God with us

Christmas 2019: Most Welcome

I’ve just had a wonderful weekend in the bosom of my birth family. Five of seven Prescott siblings spent time together at Lake McConaughy in the Nebraska sand hills. It has become a sort of tradition as we make our ways from eastern Colorado and eastern Nebraska to meet in the middle. It is the way we spend Christmas together, if not actually on Christmas day. The next generation and their significant others join us and are not too put off by the goofiness and teasing of those who are now the elders.

Yup. With Susan crossing over to her sixth decade in a few months, we are now officially a majority of sixty-somethings.

Prescott siblings 1966. FIrst Christmas without mom.

That seems weird as I contemplate the Christmases of our youth. Our gang of seven kids would descend upon Grandpa and Grandma Piskac’s home along with the cousins who are the children of my dad’s siblings. I can only remember it vaguely because I was so young, but I think my grandparents on that side must have been saints to invite such mayhem into their house. People were everywhere! As we got older, and grew to ten, it moved to our house. How those gatherings can still make me smile as I remember the fort of presents around the tree and Aunt Hon’s Christmas tree cake and Aunt Tillie’s box of perfect cookies. And people were everywhere! When Jana and I bought a house to ease the burden on our parents, the celebration moved to Chicago Street. Potluck food! More Christmas cookies! Even more cousins! People were everywhere!

I appreciate the quietness of Christmas now, as Jana, Steve and I will open our gifts on Christmas day after spending Christmas Eve at the candlelighting service at our church. The advent wreath will be fully lit: purple, purple, pink and purple, for hope, peace, joy and love. The center white candle will also glow with the incarnation, the presence we have anticipated and waited for these past weeks. The quiet singing of Silent Night, Holy Night, as the church family passes the light from candle to candle has come to represent for me the perfect experience of oh holy night, the night that Christ was born. Because it was quiet, right? Says so in the song.

I have come to believe that it is especially those moments, in the bosom of family gathered, whether birth family, adopted family or church family, that is the Christmas story of Christ’s birth. In traveling back and forth to the Middle East for almost ten years, I have been a grateful student of those of who live in that context. They live and raise families in the place where Christ was born. They introduced me to a scholar named Kenneth Bailey who gave me a whole new vision of how that holy night was experienced by the family of Jesus, the Immanuel, God-with-us. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a silent night!

We think of the words of Luke 2:7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,” and believe that Jesus was born to his parents alone in the night, rejected by everyone. Oh, that innkeeper! How rude! But read that link and discover this word: kataluma. That is the Greek word used in the passage that is not the same word for inn used in the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a word that describes a part of a typical house of that place and time where guests would stay. At this time in the world, all were gathering for the census and people coming from all over would go to their ancestral homes for the count.

In other words, Joseph’s family’s home was packed! People everywhere! No room in the kataluma, because the house was stuffed! Middle Eastern hospitality says, “Family! Come in anyway! All we have left is the place where we brought the animals in to warm and be warm, but you are most welcome!”

That’s where Jesus was born…in the bosom of family. Most welcome.

“Most welcome” are two words I hear over and over as I travel to be in the bosom of family in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Right now it is nine time zones ahead of me and the darkness of night has settled in there. Candles are being lit. Hymns are being sung. And the darkness of war and protest and violence does not overcome the light that is born this night. If I was there, I would be most welcome, and so would you. We would gather around that manger and marvel at the gift of God-with-us.

Jesus is born in the bosom of family. Oh come, let us adore him. You are most welcome.

Encounter

Baalbek, Temple of the Sun, 2010

Beirut, Lebanon, is a fascinating city. There are places we have found to visit once that draw us back again and again. One of those is the Sursock Museum. It was once the home of the Sursock family (funny how they named it after them…) and is a grand old three-story Lebanese home, now filled with modern art. Mr. Sursock and his family were great patrons of encouraging and collecting modern art and every time we come there is a new display. This trip was no different. I have encountered two rooms that are my favorites. One usually has a great collection of old photos, much older than the rest of the art in the place. On Friday, there were late 19th and early 20th century sepia photos of Baalbek, a place I visited in 2010. The color quality of the old photos seemed to match my 2010 versions; the sun was so bright the day I was there that any color simply washed away in its brightness, sacrificed as it were in the Temple to the Sun. The other room is a beautiful old salon with benches that curve around a small fountain. You can just imagine sitting there with a good book and wiling away the hours escaping that same sun on a hot summer day.

After I scanned the Baalbek photos and poked my head into the salon, I walked a bit farther down the corridor and came across this painting. It is called Encounter and it is by Amine al Bacha, the artist whose work was the feature display of the Sursock. I was entranced by the face-to-face encounters he depicted. Except for the one pair of humans, they are all birds, which I found to be kind of whimsical, as I don’t think I have ever seen birds gaze into each other’s eyes. I noticed that in some of the blocks of the painting they were farther apart and some closer together. They are even touching beaks in one block. They are encountering each other, maybe for the first time, or maybe for the second or third. And I love how the distance closes.

This is how I have experienced my own encounters as I have traveled in these places. The first time in 2010, I encountered new people from a distance. I encountered my roommate, my team members, the church people we met, first in shy conversations and then near the end in nose-to-nose embraces. We encountered each other in those spaces and drew closer to one another in deep relationships. That first roommate is now my dear friend and sister, Barbara Exley. Those team members are faithful women who have gathered me in by Facetime to pray with me over my continued travels. Our faithful leader and my now mentor and friend Marilyn Borst, along with The Outreach Foundation, have enabled me to encounter the churches in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq in ways that help me understand that the body of Christ is much bigger than my church in Omaha, Nebraska. In their midst, I have encountered Emmanuel – God-with-us – who closes the gap between us that our sin and failings create.

Past the painting of encounter, I discovered a series of paintings Mr. al Bacha did of the last supper, a meal we celebrate and remember every time we have communion. We encounter that same Jesus in the bread broken and the cup raised. That is the place where the gap is closed. And we all are invited to the table to encounter our brokenness and his sacrifice that forgives and heals and redeems us. It was fitting today that in Tripoli, Lebanon, we encountered him again. The words were in Arabic, but the breaking of the bread and the raised cup are universal. He drew us to each other as we shared the elements, and we were all drawn closer to him.

Rev. Nuhad Tomeh and Rev. Rola Sleiman offer the words of institution.

Whether for the first time, or the second, or the thirteenth, I remain grateful for these encounters and the opportunity to meet Jesus face to face.