Jay's Note

December 25, 2011, was one of my most memorable Christmases. I was bed-ridden in Fairfax Inova Hospital in Virginia where I had just received my fourth transfusion for internal bleeding (of still-undetermined origin).

In the chair next to my bed was my friend (now my wife!) Eileen Aveni, keeping watch over my health by night. My wise (and wise-acre) buddy Dan Sullivan had just stopped by to check on me, when what to my wondering eyes should appear, but four Marneys—high school-era friends Dave and Janet and their two grown sons, Robert and Austin— caroling books in hand.

Three of the carolers:  Dave, Dan, and Eileen

For the next 45 minutes, with my hospital room door wide open to share the news, we rejoiced harmoniously in the promise of eternal life birthed some 20 centuries ago. I still tear up with gratitude at the gift of friends who took part of their Christmas day to bring the celebration to me in the hospital. How much more of a gift that Jesus would come to inhabit a small space on earth for our sake.

***

Earth is a hospital on a grand scale, not for the physically ill, but the spiritually sick and wounded and dead. On what we now commemorate as Christmas, Jesus paid his first full-bodied visit to the hospitalized. He looked more like a patient than a physician—weak, needy, dependent. But, as Luci Shaw puts it in her clarion poem, Mary’s Song, “His breath (so slight it seems / no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps / to sprout a world.” Some thirty years later, that breath burst the bonds of death, calling all who would come willingly to follow. 

A friend of ours is a nurse and social worker with a hospice. She and her colleagues labor to bring peace to dying patients as they and their families navigate their impending separation.

Jesus came to end our separation from God and overcome death, purchasing the passage with his passion, pushing past the veil with his power.

I invite you to join me in celebrating the birth of Jesus, a birth that led to the death that would overcome death for those who accept the invitation to follow Jesus.

Grace and peace,

Jay