After Christmas

When all that remains is to demand a miracle

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Say what you want about Christians, but we know how to close out a calendar year. As the days grow shorter, the world grows darker, and the year itself is on the brink of death, we fill the land with lights that symbolize the breaking in of light divine. In the endless dark, we double down on light. In the days of despair, we double down on hope. For it is at this time that we celebrate the coming of one who will save us all.

But even for those who strictly observe all twelve days of Christmastide and don’t enter Epiphanytide until January 12, the feast is now over. The lights are turned off, the greenery is taken out to the curb, Netflix is no longer recommending that Yule Log, and Bing Crosby is getting fewer plays on Spotify. As much as those December events may have stressed us out, we now realize why we kept ourselves so busy, for all that stands before us now is the frigid winter stretching out into the distance. For those who, like me, live in a northern clime, these are gray days—the true times that try men’s souls.

Even plants that grow in the radioactive soil of Chernobyl cannot abide the cold of winter. Everything is dead, or at least it seems that way. It is enough to throw the most hopeful among us into depression. We have no energy to fulfill our resolutions. Heaven help us if we turn on the news! And if we are being entirely honest with ourselves, the Christmas season was not an endless parade of delights.

Well, perhaps your December was thoroughly jolly, but mine was a decidedly Charlie Brown affair. The weeks of preparation were clouded by sickness and family drama. I missed out on most of the preliminary celebrations. I had to endure that most nerve-wracking and self-flagellating season for a writer: the release of a book. More than once, I wanted to exclaim, “Good grief!” And even when I was rejoicing with loved ones, I was also thinking about people I cared about, with whom I enjoyed fellowship in the past, but who are now lost to death, distance, or discord.

I am hardly the first person to observe this tendency of the Christmas season to provoke as much grief as joy. In fact, I would not blame anyone for skipping this article, believing they’ve heard it all before. But if you have a few minutes to spare, come along for the ride.

A DEAD INSTITUTION

On the second day of Christmas, we loaded our car full of goods and made for the town of my youth. I do not often talk about my early years publicly, partially because I am wary of excessive disclosure, but also because some things went wrong in my hometown, and I am not looking to embarrass anyone or cast blame.

The story is one that most Christians who have been in the Church for a long time will recognize. A Christian ministry has a period of tremendous growth in which lives are changed for the better, the community benefits, and everything is generally on the up-and-up. Then a clash of personalities, difficult circumstances, or some combination thereof leads to increasing disintegration and the eventual breakup of said ministry. It is contentious because the people involved have all devoted themselves to the success of the ministry for years and are thus unwilling to see it suffer harm, however that might be defined. We have all seen it. A million variations, but always the same story.

Something like this happened at the church where I grew up. Once upon a time, the church started a school. From kindergarten through twelfth grade, I attended both the church and school, and while there were occasional concerns about whether the school would meet its budget (no shock for a small, independent, religious school), and church members sometimes questioned whether it was a ministry worth continuing, things were generally going well.

Then after I left to attend college out of state, a cascading series of events led to the church and school falling out with one another. I do not blame any one person or “side.” It was a complicated process as such things usually are. The result was that the church and school underwent an institutional divorce, and the school ended up staying in the beautiful building we had all spent my childhood fundraising to build, while the church had to move out.

As you can imagine, this process set friends against each other and caused people to leave one institution or the other. As I was generally absent from these events, I have been somewhat protected from the fallout, but it has certainly impacted me. During my childhood, I thought the ministry experienced success because we had a better grasp on biblical truth and leaders of greater integrity than other ministries that failed. What I know now is that success in Christian ministry often bears little or no connection to either of those things, at least in terms of earthly success. I also know that even those among us with the highest character are still, as Martin Luther famously put it, simul iustus et peccator: simultaneously just and sinner.

Every visit to my hometown since that happened has been somewhat different. The church I grew up in still exists, but I have not attended it in over a decade. The school I attended still exists, but I do not go back for homecoming or other events. I have rarely entered the building in which the church and school co-existed, but I did so on this Christmas visit. For another church now meets in that building on Sundays, my sister and her family attend it, and my infant nephew was being dedicated there on December 29.

