Sanctuaries of Christmas - Day 4: MYSTERY

The next sanctuary of Christmas I want to talk about it is a little less – actually quite a bit less – tangible and definable.  Actually, that’s its nature. It is the sanctuary of MYSTERY. It is a deep part of Christmas, not always recognized.  Yet, once we recognize it, it can bring a kind of serenity that we have yearned for, often without knowing it.

When we ask a question like, “Was Mary really a virgin?” or “Was Jesus really conceived by the Holy Spirit,”  or “Did angels really appear to shepherds in the fields?” – we are entering the sanctuary of Mystery.  Most of us know that there are no real answers to those questions.  We may have a hunch or even a firm belief that goes one way or another, but deep in our heart of hearts, I would venture to say most of us know there is no way to answer those questions without running headlong into a molasses-thick murk of mystery.

For some, that is unacceptable and excruciatingly uncomfortable.  For others, there is a tentative acceptance. And, for still others, we readily plunge into the murk allowing ourselves to be immersed in the rich creativity of imagination that can take us higher planes of possibility.

Christmas, like Easter, is a threshold.  It is a “thin place,” as the Celts would have called it.  As we might think of Easter as a threshold place between death and new life, Christmas is a threshold between what is divine and what is mortal and temporal.  It confronts us with questions about exactly what is the doorway, the connection, between our mortal, temporal lives, and whatever, whoever is beyond us.

The gospel traditions of Matthew and John shape for us this sanctuary of mystery the best, I think. Matthew highlights the divine guidance of angels in dreams and new stars and the wise ones from the East that understand the movement and portent of the cosmos, and follow the leading of the star.  John does not have a nativity story per se, but frames the mortal and temporal life of Jesus through the perspective of the earliest Creation myth – that somehow this human Jesus was the Word of God going forth over the primordial cosmic soup of chaos, and all of creation was brought forth through that Word. And now that Word was made flesh.  Whew!  Talk about mystery! 

And…that mystery is or can be a sanctuary for us.  In our mortal, temporal lives so thoroughly controlled and permeated by rationality and empirical thought, we need a haven of mystery where we don’t have to have all the answers, all the proof, all the explanations and logical rationale. 

Our children are often our excuses to hold on as long as we can to “Christmas fantasy and magic.”  This is our yearning for mystery, a sense that more is possible than we can imagine, that there just might be powers greater than our puny selves that live in stars and dreams and in strangers carrying prophetic messages that all can be trusted to carry us across thresholds of chaos and creation,  of human and divine, of flesh and spirit.  When entered, the sanctuary of Mystery assures us that what is true – deeply, authentically true – is not always what can be rationally explained or proven.