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Reflection for November 6, 2005

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Oh! You better watch out, / You better not cry, / You better not pout, / I'm telling you why: / Santa Claus is coming to town!

Despite the intervening years of World War and Cold War and international crises and ever more strident politics and increased mobility and advances in technology, whenever I hear that melody as Christmas approaches I revert to being a little boy who within the confines of a simpler age took its seriously, literally! It usually hit the airwaves too late for me to make up for my misdeeds of the year, but a clean slate from now until Christmas Eve might guarantee Santa's not passing our chimney by.

Which brings me to consider the Lectionary readings assigned for today and the remaining Sundays of November. For what is that Christmas jingle but a secularized replay of our liturgy's sacred texts. Take our first reading for today. It alerts us to Someone who's coming soon, for whom we are to keep vigil as the midnight of the year approaches. It's not, however, the Santa Claus of our commercial ditty but a resplendent Lady named Wisdom, who "hastens to make herself known in anticipation of our desire". And she will make her rounds seeking those worthy of her and "whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed". So get your stocking ready!

And then there's today's Gospel reading wherein again we're told to stay alert for Someone's arrival! And if it was important when I was 8 years old to remember: Santa knows when you are sleeping, / He knows when you're awake. / He knows if you've been bad or good, / So be good for goodness sake; then I ought to be just as ready for the surprise visitor of today's Gospel - who this time is a Bridegroom - whose arrival at midnight (just like Santa's) will signal the start of festivities we wouldn't want to miss - would we? - anymore than we'd want to wake up to coal in our stocking? Why even St. Paul in next Sunday's second reading pleads with us not to let winter darkness make us drowsy, "for the day of the Lord will come like a thief at night!" So "let us not sleep as the rest do but . . . stay awake and sober."

He's making a list, / Checking it twice, / Gonna find out who's naught or nice . . . And isn't that what the parable for next Sunday emphasizes about an Investor soon to arrive to check on whether we have invested his grace well enough this year to become ever more gracious ourselves or whether we've let the whole year pass since last Christmas and have come up no better than before - the result being that when Christmas comes we may very well find our presents moved over into Willy and Sue's pile, leaving us "wailing and grinding our teeth"? And then there's the parable for the Feast of Christ the King wherein we stand before Christ surrounded by his Christmas angels to find out he had been with us all year, long before Christmas, and we didn't recognize him in the people who were hungry, thirsty, naked, sick and imprisoned. And so, lacking such gracious clairvoyance, how shall we ever recognize him at Christmas as a bundled up infant in a barnyard manger?

The playful melody of Santa Claus Is Coming to Town still revives pleasant memories for me of cold Philadelphia winter nights and stars twinkling above our neighborhood's rooftops and Christmas lights brightening the windows of working class houses and the excitement of evidence under the tree of Santa's midnight arrival, proving I wasn't such a bad kid after all. But it does trivialize and secularize our Lectionary's way of signaling that imminent arrival - out of the shades of autumn - of Someone who may be seen either as Wisdom with a capital W or a Bridegroom come to wed Mother Church or a heavy Investor in our sanctification or - surprise, surprise - as an infant, vulnerable with a Love that can radically change our lives and our world.

-- Geoff Wood