In these Advent days, as we anticipate the coming joy of Christmas, I have been reflecting on the characters in the Christmas story who stand on the margins. Their story is intertwined with Christ's coming and their way of being has something to teach us about our own role in life and connection to Jesus's coming into this world. Join me in reflecting in my latest column for Global Sisters Report. Wishing you all blessings and grace in this holy season; may we each embrace the Light and find what it can illumine in our lives and our world.
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For weeks, I have been waiting on a set of Christmas cards to arrive at my local card shop. They're not covered in glittering trees and they don't feature the holy family. No, there's no sign of Christmas on them at all... unless you know what you're looking at. Each card has a few simple shepherds gathered in a field, above them a star shines and around them sheep graze. Little lines of gold provide a flourish and lead the eye toward a town in the distance.
Fittingly, the cards have taken their time arriving, much
like many things this year. And as I anxiously await their arrival, these
shepherds have reminded me that we each have a part to play in the Christmas
story.
Advent is a season of waiting and of anticipation. We hear
John the Baptist signal what is to come and hear stories of dreams and visions
that anticipate the future. In the midst of all of this, I find myself waiting
on Christmas cards and wondering about the stories these ancillary characters
have to tell us.
What would the Christmas story look like through their
eyes? How would shepherds recount what they found? How did Joseph make sense of
his long journey? What were the wise men thinking as they traveled to and from
Bethlehem?
As the old saying goes, we are all the stars of our own
story. Everything that happens, in our point of view, revolves around us. The
people we know, the relationships we build, the troubles we face, the tales we
tell — they all, in one way or another, revolve around us.
This is how we make sense of our lives. We relate
interpersonally and intrapersonally and at the center of each of those ways of
relating is our very self. More often than not, we are the hero of the tales we
tell. Even when we aren't, when we admit wrongdoing or are the butt of the
joke, the story still revolves around us. This is why it can feel so revelatory
when we see things from someone else's perspective, when we realize that their
reaction has nothing to do with us or worse, that their reaction has everything
to do with us, but not a part of ourselves that we readily recognize.
In that vulnerable position, when we are shaken from the
center of the universe — with the world revolving around us — we recognize that
there's more to the story than we can see. We recognize that, in other people's
lives, we are the supporting players in a cast of characters; we've been cast
in a role we never auditioned for.
This realization brings with it a certain mix of liberty and
humility. Whatever part we're playing, we can't really control how it's
received. It's also a reminder that even while our story is unfolding, we're a
part of a thousand other narratives around us. Perhaps the best way forward
then, is to be the best version of ourselves we can be.
The same might be said of the Christmas story.
The main character in that story is God, precisely in the
person of Jesus Christ. The story we tell about Christmas revolves around
Christ's birth, the joining of heaven and earth, as God became one with us in a
very real way. There in Bethlehem amid the hubbub of the census, a baby was
born. That birth changed the world and in the story of it, we stand in awe,
recognizing our place and relationship to it all.
We may not be shepherds or innkeepers or expectant parents
or people who turn to the stars for guidance, but we are still there in that
moment, our lives intertwined with theirs. As we reflect on the story of
Christmas and prepare ourselves for Christ's coming in that moment (and so many
other everyday moments of our lives), it's a good reminder that we are not the
main character. We are not the Light. Jesus is. We, rather, reflect the Light
of Christ to the world.
Our call as disciples — as real people living lives of faith
in the real world — is to play our part in the story of Christmas to the best
of our ability. We may not have auditioned for the role that we have, but in
our lived belief, we have surely accepted our part in this play. Like Mary
offering her fiat or the shepherds following the command of the angels, we
witness Christ's coming into the world and are offered the grace of
accompanying that incarnation.
Thinking in such a way is not to make ourselves the center
of the story of Christ's coming but to acknowledge that that coming is integral
to our own story. We are called to be in relationship with this One who became
human. One like us ... and like the shepherds ... and like the wise men. We are
not meant to be messiahs, but we can herald the coming of the reign of God. We
do so in the way we live and the story we tell with our lives.
In so doing, we become supporting characters in the
Christmas story, characters with our own story, a story that can be revelatory
of God's union with humanity if we only let it. Accepting this role is a
liberating and humbling experience, one that embraces the joy of God's love and
works so that that Love is evident in every situation. It may not always be a
glamorous or triumphant call but it is ours, as messy as a manger and as
inspired as a voice crying out in the wilderness.
S
