Work of Christmas leads to changing the world through love

“I will light candles this Christmas

Candles of joy despite all the sadness,

Candles of hope where despair keeps watch,

Candles of courage for fears ever present,

Candles of peace for tempest-tossed days,

Candles of grace to ease heavy burdens,

Candles of love to inspire all my living,

Candles that will burn all year long.”

— Howard Thurman

One of my absolute favorite theological books about Christmas is “The Mood of Christmas” by Howard Thurman. In it, Thurman describes Christmas as a mood, a quality, a symbol — never merely as a fact.

This year, more than ever, I need the symbol of Advent and Christmas. Thurman calls the symbol of Christmas “the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”

This year has been difficult for me and many of the people I love. The air at times is thick with tension and a wicked resurgence of racism and race-related crimes. It feels like our basic sense of civility, in some arenas, has broken down and we are tearing down one another instead of doing the work of building up one another.

No matter what side of the deep political divide you find yourself on, the general sense is that elections reveal some of our worst traits and produce anxiety for all of us. It is at the end of this year that I feel a yearning for hope and a renewed commitment to the work of justice.

I think my return to Thurman and his book about Christmas is fitting for this time in particular. Thurman lived in a tense era between the horrors of World War II and the mistreatment of people of color that would lead to the civil rights movement.

In 1944, Thurman and Alfred Fisk, a white Presbyterian clergyman, would co-found the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, which would become one of the first major interdenominational, interracial churches in the U.S. He later would go on to be the first black dean of chapel at the predominantly white Boston University.

In his most famous book, “Jesus and the Disinherited,” Thurman thinks through the implications of identification of Jesus with those on the margins. Jesus’ actions inspire his followers to resist and even to transform their oppressors through a faith-based unconditional love.

Thurman saw in Jesus someone who could thoroughly identify with the plight of the oppressed living in his day. The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., mentored by Thurman during his time at Boston, carried a copy of this influential work in his pocket while he marched in the Montgomery bus boycott. The boycott was a sign of hope and action. Things were not what they needed to be, but they had hope that through action, God’s vision of shalom — where all would be treated with the dignity afforded them as children of God — would come.

We are in the season of Advent, a season of waiting for the Messiah to come. We wait in paradox between the reality that Jesus was born and will come again. We wonder, this time, in what form he will come.

Last time those awaiting the Messiah expected a great military leader who would set them free from Roman rule. While Jesus’ teachings would set them free in a way, when Jesus was executed at the hands of the state, the Jewish people still lived under Roman rule.

Throughout the book of Luke, we see that Jesus was a revolutionary leader who sought to turn the world upside down so that the first would be last, and the last would be first — although not in any way that looked like what we knew.

He taught us to love one another beyond our differences, even loving our enemy — a subversive love that taught us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

Christmas will not end when we put away the stockings and the Christmas tree. In fact, the work of Christmas has just begun. For when Jesus is born, God is with us and following him will lead us to places where we can make change in the world through love. Christmas marks a beginning.

Listen to Thurman once more as he describes what we do in response to this Messiah whose birth we celebrate this Christmas:

“When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among others,

To make music in the heart.”

This story was originally published December 14, 2016 at 11:45 AM with the headline "Work of Christmas leads to changing the world through love."