Taking down the tree

Yesterday, we took down the Christmas tree. Our lovely living branch, brought in from Arua and decorated with handmade ornaments, lights sent from Heidi, and popcorn lovingly strung. We swept needles out the door, put away candles, took down paper snowflakes, and cleaned house. It’s amazing the amount of dry season dust and cobwebs that can be contained in our home.

Just like that, Christmas is over. The fun of making homemade holiday gifts, and singing carols, and baking stocking shaped cookies is, once again, behind us for awhile. What we had been looking forward to has come and gone.

There is something nice about reorganizing, establishing routine, returning to normal after the busyness of the holidays. But, there’s something hard about it too. We have remembered the coming of Jesus and we have recognized the promise that He will come again. But, as I put away all the stuff of Christmas, I realize that even after all the gifts are opened, we are still people who are waiting. We  look towards another coming, another visitation. In the messyness of today, Christmas seems pretty far away.

A couple of days before Christmas, a month-old baby from my church died. The son of my pastor and his wife, the child had been sick and in a place terribly lacking in health care options, there was no help for the child. As I made my way to place of grieving (here, there is a several day period of grieving between the burial and the funeral, when people go and sit with the family), I saw a large group of women from my church on the road, and so I picked them up in our vehicle. They explained that they were on their way to the funeral of another man from our church, a teacher named Santilli who I had visited fairly recently. I prepared myself for a day of funerals.

Death was therefore tied to this year’s Christmas celebration. Feasting with team and friends, and yet also grieving with friends. At church, celebrating with a congregation-wide feast and on the same day taking up a collection for the funeral. Realizing how tenuous life is, how grasping the grave. Not knowing how to rejoice that the Incarnation has changed everything, when in some ways, it feels like nothing had changed.

I guess death and loss is always a part of the Christmas story. The animal sacrifices Joseph and Mary made at the temple after Jesus was born. Simeon’s prophesying in the temple about many rising and falling, and Mary knowing a sword will pierce her heart, too. All of those babies Herod killed, and Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt. And of course, the Christmas story carries us to a cross, where the One who came for us will be killed for us.

As I sat this morning with my coffee and books, I realized Christmas didn’t end when we took down the tree. Today, Dec 6, is Epiphany,  the actual last day of Christmas. On Christmas Day, at least according to church tradition, we celebrate incarnation. But on Epiphany, we celebrate manifestation. In other words, the way Jesus showed Himself to be God among us, both to Jews and Gentiles. Often times, that has to do with remembering the Wise Men, who journeyed to Jesus and worshiped Him. But, we also remember Jesus’ miracles, and the Spirit descending during His baptism. Not just His birth, but all the ways we see evidence that Jesus really is God with us.

After the Christmas clean-up, I need pictures of His manifestation, of His presence then and now. Signs of hope that He is with us in Mundri in the grittiness of life with funerals and cobwebs and grieving mothers and rumors of fighting in neighboring states. I want to be like the wisemen, who didn’t miss shining signs in the dark of night. I want to be like those at the wedding feast of Cana, who drank from water jars the sweetest wine. I want to be like Mary, who treasured everything in heart, who did not shirk back, even though her heart would break.

I am not saying we should be like these Bible characters in some moralistic, “be just like them,” way. But I am encouraged to remember that Jesus’ incarnation was manifest to unlikely or insignificant-seeming people, in out of the way places, at unexpected times. And that each of those people, whether found in genealogies, or open fields, or star-capped stables were a part of God being made manifest to the world He loved.

This Epiphany, I wait again for the manifestation of Immanuel here in this out of the way place. And as dusk darkens the last day of Christmas, I realize that while our Christmas branch may be gone, the true Branch that has sprung out of what seemed to be the dry stump of the Old Testament story is still here, is still growing, and is still creating a picture of the hope of resurrection. And like all of those names and stories hidden in the Christmas narrative, so we too are a part of God being made manifest to the world.

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