The Days Between and an Ensign

 

We are in the days between the Octave of Christmas and Epiphany. These are waiting days. For the first time we have taken out the Three Elders, or Three Kings or Three Wise Ones, incensed them and petitioned them. They are on their way to Bethlehem. We are in this hard world where anything might happen where there is, to be sure, much suffering and it is easy to say there is no God. Indeed, by any normal bar there seems to be no God, no one protecting us from ourselves or from the random evil of men. It is as if anything could happen and anything does. In the magical world, knowing this, we call upon our allies, the ancestors and spirits, the small gods and the great ones, the elements and the Mighty One to be our defense. Thinking of this whole time of year, the year's beginning and its ending,we ask where God is and see in the Christ Child the God who consents to be born into the midst of this mess and madness. He is witness and participant in this. What it means, what this does--which often seems to be very little--is the mystery of Christmas

There is the general and primal agreement that the purpose of Christ is deliverance, redemption from sin and the door to heaven by his sacrifce. I do not believe this and those who gathered around the celebration of Christmas saw the same thing, for on the pole of Christmas, the redemption of the world is that Christ has entered it, the redemption of human beings, that he is one of them, the door to heaven opened when he came from into the Virgin's womb. We experience not only resurrection, but re birth. The two are one. As the Marys came to anoint the body of Jesus and found him gone, so the Magi come to give him gifts and then bed him be gone. In the midst of this ruined world, the Christ Child has set his court.

“And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner to the people; For the Gentiles shall seek Him, And His resting place shall be glorious.”

Isaiah 11. 10

When I imagine this ensign, this banner, it is ragged. It stands above a ruined battle field and calls out to a few people. It is not mighty, but betokens mighty beginnings from all these ashes.