My friend Chris is one of the best dads I know. He is a doctor but he always finds time to take his boys on scouting expeditions. His Facebook page is chock full of his two boys, always doing some activity or other, with the same smile on their faces. Those boys are well loved.
Last summer, Chris sent his oldest Mark, to a camp in Missouri. Chris lives in Texas, so this was the first time that Mark would have been away from home, far away from home. Mark had just finished fourth grade. Well, Mark was miserable. He sent a letter home every day. "I want to stick it out," he wrote, "But, dad, I just can't wait for you to come and get me." The camp was just two weeks long but it felt like an eternity.
Chris planned to fly to Missouri, rent a car and drive his boy home. He was so afraid of his airplane being delayed that he flew a whole day early, arriving on Thursday. He was supposed to pick up Mark on Friday evening at 5. He stayed in a hotel and drove around aimlessly all Friday morning. He ate lunch at some diner in the small town near the camp and then drove out arriving about 3 pm. There was a rope across the entrance to the dirt road that led to the camp. A sign on the rope read, "Parents are not allowed to pick up their children before 5 p.m. Please stay behind the rope."
Other parents had already gathered, looking anxious and tired at the same time. They exchanged pleasantries, how old is your kid, is this his first year at camp, etc. All the questions were perfunctory because none of the parents were listening to each other. They all had their eyes glued to the dirt road.
By about 4:30, the parents had grown in number. Chris realized that some of them had inched their way to the rope, so as be the first ones to make their way down the dirt road to their kids. Chris subtly moved himself in place. A woman behind him looked a bit overwhelmed by the crowd, but he didn't offer her his spot by the rope.
At 5, two counselors came out. They had enough sense not to step in front of the rope and get trampled by the stampede of desperate parents. Instead, they just stood at either end of the rope, untied it from the poles and let it fall to the ground.
And the parents were off. Chris said he started running like a maniac, all the way down that road. He was not in the greatest shape and got a large stitch in his side. He would do whatever it took to see his kid.
God feels the same. God will do whatever it takes to see his children, to take us home. Gods desire leaves us in the dust. Chris took a plane, rented a car and stayed in a hotel. God gave up the glory of the cosmos to become a tiny child. Theologians like Saint Paul called this kenosis, the self-emptying of God. God had to bind the Divine self to earth, become finite, small, contained. God went from the infinity of heaven to the dirt of a tiny stable in the Middle East.
I often wonder why God was born in Bethelehem. Why did God chose to come to us in a dirty place where the animals slept, in a land where the ruler was willing to kill children just to make himself feel more secure? Why did God chose a land so violent? Mary and Joseph were so alone. Scholars have realized that not only was there no innkeeper in the gospel story, but the word for inn really means guest room. All we have is this one sentence in the gospel of Luke, "There was no room in the inn" but a better translation is "there was no room in the guest room." Joseph would have been knocking on the doors of people's homes, not of inns. And some of these people would have been his relatives since he was descended from the line of David. These people rejected a woman in labor and someone from their own family! Bethlehem was not a fairy tale. The evening of Christ's birth was beautiful because God made it so, but never forget for a moment that Jesus was born in the dirt, in a dangerous and violent world.
My next door neighbor in Kansas had a son who was diagnosed with leukemia. His treatments were terrible and he was just four. His dad looked like hell warmed over. I remember seeing him in the yard and asking how things were. "Kate, I can't make it better for him," he said. "That is the hardest part. I can only stay with him, hold him, just be there. But I can't fix it. He must fight this cancer himself to live."
I think of Chris, running down that dirt road to see his son. I think of my neighbor holding his suffering child. We cannot fix the pain that our children have to endure, but we can be there for them, in the midst of it all, we can be there.
That is what Christmas is all about. It is about the gift of presence. Not presents. Presence. Being there with someone when things are hard and life seems almost unbearable. Have you ever noticed that if you try to fix your friends problems or give them advice that you really don't help them at all? God knows that we must struggle to find our way on this earth, that if God were to just fix the worlds problems, that we would learn nothing at all. Jesus came to save us just by being with us. God became a helpless child just to be with us.
And if God was born in Bethlehem, then God is with us whenever we struggle. God is here with my neighbor and his four-year-old boy as he fights for his life. God is in Peshawar, Pakistan when children are killed in a school. Jesus is right there beside a baby girl who is abandoned in China just because she is a girl. Jesus is there and when the world seems so awful that we cannot make sense of it. God says, here I am. I am willing to run down that dirt road into the mess of this world just to hold you. Merry Christmas.