So, I revisited the place of my youth, and as on previous occasions, I felt a profound sense of grief. I could not help but think of that verse: “How deserted lies the city, / once so full of people!”¹ True, the building is still full of people during certain hours of the week, but it is not full of all the people. Though the church and the school survive, something has been lost: the collective ministry. In that respect, we may call this a dead institution.

DEAD RELATIONSHIPS

I have already mentioned that friendships were broken due to the splintering of that childhood institution. Sadly, they were not the only dead relationships I was thinking about this Christmas. For we also had the family drama I mentioned: a dear relative of ours who essentially went no-contact and did not attend the Thanksgiving or Christmas gatherings. I will give no more details because you do not need them. You already understand this pain, because it has most likely happened to you.

You know what it is like to have an empty place at the dinner table. You know what it is like to fear getting a phone call from someone even as you long for it. You know what it is like to worry, and worry, and worry about someone you love, uncertain what kind of darkness has grabbed hold of them. You know what it is like to wonder if there is anything you can do to help, if you have only made things worse, if reconciliation is ever possible.

I also had the experience of getting Christmas cards from friends who now live far away and have not attempted to keep up our friendship across distance. (Here I must confess myself also guilty at times.) But the Christmas card that affected me most came from someone who has never lived close to me, but who was nevertheless a friend of sorts. Sadly, we have been out of contact for the past few years due, I suspect, to relationships killed by discord.

This was another case of a Christian ministry where people who had worked together for years fell out with one another. I was not directly at the center of that schism, but I was close enough to see and feel the hurt it caused, and I no longer hear from those involved—perhaps because they doubt my loyalty, perhaps because they never considered us close, or perhaps for some other reason I cannot guess. Yet, I have occasionally exchanged Christmas cards, longing for reconciliation even as I doubt it is ever possible on this earth.

Though God continues to connect me with other people with whom I can partner in ministry and friendship, I will never forget those friends I had and the good they did me. When I saw the name on that card, I felt a pang of grief in my heart, wishing that things could be different, wondering what I might have done wrong. Whether by distance or discord, they are dead relationships.

THE DEAD AND DYING

Nowhere did the theme of death hit me nearest this Christmas season than in my final festive gathering of the year. We met with my father’s side of the family, and for the most part, it was a wonderful time. The house was filled with the laughter of adults sharing memories and the giggles of a new crop of children as they played together. There was good food, good company, and good fellowship.

But here too the darkness managed to creep in, coloring our celebration with grief. For this was the first time we had met since the death of our family patriarch. Both my grandparents have now gone on to heaven along with one of my aunts. We feel those losses acutely. My father played a video of our Christmas gathering back in 1994, and we saw my grandfather, grandmother, and aunt all seated in a row, smiling and laughing. How we love them! How we miss them!

Yet, I found myself struggling most of all to deal with the current health struggles of another dear aunt who was in attendance. For the past five years, she has been fighting heroically against an aggressive cancer that has now penetrated her liver and brain. Recently, she was told there are no more research studies for her to join. Palliative care is all that remains to improve her quality of life.

I confess that while I have witnessed and prayed for the cancer battles of many godly people over the years, there are few if any that have affected me like this one. I accept suffering and death as the results of living in a world under the curse of sin. My theology has a clear place for these experiences, and I do not consider it surprising or cosmically unfair that the righteous should be afflicted in the same manner as the wicked.

But if you knew my aunt—the warmth of her personality, the strength of her Christian faith, the thousands of people around the world she has helped through various charities, the many times she has ventured into places tourists avoid and endured conditions most would refuse—you would join me in wondering why God should choose this person of all people to suffer like this.

Why not give this cancer to Vladimir Putin? Why not allow my aunt to live to the standard age of eighty so her grandchildren could have her there for all the big moments and everyday experiences? I know God’s ways are higher than mine, and I trust him completely, but I admit I have felt anger over this: not a faithless anger, but anger nonetheless.

As I sat there enjoying some time to chat with my aunt, who will soon be enduring her latest radiation treatment (no longer in the hope of a cure, but merely a reduction in her horrific headaches), I felt much like Ebenezer Scrooge visiting the Cratchit household with the Ghost of Christmas Present. There Scrooge sees the sickly Tiny Tim, whose plight affects him deeply. When Scrooge asks what will happen to Tiny Tim, the Ghost says he foresees a future Christmas in which there will be an empty chair where Tiny Tim once sat. Sure enough, when Scrooge returns to the house with the Ghost of Christmas Future, he learns of Tiny Tim’s death.

