THE SEASON OF RETURNS

After the big deal down in Bethlehem, after being serenaded by angels and having their sandals knocked off by glory, “the shepherds returned” Luke 2:19 tells us.  What did they return to?  Did they go back to their fields, their work, their families, changed forever in any substantial way?  Or was the birth of Jesus, their encounter with the angels, a moment with God that wore off quickly enough?

Business headlines this week are telling us that merchants are depending on the “season of returns” to make the profit they want this holiday season.  The key, they say, is what happens after the holy day.

I believe the same is true of Christmas.  The key isn’t simply the celebration, but how the reality of the Jesus Event gets lived out in our homes, classrooms, churches, friendships, playing fields, spending habits, and in our political life.

When we have conversations about school safety, the wisdom of automatic weapons on our streets, healthcare, and how we balance the Federal budget, is there a connection between what God is doing in Jesus and the words we speak…the positions we advocate?

What do the Beatitudes in Luke, for example, say to us as we talk about the “social safety net” and healthcare and housing?

What does Jesus’ statement about putting down the sword have to say to us as we enter a national conversation about the flood of weapons on our streets and in our homes?

Jesus said to get rid of the thing that causes us to sin.  What does that say to us as we consider the films we watch, the TV shows we support, and the video games we buy for our children?

Who are we -in Bloomington, in Washington- as we join the shepherds in returning to our fields?

Frederick Buechner talks about Christmas and says this:  “The Gospel writers are not really interested primarily in the facts of the birth, but in the significance, the meaning for them of that birth just as the people who love us are not really interested primarily in the facts of our birth, but in what it meant to them when we were born and how for them the world was never the same again., how their whole lives were charged with new significance.”

Whether there were ten million angels over Bethlehem or it was just the woman and her husband present at the birth, Buechner writes, what matters is that this birth changed history.  The birth of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way of understanding life, but a new way of living life.

As we return, will we live life in a new way.