The Christmas Extrapolation

For the Christmas episode of The Big Bang Theory sitcom this year, the writers of the show had taken their inspiration from one of – if not the most – famous of all Christmas-time movies: It’s a Wonderful Life. If you have seen the movie, you know that it is based on Jimmy Stewart’s character of a man who thought his life had no meaning and that the world would have been no different had he not been born. He is then shown what the world would have looked like without his being born, and to say the least, he was quite surprised to see the great meaning and significance of his life.

 

So the writers of the hottest sitcom on television took their inspiration from this movie. To give a little background, especially if you have never seen The Big Bang Theory, it is show based on the social lives of, well, some of the most brilliant and astute young men in the fields of science, superheroes, and comic books. In other words, it’s a show about nerds. The show centers greatly on the obsessive compulsive disordered genius, Sheldon Cooper – Dr. Sheldon Cooper – who insists on his own way based on his own logic and world perception, which is highly scientifically empirical and therefore supersedes human emotion or human reason. As a result, he’s pretty much an annoying headache to the people around him. His roommate and closest friends are continually getting caught up in Sheldon’s eccentricities as his demands that his own personal habits must be yielded to by his friends – Sheldon is intentionally controlling of his favorite place on the sofa, what meals he eats depending on the day of the week, Saturday night laundry, and a fiercely regimented bathroom schedule. Sounds like the ideal roommate, right?

 

In the Christmas episode, Sheldon goes back home to east Texas to welcome the arrival of his sister’s baby. While he was out of town, his all but plutonic girlfriend, Amy, takes the opportunity to challenge Sheldon’s friends to realize how none of them would know each other had it not been for knowing Sheldon. The rest of his buddies would never have met and become friends. The two couples who fell in love, one of them being married, would never have met. They make fun of Sheldon and complain eternally about his annoying habits and lack of social graces, but their happiness- without them giving it much thought – is very much attributable to their annoying, nerdy best friend.  A good lesson perhaps for all of us, that the least likely of people in our lives may just have the greatest impact on our happiness.

 

Now there is no Jim Parsons or Jimmy Stewart character in the Christmas narrative – but like these stories of human interaction and dependency, the narrative of God’s coming to us as a vulnerable infant is very human. The plight of Joseph and Mary, a baby born in harsh and dangerous circumstances – to the mother and child both – is a harrowing ordeal. Why would God choose to enter humanity in such a way? If you or I were God, would we choose to become human in such a way? Most likely not. Most of us would choose to be American with all the amenities that make our lives easy. We would choose a large home a nice car, money in the bank, rewarding employment; status, respect, wealth, power and influence, etcetera, etcetera. Or would we choose poverty, danger, homelessness, outcast status, vulnerability – etcetera, etcetera. Again, most of us would choose the “good” life. So why would God come to us under these most precarious of circumstances? The answer, I believe, lies in the heart of God’s love and compassion for humanity. When we suffer, God suffers too. When our hearts are broken, God’s heart is broken too.

 

I think part of the difficulty we have in better understanding the magnificence of the nativity story, is partly that, one, we have heard the story so often that perhaps it has become rote for us; and second, we may have difficulty imagining the holy family outside the context of the Bible.

 

Playwright and novelist Dorothy Sayers believed strongly that the reason why people could not see the drama in the gospel was because they saw Jesus and his disciples living in the Bible or in the stained glass windows of churches. In her essay “Nativity Play” she writes, “But they did not live in the Bible; they lived in this confused and passionate world, amid social and political conditions curiously like those of the present day. Unless we can recapture a strong apprehension of that plain fact, they will forever remain for us an assemblage of wraiths and shadows.”

 

I think she makes a good point. Like the story of “It’s a Wonderful Life” and even silly portrayals of such in a Thursday evening sitcom, these biblical stories are stories of humanity; the human struggle to find fulfillment, meaning, and joy. The conquering of those things that threaten our finding of such fulfillment and joy has been part of our history from the beginning. Our problem in finding such fulfillment lies in the fact that we continue to look in all the wrong places to fill that void. We look to our own merit and our own achievements to find fulfillment. We have bought into the human tendency to believe that material and monetary wealth will satisfy us and bring us true happiness. Perhaps this is the reason God chose to enter the world as a poor, homeless infant to peasant Jews. Perhaps material and monetary wealth are traps – or worse, lies that we continually believe will eventually satisfy us, make us happy, make us less anxious and frustrated, eventually, bring us fulfillment.

 

I am sure that you have experienced this many times in your life: you walk into a store – any store – clothing, home goods, shoes, whatever; and an associate approaches you and says “can I help you find anything?” And your canned reply is, “No, just looking.” Particularly if I am shopping with my wife, this is certainly my response; and I say it with meaning!

 

But aren’t we all looking for something? I remember a priest, long ago before I became a priest myself, saying on Christmas Eve, “what brought you here tonight? What are you looking for?” The Rev. Anjel Scarborogh writes, “When we think about the birth of Christ beyond the biblical story of what happened and consider why it happened, it leads us back to the question, “Did you find what you were looking for?” Perhaps you haven’t considered that question in this context, but do so for just a moment.

 

You are here, in this church, on Christmas. Why did you come? You didn’t have to come, you know. Maybe some here are attending church on Christmas because it’s part of your family tradition; or maybe it was to appease parents or grandparents; or maybe some of you are just accustomed to regularly attending church. But regardless of why you think you are here, ponder in your heart for a moment what you are really seeking, because perhaps something deeper brought you here. What are you really looking for?

 

If we are honest, we all have a deep longing – a sense of something missing in our lives; some nagging feeling that we are incomplete, lacking, unfulfilled. We humans are consciously aware of our fragility, our finitude, our faults and our failings. It is a fearful thing to acknowledge this truth. Most of us spend our lives running away from this stark reality by attempting to fill this hole in our soul with anything that promises to fulfill or fix us.”

 

In this night, the real people that were Joseph and Mary were scared to death. They had no place to go as Mary was getting dangerously close to giving birth. No doctors. No midwife. No alternate plan or safety net. This young couple was on their own. But they were faithful and remained steadfast in their trust in God. Surely they had doubts – we all do. But they are models for us.

 

“Mary treasured all these things in her heart” to what Susanna Metz writes, “I’m sure she treasured the lovely things, the joy of the shepherds, the visit of the kings, the birth of her beloved Child. But she also treasured the troubling things, the questions, the fear, the tensions—she held them in her soul, dealing with them with courage and faith. If we could just do the same. If we could hold the lives of others in our own hearts, be concerned about women who give birth in desperate situations, in cold, unsafe places, in war areas, or wrapped in the fear of violence, we might learn to see as God sees, to love as God loves. We might learn how better to treasure many things in our hearts and let those treasures teach us to be more human.”

 

No matter what your life circumstances are this day, God called you here to speak a word of eternal life and love to you: a love that you didn’t have to earn or prove yourself worthy to receive. God’s movement is toward us and for us in the birth of Jesus Christ.

 

For whatever reason you did come this night: I’m glad you did. Come with your questions and doubts. Come with your fear and anxiety. Come as you are; as the very human person God breathed into being. And rejoice. For to you is born this day, a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.