It is the most poignant moment in a story filled with them, setting up a turnaround so brilliant, I saw people in my social media feeds quoting it all through December. I imagine it in the tones of Gonzo in The Muppet Christmas Carol: “Tiny Tim…who did not die!”

People love that line because it suggests death can be averted if we take the right steps (like Scrooge) or receive divine intervention (as in one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s eucatastrophes). For a loved one on the brink of death to recover and live to a ripe old age is the ultimate earthly blessing. Yet, the fact remains that many people do not share the fate of Tiny Tim, and as I sat there with my aunt, I wondered very much if she would be joining us next Christmas, or if her chair would be empty.

“My aunt…who did not die!” Oh, how I wanted to believe it. She spoke of her need for a miracle: that at this point, there is no series of “right steps” human beings can take to save her, and only divine intervention can restore her to health. She swore that if this miracle were to happen, she would share it with the entire world to testify to the power of God. Yet, she also spoke of her willingness to accept whatever comes. “I know where I’m going,” she told me, as if it were a thing as certain as popping out to the grocery store. Even now, in the valley of the shadow of death, her faith in God and his promises is firm.

I realized something important at that family gathering. Initially, I was afraid to speak it, for I did not want to take away from her hope for a miracle. In the end, I decided to share. I told her, “I want that miracle for you, and I will pray for it, but at this point in my life, the miracle I need to see is Christians being faithful until the end. I need to see the Spirit of God truly working. Because for a person to persevere in faith is as much a miracle of God as making someone’s cancer go away.” She agreed with me.

THE DEATH OF DEATH

“We who must die demand a miracle.”

– W.H. Auden, For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio

How has my aunt managed to persevere in faith through this trial that has no doubt tempted her to “curse God and die,” in the words of Job’s unhelpful wife? Because she places her hope in resurrection, even as I do.

“At this point in my life, my Christian faith can be summarized in the phrase, ‘We believe in the resurrection of the dead,’” I said as we sat there together. I spoke to her as I have often written to you all. It is not enough to experience heaven as a disembodied spirit. I have seen too many people endure bodily agony to think such a fate is just and fitting. The only thing that can justify God is real, bodily resurrection: the granting of new life to dead institutions, dead relationships, and dead people. When I speak of resurrection, I mean nothing less than the restoration and reconciliation of all things in Christ.

Absent a miracle, my aunt will soon need resurrection, even as my grandfather, grandmother, and other aunt need it. One day, I too will need to be resurrected. In fact, it is not only upon death that I will need it, for I am already wounded deeply by the presence of sin in this world. I ache and groan in my body and soul. I long for the coming of Christ’s kingdom, the fulfillment of the promise, the restoration of all that is good in the New Heavens and New Earth.

Christmas is over. The good news of Christ’s arrival has come and gone. And yet, much remains.

I spent my few free moments in the holiday season reading through Fleming Rutledge’s Advent sermons. She does an excellent job of reminding us that the Church’s entire existence is between the two Advents of Christ. We have seen a preview of the kingdom, but not its full inauguration. We have received a promise but await its fulfillment. Our present work is to endure in hope, knowing that at any moment, our Lord and Savior will return. We must oppose the powers of evil in this world, sharing the good news of Christ’s victory. We must endure these present sufferings, including the destruction of our flesh.

The Christian may and should ask God for bodily healing, but it is never guaranteed. God is within his rights to allow us to die. That is what it means to live in this present age. But there are two demands we can make of God without reservation or doubt, for he has solemnly promised to grant them: the forgiveness of sins and the resurrection of the dead.

Resurrection is what God owes us. He owes it because he promised it, and thus the very integrity of his name rests upon it. My aunt has the right to demand that of God, even as I do. In these days after Christmas, as I endure the hours of waiting, I am looking ahead to Easter: my annual reminder that as Christ was raised, so we will be.

For all that is wrong will be made right. All that is dead will be brought to life. The eternal winter will end. The King will come again.

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1. Lamentations 1:1. From the 1995 New American Standard Bible, copyright The Lockman Foundation.