Sappy Christmas Movies

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;”
-from “God’s Grandeur” by Gerard Manley Hopkins

I have a confession to make. I love sappy Christmas movies. You know the ones… a parent is dead, a mortgage can’t be paid, a child is long lost… and then miracle! All is made right, by an angel, by some vague Christmas magic, by Saint Nick and always by God. The widower finds new love, money falls from the sky, lessons are learned, bells ring, candles flicker, and as the final credits roll, I wipe a tear or two… or ten, from my eyes. My television is tuned to Hallmark or Lifetime or ABC Family almost every night during the weeks before Christmas.

Now, most folks wouldn’t think of me as a sentimental guy. I come across as a little bookish, a little too grounded in my Y-chromosome to ever watch sappy Christmas movies. But I love them. They are to me what this season is all about. I’m a big fan of the “hopey-changey” thing. Advent is that season when we remember “Emmanuel,” the God-that-is-with-us. And that God, the God of the Incarnation, walks with us and feels with us and flames out glory and hope and miracle throughout the year. As Hopkins wrote over a century ago, the world is indeed charged with the grandeur of God.

Diana Butler Bass, in a worship video, states that she believes in the resurrection. She must, she says, because she has seen it too many times. In the same way, I believe in the Incarnation. I have seen it too many times, have seen it too powerfully to ignore… God is with us and the face of Christ is before us, in the beauty of the stranger and of the loved one, in the gift of creation and the challenge of each day. How can we doubt the loving creative passion of God incarnate in Christ for even a moment?

In his book “I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church,” Pastor Paul Nixon writes about apostolic leaders, ordained and lay, noting that they have always experienced the real presence of God. I would go a step beyond… it is not that apostolic leaders, fired with the Spirit, are the only ones who have experienced the real presence of God. They are simply the ones who, at that moment, had eyes to see and ears to listen.

This is uncomfortable language for folks in the Protestant Mainline. We don’t like to talk about the powerful experience of God in our lives and in our world, we surrender that language to theological conservatives. Isn’t it time we re-claim that truth? God is with us! God was incarnate, en-fleshed, with sore feet and aching back and a heart full of love and laughter and tears. God is still incarnate, for when  God became one of us, we became one with God. This is a season when we remember that powerful story… not just a quaint tale of shepherds and donkeys and obedient Mary and kind Joseph. That God in passion became flesh, that God was and is with us. “The love of God was made manifest among us.” (1 John 4:9)

This season, as you scurry about exhausted and obligated, I hope you have a moment to experience the powerful presence of God. I hope that somewhere, in worship, in a “hopey-changey” Christmas movie, on a cold city sidewalk, you see the face of Christ. And I pray that when you do, you feel a renewed call to share the Good News. Jesus changes everything, miracles happen daily, and we are called, oh so gloriously called, to walk with our very present God. Amen.