Anchors for the soul. . .

In a recent conversation I explored with a few other pastors the heightened attention given to little traditions, especially at the Christmas season.  Some complain about this, about the often rigid expectations of those who show up in church on Christmas after being largely absent throughout the rest of the year.  Others find the whole thing somewhat of a nuisance.  I will admit to being among those who was irritated by the local traditions of a congregation when I, their educated pastor, knew better how to celebrate the Incarnation of our Lord.  Once I moved the candlelight from its coveted position at the end of the Christmas Eve service during the singing of Silent Night (at least one stanza in German) to the proper place during the reading of the Gospel.  People were solemn on their way out the door and one man told me I had ruined Christmas for him.  Of course, I had plenty of arguments why I had not and why his children and grand-children who did not bother to show up at home ruined Christmas and not me.  But I missed what he was saying.  I learned through the years to pay attention.

Everyone needs anchors for their faith and lives and in this time of nearly constant and fast change, those anchors are even more important. While this is certainly true of individuals and families, the reality is that culture endures when it is anchored to the timeless things that transcend such change.  It does not take all that much to figure this out.  The pace of change and the extent of change have left us not only wearied but vulnerable and even more depressed and set up for disappointment than usual.  It is no wonder that what you do at Christmas takes on greater significance and puts even more pressure on people, families,, and the church this time of year.

As one who never ever celebrated Christmas with my family or my in-laws after ordination, I get it.  My wife and I hoped for the Christmases we knew growing up and neither of us got even a part of it.  Our first Christmas together was spent on Long Island in a cold rain with the worship services of the congregation getting my primary attention and everything else was hard to suffer.  I get it.  It is about the Lord and His incarnation.  Duh.  But it is also about the traditions, ceremonies, and rituals that we learned as children and expected to know our whole lives and pass on to our children.  When we moved upstate New York and then to Tennessee, these things became even more important and added a great deal of stress to us and our families.  Sadly, my wife probably knew this and knows this more than I.  She was always the one who made the best of eve and morning spent at the congregation with time for family and Christmas at home squeezed in as best it could.  God bless her.  If my children have any traditions carried through from our home to theirs, it is because of her.

When your children become adults and move across country and marry, they have their own pulls to distract and disappoint.  It is no wonder then that the congregation and the rituals and traditions of our churches carry such weight and are so fragile.  We are fragile.  Torn up by our roots and moved across the world, a part of us longs for the cultural and familial anchors of yesterday.  I get it.  You should, too.  Instead of rebelling against these anchors or fighting them or even wasting our time trying to change them, we ought to respect them and use them to nurture the lives and families so listlessly bounced around in search of something more permanent.  

It is, after all, a part of the search for Sabbath rest that was hardwired in us when we were first created and it lives in us still with the same urgency and longing.  We desire to be rooted and planted but life continuously uproots us and plants us anew.  To survive we carry with us the traditions, ceremonies, and rituals of our past.  Even in church.  Otherwise, we would have long ago given up the old wording of the Our Father for something new.  We do not because we cannot.  These things are too precious to us.  So, if you are a pastor, cut the people some slack.  If you are people who have been disappointed at home or in church this past Christmas, let it go but not before telling those around you why these roots and anchors are so important.  Sometimes we do not even realize this in the midst of our broken or bruised hearts but until we do, healing cannot begin.  Hold on.  Jesus said that the one who endures shall be saved.  To endure we need to hold on -- to our anchors in God's Word and in our lives together and in the gathering of the people of God.  Hold on, my friends, because the promised rest will come.