and waiting?  "O come, O come, Emmanuel!  And ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here..."

If Christmas promises incarnation, the radical and puzzling embodiment of God in our sorrows, what does that mean for Gaza?  What does it say about unfettered racism and inequality in my own neighborhood?  What does it mean for the activists crying out for the earth herself, for the dangerous edge we're dancing on?  Maybe the Divine is waiting in the crisis itself, waiting in the dangerous streets of Hebron, waiting with an unattended premie in Gaza, waiting with a family in Sderot who hope beyond hope for the return of a brother.  Maybe we should run into the streets today, expecting to see Her there, in the woman pushing a grocery cart without anywhere to go, or in the leafless branches of the oak tree.  Which knows (deep in its roots) that something more, something new, something holy is yet to come.

Portsmouth, Nov. 23, 2023