Covid Christmas

 

If you’d been told, if I’d been told, that we’d be having another Covid Christmas this year— would we have believed it?

I wonder, as we celebrate Christmas–The Feast of the Incarnation–how the meaning of incarnation has changed for us during this time of pandemic. Incarnation—from the Latin “carne”–meat as in chili con carne—means God’s entry into our world in flesh. Not God out there, at some great distance, smiling benignly. Not a watchmaker God who has created the world, flung it into space, and stepped back. No, God chose to dive, to become fully immersed in the messiness and vulnerability of human life.

Messiness and vulnerability of human life: yes, we’ve seen that this year, as this pandemic moves throughout the world, as it affects us even here in Cook County.

Messiness and vulnerability of human life. We’ve seen that in new ways this year, or at least in more clearly, in our human communities. How can any kind of life together be sustained when people hold their personal autonomy as more important than care for the health of the whole? When anti-vaxers mistreat health care workers? When my own impatience and outrage seems to grow and grow? I/we need to find the resources to love.

Messiness and vulnerability of human life: We see growing evidence of a dire future for our planet—glaciers falling off Antarctica, tornadoes in Minnesota in December, fires and floods worldwide. I/we need ways to hope.

Messiness and vulnerability of human life: Institutions we took for granted—American democracy, voting rights, the peaceful transfer of power—are shaky. Where is my faith? Who is it in? I/we need faith for a future.

So, we “need a little Christmas, right this very minute”—but not so much ‘carols at the spinet’ as a recognition that what Christmas gives us is not glitter, not presents under a tree, but God present in the messiness and vulnerability of human life. And the promise of transcendent faith, hope and love that might show up in the most unlikely of places.

Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This month’s contributor is Mary Ellen Ashcroft, Vicar of Spirit of the Wilderness Episcopal Church.