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If your experience has been anything like mine during the past few days, your overriding concern has been whether or not you would be ready for Christmas. “Being ready” is something to which the gospels exhort us. According to Matthew 25:10, “When the bridegroom came, those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast.” An old revivalist hymn has a refrain that goes, “I hope that I’ll be ready.”

Ready for what? We know what it means to be ready for Christmas, because we know the things which have to be done so that the feast can take place in the usual manner: the cards need to be written, the gifts need to be purchased, the provisions need to be bought.

And we know what it’s like when we are not ready. We have all had the experience of having guests arrive with unexpected punctuality as we are still in the midst of preparations. This, at worst, is a minor embarrassment. But what if the doorbell were to ring and there, standing in front of my apartment, is someone I have never seen before in my life. And let us suppose that I ask with surprise and indignation, “Who are you and what do you want?”, and the unknown stranger replies, “I live here. Who are you?”

This parable might suggest something of the shock and consternation which the coming of the Lord engenders, according to the familiar words from Malachi: “Who may abide the day of his coming, and who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire” ((3:2).

Christian Messianism believes in a Messiah who has already come, and this could lead us to think that we know who we are dealing with when he comes again at Christmas. Jewish Messianism believes in a Messiah who is yet to come, who is hidden and unknown, and this, perhaps, is a perspective we need to incorporate into our Christian expectation.

The familiar Nativity scene is usually experienced as one of touching domesticity, even if situated in somewhat rustic surroundings. But we should not leave out of the story the sudden appearance to the shepherds of the angel of the Lord, surrounded with heavenly glory (Luke 2:9). Although the angel’s message was one of joy (v. 10), the shepherds, we are told, “were sore afraid” (v. 9).

The coming of the Lord is awesome, and it is also unexpected. The liturgical cycle, patterned in part on the agricultural year, has a reassuring predictability about it. Under any and all circumstances, Christmas will be celebrated on the 25th of December. But the event which we are celebrating, the birth of a child, is not so predictable. The papers are always reporting deliveries which take place in unforeseen and unusual circumstances.

And although the birth of a child is a joyful occasion, the birth itself is a time of danger and apprehension for all concerned. So the arrival of the Christ-child “when the days were accomplished” (Luke 2:6) is a fitting sign for the coming of God, who comes “ready or not,” and who does not adhere to our human calendars, liturgical or secular.

In a sense, we never can be ready for Christmas, if Christmas means the coming of the Lord and not simply an observance over which we have control. And so, even though Christmas is now here, the watchful yearning which was practiced during Advent does not become superfluous, just because “the desire of all nations” (Haggai 2:7) has arrived on the day the calendar required.

The Lord can come at any time, in ways that we cannot foresee, and his presence is marked by that strange mixture of trepidation and exultation which was experienced by the shepherds that first Christmas night.

Christmas, 2005

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