If you pay attention to the appendices in "Lord of the Rings," interesting subtleties show up. The day the Nine Walkers set out from Rivendell to challenge the Nine Riders and even Sauron himself, is December 25. Three months later, the destruction of the Ring of Power occurs on March 25, which is the Feast of the Annunciation. Looking at years as a whole, we should note that three months is the complement of...nine months. In our wise age now, we reject the idea of December 25 having anything to do with Jesus originally, insisting that the date was derived more from Saturnalia, Solstice, and other more obscure celebrations. Yet at least one theory from Biblical Archaeology Review thinks that December Five-And-Twenty might actually be a pretty good estimate.
In our gentler age, you will hear preaching about how Jesus came to earth and became God With Us. He ate and drank with his friends! He laughed, he sang, he went to weddings!
When we play at becoming someone else, when we get excited about the idea of past lives, or thinking what other courses we might have chosen, or write letters to our seventeen-year-old selves, we tend to make our other selves more important, more influential, or at least more interesting. If we imagine incarnating into another, or they into us, we use this to be wiser, richer, more worthy of having books written about us. But when Jesus comes, he comes into a quite uninteresting, inconsequential life. It is not even the overdramatic "poorest, most oppressed, most rejected child," which has a sort of reverse snobbery to it. He comes into an invisible life and is admired and rejected, befriended and betrayed, conquering and oppressed. He shares all the sides of our lives, but ultimately he suffers more and more as the end draws near.
If you are now suffering he shares in that suffering, even if you have brought it upon yourself and deserve it. You should find what rejoicing you can at Christ sharing Christmas with us, but do not let all our happy and overcheerful modern Christians take from you that Jesus shares your suffering as well, having been there. The Incarnation cuts to the bone. He does not condemn, but rides beside you on tht bus ride as you travel toward home or away from home for reasons that are pretty sad.
Check out verse four, above, from an earlier era, even in a peppy, upbeat carol.
2 comments:
Bodies are funny things. Even as we grow, cells are dying.
In fact, that's why we don't have webbed hands; because the cells of the webbing self-destructed before we were even born.
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