When Christmas Comes ‘Round Again
O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above the deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.
Phillips Brooks, 1868
I am old enough now that Christmas, that Holy Night, has come around over and over again. It threatens to become just a routine even though Christian tradition claims that this night of God breaking into human form was the night of all nights. As Brooks reminds us each year, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
Can crucially important moments also be repetitious or routine? What does it mean for important things to come round and round and round again?
It reminds me of a situation I found myself in recently. A good friend came to me and asked for a quick course on what “transgender” meant, exactly. As an openly bisexual minister and advocate for full LGBT inclusion in my church, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), these are the types of conversations I have had again and again over the years. The core of these conversations may be repetitious, but each one is a gift. Each one is important.
In this case, it turned out that my friend’s young adult nephew had come out recently as transgender and is now estranged from the family. Her mother had sought out my friend with the fear that she had caused this because of anxiety when she was pregnant with this child. During the time I spent with my friend in conversation, we covered everything from the basics of things like not adding an “ed” on the end of transgender to the fact that there are millions of transgender people all over the world. I talked of the wonderful gifts that our transgender brothers and sisters can bring to our church and our community and what we lose if we push them away.
It occurred to me that for many, the awesome moment of coming out to oneself and to one’s loved ones is something that happens again and again all over, with all the waves of emotions, questions, fears and hopes that are both universal and unique to each of us and our situations. No matter how many of us come out, yearning for all the health and integrity that it can bring, there is always that next child born who will face a moment of reckoning like my friend’s niece and her family.
So I, as a follower of Jesus, look to that dark night of birth in Bethlehem millennia ago as a moment that made all the difference in the world, once and for all. And I acknowledge that I miss the mark—I sin—everyday. Senseless violence and tragedy strikes here and everywhere. So the return of Christmas each December resets my hope. It calms my fears, turning my mind and heart to follow Jesus into the new year committed again to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with God.
And this is especially important for us in the LGBT community. For all the good news of unprecedented electoral gains in civil marriage, there are also far too regularly news reports of violence against us and among us as LGBT youth, in particular, commit suicide at a sickening rate. There can be no rest for the weary no matter how many phone calls were made for marriage equality last fall or conversations about inclusion engaged in over coffee hour after church.
There is so much more to be done to ensure that the long arc of history continues to bend toward justice. This is why I give thanks for the return every year of affirming again the everlasting light that shines in the darkness of the Bethlehem night. I pray that you gain strength from rejoicing in it too.
Photo via Flickr user p.m.w., Creative Commons