It’s Christmastide. I just got word from a friend of mine that he’s splitting ways with his spouse. “It will be okay,” I told him. “How do you know?” he asked me. “You don’t know that. You can’t say that. How do you know?” “Because,” I assured him, “it’s been okay before.”
Difficult as it may be to believe, and as impossible as it may be to do, this is what we all can celebrate today, that it will be okay. Because it’s been okay before. There’s been peace in Syria before. We have put our guns down before and wound up on the right side of justice before. We have reached across tables and aisles and walked across streets to be good samaritans to perfect strangers before. We have reached even deeper into our hearts to pray for our enemies before. The have-nots have been made rich at the hands of the have-it-alls before and the have-it-alls have received as much in return from the have-nots. We have mustered up within ourselves the power to speak well of those we agree with without also having to speak ill of those we don’t. We have done this before.
In the Christian tradition Christmas arrives in the mystery of an Almighty God who doesn’t ask us if we have the means to protect and defend him. This God doesn’t ask if we share his beliefs or even have any beliefs at all. Where we go to church, mosque or temple is secondary to whether we do go and if so, why do you go and how is it making you more gracious? This God neither asks nor cares about our leanings—right, left, gender, political, theological or otherwise. Do you think I’m a man or woman? This God says I was born a baby, so were you, can’t we leave it at that? This God doesn’t ask if we have enough money with which to buy him some food and clothing. This God asks only if we’re willing to share what little bit we do have. This God doesn’t ask if we can first get it together in our marriages and prioritize our commitments accordingly before he’ll come through the door and make a home with us.
At Christmas God puts his own faith in our humanity on the line. Entering the world like we all do as a baby, God puts the eternal at the mercy of the calendar. At the end of nine months, give or take a day or two, God will have to come. To parents who aren’t ready, delivered by a virgin of all things! And if a virgin birth seems half-baked and laughable; if it defies all logic and reason; if we know it to actually be implausible, I think this is the way God would have it be. If nothing else a virgin birth is God’s version of storming the castle. It happens on God’s terms, without warning and with a force that topples the powerful, dumbfounds the scholar, and lifts up the lowly. And yet, in the virgin birth God chooses to go it our way, leaving himself no exit plan, no way to back out should things not go well.
And we know things won’t go well, for things often don’t. The fact is, precious little in our world is likely to make it, including our marriages. But this isn’t the hardest part. The hardest part perhaps is that that which does make it is going to change almost entirely. When all is said and done, the things that remain will be nearly unrecognizable to us; ghosts of a past once loved. We will look at these things through squinted eyes and wonder how and why they betrayed us, and how and why we could still love them. So it goes with spouses, children, and even newborn babies.
But this is what Christmas means to me: everything will be okay because it’s been okay before.
As I sit here typing, Christmas Day has actually come and gone. I suppose this means ho-ho is over and ho-hum has returned. Except my children are lying on the living room floor building the Legos Santa brought them. Soon they’ll skip out the back door to take a swing ride on this unusually warm December day. Watching them play I can’t help but think, So this is what becomes of hope.
We dig our gift out from under the tree, unsure at first of what it is and disappointed at what it is not. Give it time, tinker with it though, and in our disappointment we may also discover a certain wonder and curiosity rising up within us—the hopefulness of what it could yet be. Of course, in our discovery we may also find that the gift is indeed what it is—a gift, yes, that ought to be handled with gratitude and gentleness, but alas, something that neither can nor ever will be changed. A gift that despite our best calculations will never save our failed expectations. We will need to return the gift to the place from which it came, give it away to someone who needs it more, or appreciate it for what it is.
In the case of my friend, I don’t know which it is. A spouse is hardly something you dig out from under a tree and unwrap (at least not in my part of the world). So some will say then that he and his wife should have seen it coming. They should have thought more carefully about their vows, dated longer, had a few more get-to-know you conversations before saying, I do. And now that they have, it’s too late to back out. Live with it the way it is.
I don’t know. Marriage can be a deadly mixture of fits and starts, of speechless joy and groaning anger. We wake up next to the one person we swore we’d always be honest with only to find that our honesty is going to wreck us. And while loyalty may have its place and persistence can pay off, while that which doesn’t kill us usually does make us stronger, those who preach loyalty and persistence at all costs are just playing the fools. What is required is hope. Hope is what the ancients called the sum total of suffering, perseverance, and character. In other words, hope does not say, “Forget about what happened yesterday and today. Tomorrow will be better.” Hope does not bury its head in the sand or wish upon a star. Hope does not plow ahead. Rather, hope demands that we look back over yesterday and today and take stock of our wounds. Hope considers the wreckage of our lives and asks, how did this happen? Who’s responsible? And yet, hope plays neither the victim nor the jury, for hope knows it will do us no good to lick our wounds or place blame. Like Almighty God, hope is concerned for who we’ve become.
If hope is born of suffering, suffering, we know, changes us both inside and out. It fundamentally alters our self-confidence as well as our relationship to neighbors, friends, and community. That suffering results in perseverance may be a grotesque assumption. Perseverance, however, is not at all what we think or say it is: our ability to take a few licks. Perseverance is not a measurement of our ability to beat all odds and go it alone. Above all, perseverance is a matter of our continued trust in others. Despite the number of times we’ve been kicked, punched, and thrown to the ground, can we continue to trust others? In short, if suffering does lend itself to perseverance and perseverance to hope, than the continued existence of hope in the world depends upon you and me and our daringness to trust each other as signs of goodness and mercy still. Give up this trust and we become critics and enemies to one another. Hold fast to it and suddenly a whole new world order becomes possible.
For the sake of my friend this is where I’d like to add that the same ones who told us that suffering, perseverance, and character add up to equal hope, they have also told us that the end of hope is the total loss of disappointment. Hope does not disappoint us. Regret may remain; sadness and scars, too. In a strange twist of understanding, love itself may force us to go our separate ways. These are the awful side effects of having hoped at all. Still, hope does not disappoint us. So go forth. Suffer, trust, be trusted, rest up, then move along and do it all over again. Until you find yourself somewhere down the road where the nights don’t feel so long and dark anymore, where hope becomes you, and where at last you can remember a time when everything was okay, and when everything was yet to be.
PleaseGrace 