Locating Love is Not Complicated

Reflections
December 27, 2009

In his book Leaving Home, Garrison Keillor has an essay titled, "Christmas Dinner." The story suggests that the primary function of Christmas gatherings is to argue politics, watch football and eat ourselves out of one wardrobe and into another. In a line which speaks volumes about his experience he writes, "You close your eyes and when you open them you could be six or you could be forty-two." For him the story of Christmas is something one can relate to and touch. The late theologian and Christian mystic, Dr. Howard Thurman takes a different approach. In his text, The Growing Edge, he writes of the mood symbol and quality" of Christmas, and of the "fullness of time," found in the person and ministry of Jesus. "As we look at the life of Jesus, we discover there was no great dazzling character to his daily living experience..." "He did a thousand little things, but all of them were infused with the most profound awareness of his life as a living instrument in the hands of God. He was available to God totally..." Thurman's point, and I dare say Keillor's, is hat the gift we are given by God in our Christmas tradition is remembrance. For all of Mr. Keillor's humor, one can sense in the weaving of his words the powerful bond he finds in relationships and how remembering Christmas dinner becomes more rich with the passage of time.

In faith, we remember that in the "fullness of time" God came to us in the person and presence of Jesus. In his life and ministry, Jesus shows us that love may have come down at Christmas, but it didn't stand still, rather it lives unto God and moves among people in real time.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601