Over Thanksgiving break I finally had some time to catch up on some recent movies with my family. We don’t get many moments when our whole family is together in the same place for more than a couple of hours at one time. So, we took advantage of the Thanksgiving Break and watched Mary Poppins Returns, and I gave it two thumbs up! Granted, it’s not as good as the original. I mean, what duo could be as good as Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke? Not many. But it was a wholesome movie with the powerful images and ideas we have come to connect with the benevolent Mary Poppins.
One scene was particularly striking when Mary Poppins let the kids lead the way home from the bank and they got seriously lost. In my estimation, the producers of Mary Poppins put this scene into the movie to show that the children of Michael Banks needed to go through and experience their own lostness and confusion after the death of their mother. By experiencing the misty, foggy, dark night, they were able to notice the places where light was peeking through the pain.
Here’s what Lin Manuel-Miranda, as Jack, the lamplighter, sang:
Let’s say you’re lost in a park, sure
You can give in to the dark or
You can trip a little light fantastic with me
When you’re alone in your room
Your choice’s just embrace the gloom
Or you can trip a little light fantastic with me
For if you hide under the covers
You might never see the day
But if a spark can start inside your heart
Then you can always find the way
So, when life is getting dreary
Just pretend that you’re a leerie
As you trip a little light fantastic with me
Now when you’re stuck in the mist, sure
You can struggle and resist or
You can trip a little light fantastic with me
Now say you’re lost in the crowd, well
You can stamp and scream out loud or
You can trip a little light fantastic with me
And when the fog comes rolling in, just
Keep your feet upon the path
Mustn’t mope and frown or worst lie down
Don’t let it be your epitaph
So, when life is getting scary, be your own illuminary
Who can shine the light for all the world to see
As you trip a little light fantastic with me
As we continue to ponder the Work of Christmas and this second section of Dr. Thurman’s poem, I can’t help but think that finding the lost and healing the broken not only applies for those living in pain and despair in Dallas, but also references the pain and despair in our own souls as well. We, in this room, are not immune to being lost and broken. And I think that Dr. Thurman, as a mystic, knew the value of coming to the mystery of God in prayer and in the transformation of the soul. And so, it is not only our jobs this Christmas to get those who have nowhere else to turn, with their backs up against the wall, to a place of healing and “foundness,” but we are also called as followers of the wandering Messiah, who had nowhere to lay his head, to be people who recognize our own brokenness and lostness and how that brings us closer to Jesus. We are called to follow the lost and broken One, the one who was beaten and battered on a cross because he dared to challenge the empire’s way of keeping people in submission and in surrender. So, we see, that just like us, Jesus was both lost and broken.
And as we ponder our own lostness and brokenness, knowing that the way through the pain will be long and heavy, we are reassured that Jesus came to earth as a baby, in the flesh, in the human condition that felt everything that we will ever feel, that every person will ever feel. Jesus has been there, and we can know that even though most days we feel lost, Jesus is walking with us. Even though we feel broken, Jesus is holding the pieces with us. Even though we feel alone, Jesus is patiently waiting. Even though we feel powerless, Jesus is holding us up. The work of Christmas reminds us that we are all lost and broken, just like our savior.
And I know for many of us, Christmas is a time when the emotions and the feelings come right to the surface. Many of us are really raw this time of year. We’ve had relatives, parents, siblings, and friends die this year. We know that this Christmas will be the first one without them. We are lost and we are broken. We don’t know if we are going to make it through the season without grief taking us out at the knees. Others of us have had cancer intrude in our bodies leaving us lost in emotional and physical pain and broken financially. Others of us have struggled to keep our marriages together as the weight of our jobs, kids, and responsibilities clouds our vision. We have unexplained medical conditions, broken family relationships, and mounting debt. How do we enter into this Christmas season knowing that we are very much the lost and broken people needing the work of Christmas in our own lives?
You see, the work of Christmas often eludes us because when we feel lost and broken, we often don’t know that there is a tomorrow. We are so burdened by the hurt and pain of today that we don’t realize that God gives us a tomorrow, a new start, a Christmas morning when the Spirit rests upon us even when we are afraid or alone. And that is what the season of Advent beckons us towards. Advent reminds us that we are waiting for something, expecting God to come and make all things right again. That’s what Advent means, to expectantly wait, to come. We can remember that no matter how bad things are today, Christmas will come and it will be what guides our actions and our lives. We have no choice but to look forward and work diligently to tend to the brokenness in our hearts and to tend to the brokenness in the world.
