The gift of grace

By Dr Tanya Wittwer
Postgraduate Coordinator, Uniting College for Leadership & Theology

Posted Dec 14, 2015 in Faith

The participants in the Christmas Pageant all rose early. Sparkly costumes and greasepaint applied, uniforms ironed, and instruments warmed up and tuned. They might not have had time to listen to a news bulletin. But many of the families getting ready for the morning that ushers in the Christmas season in Adelaide would have tuned in to the tragic news of a series of violent attacks in Paris.

Meanwhile, my 20-something friend Rebecca was writing a Facebook message:

“So, as many of you know, tomorrow is my birthday. However, it is not a happy one. Tomorrow, on my birthday, mum will move into hospice care. I am going to ask you all to hold me in your thoughts, but to refrain from wishing me a happy birthday… understand that I am grieving, not celebrating.”

A four year strategic campaign to destroy cancer has been unsuccessful, and the time has come for the family to cherish every minute, to tell the stories that haven’t been told, to speak out loud of the love that is there.

There is something that feels so wrong about the juxtaposition of the tinsel and joy with violence and mayhem, or of celebrating a birthday by looking death squarely in the face.

Yet, when we look past the cultural layers, we discover, again, the grace of Christmas in earthly reality. Grace, that God – wholly other, mysterious, majestic – comes to be among us, comes to be one of us. Grace, that God would take on the vulnerability of a tiny human being, be born in a small town weighed down by military occupation, to parents prepared to risk everything to keep their baby safe.

I remain entranced by a line from a Leigh Newton song:

                How can God be a helpless child

                When God made it all and is still creating?*

Was the One who is love ever loved so fiercely as by Mary? I find it hard to get my head around the idea of this young woman cuddling the very One that cradles the universe.

Rebecca’s mother recalls assuming the role of Mary in a Nativity play, with baby Rebecca in swaddling cloths. With her heart bursting with the love for her child, love for God and knowing God’s love came especially near for her in that moment. It was a profound experience that shaped her prayer life.

“When I pray”, she wrote on Christmas Eve, a year after her diagnosis, “I try to remember that holding and being held. When I pray, I take both of my hands, palms up, and lay one on top of the other. With the top hand, I experience being held. With the bottom hand, I practice holding.

“That is what we all get to do this night: hold the Christ Child and be held by him. That is what we can do each day. With each sharing of the peace, with each gift given, with each embrace… we hold that Christ Child closely. With each sorrow lifted up, with each grief shared, with each tear shed, with each prayer prayed, and with each sigh offered when words are done, we are held securely in Christ’s loving arms.”**

God chooses to be enmeshed in the very fabric of God’s own creation by entering finite, creaturely existence. And with that choice God has chosen to know life and joy and birth and pain and suffering and death.

Whether the candles and carols can transport us again into the wonder of the incarnation, or whether we are in a space where pain cuts us off from feeling anything, God is there. God embraces humanity, and embraces the world. And in this embrace is found more hope and healing than can be found in the beauty of a Christmas tree or a cake blazing with birthday candles. This Christmas gift is truly grace.

*In the Night, written for New Times in 1989.

**Koppenhoefer, Laura A . Notes on the Journey: Living with Sarcoma and Hope. Living in Hope Publishing: Rock Island, IL. 2014 p 202.

 

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