Dear Santa

We've spent centuries compiling our Christmas wish lists; material possessions at worst, sentimental feelings most other times. If you really have any spiritual connection to Nicholas of Myra, whose life continues to spark generations to saintly and unselfish behavior, would you please help us reconnect to that same kind of divine gifting?

When the greed and hoarding of Commercialmas have been outed as losing propositions, wearing us out more than preparing us to receive your Christmas gift, we struggle to find a path leading to our created purpose. We can light the candles, more of them each week, but winter’s darkness still seems to have the upper hand. We think about full sanctuaries, growing church rolls, and overflowing offering plates; but we don't often consider how our lives and our community would be transformed by grown-up faith put into action, by grace unfettered.

We have a long history with Jonathan Edwards’ "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" sermon; but, for the most part, we have turned it into nothing more than a “Get Out of Hell Free” card. Maybe it’s time to hear a "Grace Breaking-Out and Breaking-In Despite Angry Christians" sermon. 

We’ve had a little too much of the jolly old man who spends his time like an elf on the shelf, judging naughty and nice indeed, but failing to see the faces of hunger and need. Despite the catchiness and cuteness of the song written about you, we don't need another list-checking naughty or nice eavesdropper in our lives. Guilt and shame are ready to pile-on at every corner. What we need is a tangible reminder of grace; an invitation to accept God's love, not because we're behaving and earning and deserving that love, but because we were created from love and for love. THIS is the gift that will generate spontaneous gratitude, joy, and service in and through our lives. 

Would you invite us, Saint Nicholas, to reach out to those for whom December and the holidays are a dark and foreboding season because the people they’ve always had around them at Christmas are no longer here, either taken away by death or maybe even divorce?

Would you teach us compassion for those whose holiday memories – childhood and/or adult – are a living hell filled with remembrances of violence or emptiness or gaping need? Will you show us how to be present to their pain, not by amping-up the seasonal cheer, or by throwing food and clothes at the “problem”, but by listening, by sitting, by caring?

Would you give us the grace to be a Christ-like presence, both in the lives of those who won’t receive any wrapped presents under the tree, as well as those who will be inundated with material additions to their houses, all the while still starving for a spiritual morsel and a place to call home?

We are struggling to be innkeepers for any sort of nativity this Christmas season, as people fleeing their homes and home countries are showing up in droves, seeking hope and reprieve from a pervasive violence over which they have no control. But our fear and anxiety, successfully fueled by terrorism’s explosive hate, seems to have prompted us to declare that, not only is there no room in the inn, but the stable is too near our own families to allow anyone access, even to the pig trough.

Would you fill our stockings with courage this holiday season? Would you expose all xenophobia and immaturity in our religious practice, and wrap the kinds of sacred questions with which we so desperately need to wrestle? Would you leave the gift and courage of your Holy Spirit under the tree, and give us courage to unwrap her whisper?

You know we love the baby, and even the manger, but it's the grown-up Jesus we struggle to follow, and the risen Christ by whom our comfortable way of life is threatened. Give us a hunger for the bread of life and a thirst for living water, so we might grow into gentle souls who receive and reflect love, allowing unmerited grace to ingress and egress through all the cracks of our own brokenness and the brokenness of our world.

Sincerely,

Hungry Church

Photo by Jennie Jenkins

© 2015 Todd Jenkins