We Can Still Sing Alleluias!

Christmas Day
December 25, 2019

LATER

Later
after the angels,
after the stable,
after the Child,
they went back …
as we always must,
back to the world that doesn’t understand
our talk of angels and stars
and especially not the Child.
We go back complaining that it doesn’t last.
They went back singing praises to God!
We do have to go back,
but we can still sing the alleluias!

— Ann Weems

Christmas Day — it will pass too soon, out of sight for another year. The angels topping our trees will be packed away. The stars on our garlands will be neatly rolled up and packed into a box. The tinsel gone! The ornaments gone! The lights unplugged! The candles extinguished! Until another year.

And we all go back to a “world that doesn’t understand our talk of angels and stars and especially not the Child.” The world goes back to life as usual, no longer graced with the brilliance of Christmas. The wars rage on across the globe, swords replacing plowshares. The racism again begins to reign. The political parties spew hatred one to the other. Hunger remains and poverty still devastates. The border wall continues to send its message of exclusion.

It’s all the same, just as it was before. It seems that the gentle spirit of Christmas changed our spirits for only a brief moment. We slip back again into our normal lives, perhaps forgetting the silent night when the star shone over a Child. As the poem says so poignantly, Christmas doesn’t last. We do have to go back to a life that can be oppressively normal, a world that can be oppressively cruel.

But there is Good News! Because God Incarnate came to us, there is Gospel Good News! Even though we have to go back, “we can still sing the alleluias!” We can sing year around if we want to. We can sing alleluias in good times and bad, in times of joy and in times of sorrow.

We can sing alleluias, like the angels who still sing in the heavens. We can sing alleluias because “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Thanks be to God. Amen.