Notes from Isaiah: A Christmas Reading (Part 2)
I often forget that the Christmas season is not entirely about joy and celebration. It is the darkest and coldest time of the year, yet even that aspect of it I love (I know, I know, I might feel differently if I lived somewhere where the winter was a little harsher). But the real idea of Christmas is that it’s the pivot point of human history. The time leading up to Christmas is about the difficult spiritual work of preparation. John the Baptist tells us that when we hear the announcement that “the Kingdom of Heaven is near,” it is cause for repentance.
If there is any validity to the the criticism that we have allowed the Christmas season to spread its lovely, evergreen branches over too much of the calendar, surely it’s not because it’s too much religious sentiment. It’s because it’s too little. We are skipping over the hard parts, ignoring the fast for two solid months of feasting. We set up an evergreen in our hearts, so we don’t have to think about the deciduous parts that are dying — the parts that must die before Christ can bring new life. The untended sorrows, the mourning of loss, the painful memories: these things need our attention, and we do our souls no favors by hauling in an evergreen and pretending they’re not there.
Not only do we do our own souls no favors, we also give Christ no pleasure. The name that the prophet Isaiah gave to the Messiah, Immanuel, means “God with us.” Jesus assured his disciples that even among the hardships and labor pangs that will precede his second coming, he would be with us always. How can he be with us in our pain if we do not first acknowledge our pain? If we ignore our sorrows, then we our not even “with” our own selves.
I am in the midst of reading a section of Isaiah that contains a series of warnings and announcements of judgments against various nations. It’s grim stuff. In reading these texts with an eye towards Christmas, one passage in particular stood out to me as being, on the surface, an complete inversion of the typical Christmas vibe. In Chapter 22, the judgments turn towards “the Valley of Vision,” which is presumably an epithet for Jerusalem. In verses 12–13, the prophet says:
The Lord, the Lord Almighty,
called you on that day
to weep and to wail,
to tear out your hair and put on sackcloth.
But see, there is joy and revelry,
slaughtering of cattle and killing of sheep,
eating of meat and drinking of wine!
“Let us eat and drink,” you say,
“for tomorrow we die!” (NIV)
Of course, none of this is to say that the Christmas season is all about sorrow, any more than it is all about rejoicing. I’m certainly not trying to say that we should all be in sackcloth and ashes everyday until Christmas morn. We just need to make room for Christ to come into all spaces of our souls, rather than just the ones we’re proud to show off. He’ll come into the lowliest manger. Let him.
As I was showering this morning, my heart was heavy with the thoughts I am putting to paper now. And then I noticed the song that was playing on my Christmas playlist, a song that I was hearing for the first time. It’s called “Gloria, Gloria” by Jess Ray and Jessica Langdon, and the lyrics expressed everything that was on my mind:
Gloria, gloria, God has come to understand us
Were you forgotten? Were you betrayed?
Are you alone? He knows the ache
Have you been waiting? Tired and confused
Have you lost someone? He weeps with you
Is your heart crushed? Then he is near
Enough to share every tearGloria, gloria, God has come to understand us
Gloria, gloria, God has come to understand usIt’s ok if you need to admit
That this season lost some of its magic
It reminds you of all your hurt and loss
And how you’re cryin’ out for kingdom come
No need to smile, no need to sing
Be still and think of this one thing…Gloria, gloria, God has come to understand us
Gloria, gloria, God has come to understand us
Gloria, gloria, God has come to understand us
This Christmas season, I am committed to allowing Christ to come into whatever chamber of my heart he wishes. I will celebrate and rejoice all along the way, as I naturally do during this time of year. But through prayer and studying of Scripture, I will try to stay vigilant against my tendency to try to obscure sorrows and sin with feasting and festivity and even banal distractions.