Advent Time: The Stable

"Remembering the stable where for once in our lives everything became a you and nothing was an it."

--W.H. Auden

          

I stopped at an Art Gallery in Roswell, Georgia and as I walked into the shop I saw this picture. I looked at it a long time, wandered through the store, started out and stopped. I saw the picture again. Really saw it.  I don't know who the artist is but I know that stable scene captures Christmas for me. This is the picture I took that day.

Oh, there is so much wrong with this weary world. I am heartsick at watching what is happening to this nation. I talk to so many friends on the telephone and they share my misery. How can so much of the religious world these days swallow the President and all his shenanigans? How in the world can so many brush aside the lies, the arrogance, and the sheer cruelty that he displays day after day. This isn't a Republican-Democratic problem.  And this isn't a "If Hillary won..." dream. No. There is something deeper than politics: the basic human decency that ties us to one another is becoming unraveled. As the old song goes: we really are poor little sheep that have lost our way.

And so I come back to the picture. The backdrop of the stable painting was a world in disarray. I need to remember this is why he came. Because the world has always been a mess and troubled and heartsick. That stable is nothing like the wonder of our houses and our trees and gifts and looking for our loved ones to arrive. And there is nothing wrong with this. But the centerpiece of Christmas I see in this painting.

He came to all. No qualification. The old woman yesterday at the Dollar Store. The man holding a sign by the highway saying: "Help me." All those huddling in tents so far from home wondering, wondering about the future. The hungry. The dispossessed. All those who lost someone this year and they just wish Christmas would go away. But not only those. The stable is somehow also linked to the Caesars and the Roman Governors smug and comfortable and lost. It hardly matters--rich or poor--remember even then it was scruffy shepherds and rich Wise Men from the East. The manger is never either or--it is always both-and.

So I ponder the mystery--in the poorest part of town to just humble and common folk--Jesus came.  And what he brought promised hope for everyone. Remember what he said in that first sermon: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free..." The reception he got from his homeowners was to turn away furious. They even tried to push him off the edge of a cliff. This rage did not stop Jesus. Let your finger run down the story and in that same chapter we read: "As the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various kinds of diseases brought them to him; and he laid his hands on each of them and cured them."

So when I look at the painting of those old red barn I remember that despite is all--the years, the wrong-headedness, the sins we are all guilty of--he is still with us and his promise was that he would be with us always.

Forget Emperor Tiberius and Pilate, the governor of Judea and Herod who ruled Galilee and his brother Philip who ruled so much. Forget the Priests that never quite understood--Annas and Caiphas and all the other evangelicals. We hardly know their names. But we still remember an old barn with its manger and a new mother and father and lying there on that straw--the hope of the world. The old  carol goes: "let every heart prepare him room..." And somewhere between today and the coming birthday morning--let us listen closely and maybe, just maybe "heaven and nature will sing" for us as if we were the only one.


G.K. Chesterton says it for me:

"There was a Man

who dwelt in the East

centuries ago

and now I cannot look 

at a sheep or a sparrow, 

a lily or a cornfield, 

a raven or a sunset,

a vineyard or a mountain

without thinking

of Him."

photo by Megan / flickr

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com