One commentator I read recently said that “Christmas is the promise of tomorrow, embodied in the adventure of today.” The Christ Child born among us is an adventure, a holy adventure in which we discover that the lost can be found, the broken can be made whole, the grieving can experience hope, the fearful can find love, those experiencing violence can know peace. Christmas calls us to look forward! Although we remember the savior of two thousand years ago, God is the voice of tomorrow. God reveals to us through the adventure of today that there is, indeed, a tomorrow!
And since we are promised a tomorrow where Jesus’ love, the power of Christmas, moves through the world, we must do everything we can to bring wholeness and healing to people today. That’s what Christmas is. Dr. Thurman sees this as Christmas as well. He says, “The symbol of Christmas – what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when clouds are heavy and foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe, when forced from its mother’s nest, it claims the right to life. It is the brooding presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked ways straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”[1]
You see Jesus did the work of Christmas when he stood up to preach in his hometown in Luke 4. He could’ve given a long and pedantic sermon, but instead read one passage from the Isaiah scroll. “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” That is our work, right here and right now. So, finding the lost and healing the broken means that we have work to do in our own lives this Christmas, but also in the lives of people in Dallas as we seek to companion our lost and broken selves with a lost and broken world.
Dr. Thurman tells the story of meeting an extraordinary man on a college campus where he was giving a series of lectures on religion. Each morning this gentleman sat in the front seat. He was differently abled, needing the aid of two huge crutches to walk. At the close of Thurman’s last lecture, the man approached him. “Mr. Thurman, you have been very kind to me during this week. I want to give you something. Will you come to my room this evening when you are through with your work?” Thurman agreed. In the meantime, Thurman asked another student about this man and was told that he was an older gentleman who earned his living by repairing shoes in a rickety shop at the top of the hill. And that some of the students referred to him as “Old Crip.”
With this information, Thurman entered his room in the late evening, and the old man was standing behind a chair supporting himself very unobtrusively. He asked, “Mr. Thurman, do you like Shakespeare? What is your favorite play?” Thurman said, “Macbeth.” Then, without missing a beat, the man recited for Thurman, from memory, the entire first act of Macbeth. And at Thurman’s direction, for over an hour, recited scene after scene from Shakespearian Tragedies. Thurman noted that this was an old, differently abled man who was earning his living by repairing shoes for college men who thought nothing of him. And so, Thurman says, “There is magic all around us. It may be that the person with whom you live every day or with whom you work has locked deep down within the answer to your own greatest need if you know how to ‘strike the rock aright.’”
And that’s what we get with the magic of the birth of the Christ Child. Many births had happened and many people claimed to be the Messiah. What was so special and so unique about this particular birth and this particular Messiah? It was that this Christ Child’s birth was something that breaks us from our self-centered ways and our neglect of the poor and outcast. The birth of Jesus meant that Christmas is the norm in God’s realm, the natural state of being. And that it is our consumerism, indifference, and fear of the vulnerable and our “greed-inspired” economics and actions that are the exceptions. If we live each day as if the only people that matter are those who have all of their stuff together, the ones who don’t have to worry about money, those who don’t experience hurt and pain, those who don’t have their backs against the wall, then we don’t see the Christ of Christmas among us. Because, according to Thurman, “Christmas comes [especially] to those with their backs against the wall, “ the working-poor shepherds, a family having to migrate to satisfy a dictator’s need for riches despite a mother’s pregnancy, infants murdered by a local ruler in his quest to destroy the Holy Child and his way of peace.”[2]
There is a tomorrow, for all of us, because we are on this adventure of the work of Christmas and are called to be Christmas people all year long. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you do, what you’ve done, or how many pieces you have picked up from your shattered life. God has come to the broken and the lost. God will come in a manger. God will become lost and broken. And because God came to be with us on Christmas, we must be people who find the lost and heal the broken too. Christ has come for everyone in this city, all of those with their backs against the wall who need care and acceptance and justice. And Christ has come for you, too.
“So, when life is getting scary, be your own illuminary
Who can shine the light for all the world to see
As you trip a little light fantastic with me.”
Amen.
[1] Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas & Other Celebrations (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1985), 3.
[2] Bruce Epperly, 72