Just Another Day?

Christmas Day is, in reality stripped of that collection of emotion, history and sentiment which make it such an adored day on the calendar, a collection of just a few short hours which every year seem to pass by quicker. No sooner have you digested the best and biggest meal of the year, than it's time to get under the blankets to sleep it off neath the wrapping of sheet and duvet as we enter Boxing Day, the holiday after Christmas in many parts of the Christian world. But the birthday of no ordinary boy means that Christmastide proper, which runs for another eleven days yet, can be no ordinary feast, so we should rightly join the celebration and keep on hurrying down to Bethlehem.

The birthday "bit" is now over for another year- at least as far as the UK is concerned. On the other hand, if you're one of my American readers or maybe even watching the ocean swell break on the shores of the Pacific as you read this on Christmas night, you are fortunate indeed to be enjoying the special feel of that evening, and pondering still perhaps like the shepherds and the wise men the mystery of it all.

Not in that poor lonely stable,
With the Oxen standing by
We shall see him,
but in Heaven
Sat at God's right hand on high
When like stars his children crowned
All in white, shall wait around

I can still hear the descant notes struggling now as if to pass through the celestial ceiling into eternity's portal, just 36 hours ago now but it could have been an eternity away. The strange way in which all time seems to roll into one at this time of the year, like wool used to knit a Christmas jumper, is part of the special magic of the season for me. Yet Mrs Cecil Frances Alexander never intended Once in Royal David's City to be a hymn just for singing at Christmas actually. Its underlying message is timeless and relevant to every day of every life as it has been for two millennia. Though you'll rarely hear it done so in church, it could actually be sung on any day of the year, and that is part of its brilliance- and the brilliance of the Christmas story.

For we're dealing with events which weave together the past, present and future of all humanity- whatever our race, colour or creed. I'm writing this in the wee small hours of a dark December day in Southern England, the world around me still but for the ticking of a Christmas present clock from many years ago and the clicking of my own chubby fingers on the keyboard. Yet somewhere on another shore, in another country even beyond the reach of Google Earth, souls who once lived and breathed as I do are celebrating for us, with us, day after day, until He comes again, making music which will still be sounding long after the last organ stop is closed on the the final chord of Christmas 2005. For they lived and died for and with their faith, just as the first Christian martyr St Stephen did back in the first century. His feast is the one we celebrate now, feeding on leftover turkey and trying, maybe, to keep the peace of Christmas Day going on in our domestic life for just another few hours before the holy atmosphere has quite dissipated. And meanwhile, some of us might actually get round to giving the little boxes of love we could not find the time or energy to open and wrap on Christmas Day!

Stephen had seen Jesus, not in Bethlehem, nor in Nazareth, but as a grown thirty-something man doing the work he was born to do.He had seen, worshipped and believed in Jesus and accepted him as his Messiah. Tragically for Stephen's earthly life, others did not share his view, and indeed mercilessly pursued him with sticks if not stones which did break bones. The names that people call us, and the impressions we so often form, do hurt us actually. Put your hope in the God of the manger and the God of the cross, however, and there is a life waiting even beyond death- which ought to cause us all to cry "Alleluia" as loudly as the master Handel did with his own timeless musical celebration of The Messiah.

I guess looked at with the eyes of faith and a long view like a GPS gazing on earth, Christmas might also be called Crossmas. Like all of us, actually, Jesus was destined to give up his last one day all too soon- but he gave his all so that there might be life for all, in all its fulness, now and forevermore, i.e. both sides of death.

This Boxing Day will be the proper remembrance in many churches and on other shores from Africa to the islands of Asia of the death which came suddenly, unexpectedly and seemingly without merchy to numbers still impossible to count accurately, twelve months ago. The Indian ocean tsunami was a reminder of what a precious gift life is, yet wrapped in only flesh and bones which need to be protected and safe from harm.

Our Boxing Day response in 2005 might seem all too small, but it can still be given with love, whether of wallet or words. Prayer can and still does bring a relief which no human agency alone can handle, vital though this is. Stephen knew this, as he saw his wonderful vision of Jesus, sat at God's right hand on high, before his life was taken by those who knew not what they were doing, as it so often has been through the centuries in war and tragedy.

Yet beneath the horrors which the workaday world so quickly brings back to our consciousness after the dreamy romantic visions and imagery of Christmastide are gone for another year, lie the unexpected happenings, the miraculous healings, changes of heart, turn in world events and ordinary human stories, that our world still brings. It brings the heart-rending and yet heart-challenging words of forgiveness from grieving mother Gee Walker, following the conviction of her son's racist killers a few weeks before Christmas. Or the astounding grace with which the parents of devout Catholic Abigail Witchell showed to her presumed attacker who later took his own life. Several thousand more such stories happen everyday, unheralded by trumpets, unreported in the media. But they are the reason why I, and even a devout Jew called Saul, later come back to the boy born in a barn, and the man muredered on a mount, day after day. Saul's story may be for another day, but for the moment, let's just remember, indeed, that God is for life, not just for Christmas.