Friends
Peace be with you.
A couple of weeks ago, a friend who was visiting from out of town told me about a new song by a singer named Michael Boggs called Come You Unfaithful. I was immediately turned off by the title but I trust this friend so I decided to give it a chance. It starts to the tune of O Come All Ye Faithful but goes in a very different direction than the original. Actually, it pointed out what I would consider to be some flaws with the original song. In this version, the unfaithful, the unworthy, those with nothing to offer him, the unrighteous, and the undeserving are invited to Christ the Lord because He came for them. I started to tear up a little thinking about all the people who have left the church because they felt that they simply weren’t holy enough, weren’t worthy, to come here. I thought of my relatives who feel unrighteous and undeserving of God’s love. I thought of my friends who struggle to know and be loved by God, who feel unfaithful and, thus, unwelcome in God’s house. And I prayed for them and wished I could invite them here right then and there.
But it was the second verse that really got me emotionally. In that verse, he invites the anxious, the waiting and wanting, those whose burdens are all they can bring, those weary from silence and questions without answers to rejoice because Christ came for them. I started thinking about people who really needed to hear this message and never will because they’re not here with us any longer. I started thinking about the people struggling with brain health in our streets walking past the church at all hours of the night in search of some safe place they may not find or some drug that will numb it all. I thought about families missing a child who died in a school shooting or from some disease struggling to celebrate the birth of the Christ child without a child of their own.
There’s simply too much suffering happening around here this Christmas, maybe not for you or your family but for a lot of people there is. For some people who came to this country illegally, they’re worried about being deported and being separated from a spouse and children or, worse, having a legal spouse and children be forced to be deported with them. For some people, they’re worried they won’t be able to afford their house or their car because their salary dropped when they lost their job and had to take one with less pay. For some people, they’re wondering how they’re going to keep their business open when everyone is buying everything online. And, for a lot of people they’ve come to church hoping God would send an angel like the movie It’s a Wonderful Life only to go back home and have nothing get better.
For our Christmas Masses, there are four separate sets of readings with four different gospels. There’s Jesus’ genealogy from the gospel of Matthew, the traditional story of no room at the inn from the Gospel of Luke, there’s the visit of the shepherds from the Gospel of Luke, and there’s what’s referred to as the prologue of the St. John. What’s striking about these sets of readings, however, is the promise of the messiah in the first reading versus what actually happens in the gospel. If you read the first readings, you may get a sense that, when Jesus came, it should have been like a superhero movie or like a scene from the Lord of the Rings. The bad guys should be just about ready to destroy all the faithful followers of the Lord when, out of the East, Jesus appears riding a white horse with a sword wiping out all the bad guys and saving the day. But, instead, we hear about a baby lying in an animal’s food trough being visited by a bunch of dirty shepherds who should be looking after their flocks. We hear all about his relatives, some of whom are not particularly great by the way. And St. John, in all his philosophical nuance, puts Jesus as the incarnation of the words used to create the universe at the beginning of time. That’s hardly going to drive off a warring army, let alone deal with all the problems we have.
The hardest part of today is that Jesus didn’t come to make our life prosperous or even to make it easy. If, for the most part, your life is going okay, that’s great. Even Michael Boggs, in the third verse of Come You Unfaithful, says Jesus came for the prideful, the self-sufficient, and you with all the answers, which is true. He loves you too and walks with you. But for those of us who are maybe struggling to find the Christmas spirit, It’s okay. Jesus may not have come to take away our suffering, but he came to walk with us in our misery. It may not always feel like he’s there, but he’s closest to us in our suffering, not just in an impassive voyeuristic way, but in a way in which He suffers with us. He doesn’t take away our pain but he shares it with us. He took on our sins and redeemed us all on his own on the cross but he doesn’t leave us here to suffer on our own. Do you feel lonely, abandoned, or isolated? Do you feel like no one can help or no one cares? I hope not. But, if so, please know that you’re not alone. Christmas reminds us that Jesus came in a real human way to walk with us in our suffering and he sends us, the members of his church, to walk with each other. You’re welcome here to experience Him, and us, walking with you.
