By LEE N. HOWELL
Politically Speaking

In The Book of Common Prayer, the words of the prayer assigned for reading in services held on Christmas Day seem at first glance to have a disjointed sound to them.

Each year, at this service, we praise God “who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ.”

Then, we pray that God “Grant that, as we joyfully receive him for our Redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge.”

It has always sounded just a little bit out of “sync” with what we have all been experiencing in this happy season of carol-singing, bell-ringing, tree-decorating, package-wrapping, gift-giving, card-sending, well-wishing, friend-toasting, family-feasting season of the year.

After all, Christmas is a happy holiday, the most joyous occasion on our calendar, a time for recalling all that is good and hopeful in the world.

What does the author of this prayer mean interrupting our gaiety with words about some future judgment?

Why, the only judgment we will face when Christmas is over is having to lose the 15 pounds or so we gained from all our celebrating and paying off the bills incurred by our generosity.

Right?

Not quite — and this is the real message of Christmas which so many people miss! — for the journey which begins in this holy season does not end when we find the babe in the manger.

It continues on until we come face to face with ... the cross.

For, that rosy-cheeked infant, wrapped in homespun and nestled amidst warm straw in the trough of a stable in Bethlehem, grows up.

He learns fear early when, as a very young child, he is roused from his sleep in the middle of the night and forced to become a nationless refugee in Egypt to which his parents fled to avoid the wrath of an aging despot who ordered all male infants to be slaughtered in order to protect his throne against any pretender.

He learns the value of hard work at the side of his earthly father, a small-town carpenter who worked long hours with his hands, shaping wood into furniture and farm implements in order to earn enough to feed his family.

He learns the historic traditions and the laws of his faith, and the teachings of the prophets, about the God who created the world and all who inhabit it.

He learns about the world and the powers — sometimes benign and sometimes evil — which rule it.

He learns sadness as he mourns with members of his extended family over the death of a close friend.

And, finally, he learns (in the words of a man who would follow his teaching centuries afterward) that things which are worth living for are also worth dying for.

Die, he did — a horrible death on the cross on that Friday called Good.

Then, when it is over, he is hurriedly buried in a borrowed grave just as the sun goes down.

But, for Christian believers, the journey does not end even then.

For, the most beautiful mystery of the Church is that when the women arrived to anoint his body after the Sabbath, the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.

And, for centuries, the creeds have taught us that “he ascended into heaven ... is seated at the right hand of the father, and ... will come again to judge the quick and the dead.”

That is why the prayer assigned to Christmas Day talks about “behold(ing) him when he shall come to be our judge.”

They are not hollow words for believers; and, we know it is not an either/or proposition.

So, if our preparations for Christmas did not include getting ready for judgment, then we still have to get ready for the rest of the journey.

And, it is time we got started.

[Lee N. Howell is an award-winning writer who has been observing and commenting upon politics and society in the Southern Crescent, the state, and nation for more than a quarter of a century.]

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