Christmas Identity Crisis

Each year on the Sunday before Christmas I have an "identity crisis." Being one who is supposed to proclaim the good news I have a bit of a problem at Christmas time. What can be said about the Christmas story that has not already been said? Having a desire to do something that needs to be special and unique I come to a kind of crisis. What shall I do?

So, I decided years ago to simply tell the story. I do this by taking on the identity of someone "in" the story. I call it my Christmas monologue. The problem is that after I've been at a church for a few years all the characters are "used up." I've been the innkeeper, a shepherd, a wise man, Herod, Joseph, and even a stranger who finds himself as a guest in the inn on that fateful night. So, what was I to do this year?

I pondered the story. Was anyone else there? Then it hit me, those famous words that we have all heard from the days of childhood and bathrobed shepherds accompanied by wise men carrying gifts that look strangely like they were taken from somebody's jewelry cabinet: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered." Alas, someone had to register them. So this year I will be a "census taker in Bethlehem," which of course is simply another version of a dreaded "tax collector."

I just finished creating him. He is a lonely man who like all "characters" whom we think to be "bad" has a story. This census taker happens upon that scene in the stable and gets caught up in the "story." He gets to "see" Christmas and his life is changed forever.

That is the way the story goes you know. It is not a story that is to be observed from a distance but one that invites the hearer to come close and step into the story. It is meant to be our story. God comes close in the form of Emmanuel...God with us.

The best way I can convey this truth to all of you who are reading this is to share what happened the very first time I did one of these characters. It was years ago and I was the innkeeper. When I got to the part of the story when the innkeeper went to the door he simply said this: "I went to the door to let some of the cool night air in. I had long sense quit answering the many knocks at my door because I had no more room. I had listened to every story and lie you could imagine from people trying to get me to find some room. I was tired of hearing them so I'm not sure why I opened the door late that night except to get some fresh air...There they were...shabby looking couple. The woman was leaning over the neck of what looked like a very tired burro. Then the man said what was unbelievable, 'Sir, do you have some room? My wife is about to have a baby?' Well I thought I had heard it all. Did this man think I was supposed to believe that he would take his wife out on a night like this if she was about to have a baby? Was I supposed to believe a story like that?"

...Then before the innkeeper could say the next words something happened. 4 year old Teddy Gellar was on the back row of the crowded sanctuary. His mother later told me he was standing on the pew bending forward, spell bound by the innkeeper's tale. When he heard the innkeeper say, "Do you expect me to believe a story like that?" Teddy shouted out across the room, "Yes!"

For a moment there was silence. The innkeeper froze. Then there was a solitary laugh. Then the innkeeper simply shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "What do I do now?" Then the magic happened. The laughter took over the room like a tide that had come in and swallowed us all.

Teddy Gellar told the story with one word: "Yes." O, the innkeeper regained his composure and finished the monologue but he and everyone else knew that it was a child who understood that in the face of all the world's "no" God had said "yes."

I've been offering my identity crisis monologues ever since that Christmas long ago. I've been many characters and I've re-written all of them several times, but none will be able to compare with the day that an innkeeper heard a child's voice from out of the dark....Yes, Teddy I believe it.

May you hear the story afresh this year. Stop, look, and listen and you too will hear in the midst of wars, recessions, and a world framed in terror the one word that matters...the "yes" that comes from a stable.

Merry Christmas
jody
jseymour@davidsonumc.org