No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.
It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left.
It is the nativity of our common Adam.
– Charles Lamb
We come to this new year
naked as dormant branches
in the freezing night.
Mere potential is barely budded,
nothing covered up,
no hiding in shame.
A shared and common birthday,
a still life nativity in a winter garden,
another chance to make it right.
Joy abides with God
and it comes down from God
and embraces spirit, soul, and body;
and where this joy has seized a person,
there it spreads,
there it carries one away,
there it bursts closed doors.
A sort of joy exists
that knows nothing at all
of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread;
it does not last,
it can only numb a person for the moment.
The joy of God
the poverty of the manger
and the agony of the cross;
that is why it is invincible,
irrefutable.
Excerpted from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s final circular letter
to his friends in November 1942, before his imprisonment and execution by the Nazis
Bonhoeffer also wrote about this particular nativity painting by Albrecht Altdorfer:
The Altdorfer Nativity, which portrays the Holy Family at the manger amidst the ruins of a dilapidated house – whatever made him do that 400 years ago, against all tradition? – is especially on my mind these days. Perhaps Altdorfer meant to tell us, “Christmas can, and should, be celebrated in this way too.”
There is nothing attractive or sweet about Altdorfer’s 500 year old portrayal of the nativity scene. It expresses the stark truth of the Savior’s coming to us: we are in ruins and He was born within our shattered shell. We cannot be more broken, more fragile than we are in this moment. He is born into that unwelcoming falling down mess, bringing to us irrefutable joy.
This is joy that bursts outside the boundaries of our misery.
This is incomparable invincible joy to rebuild us from the inside.
This is Christmas celebrated within our broken hearts: joy amidst the ruins.
“…we should not try to escape a sense of awe, almost a sense of fright, at what God has done. Nothing can alter the fact that we live on a visited planet…
God has been here once historically, but he will come again with the same silence and same devastating humility into any human heart ready to receive him.”
J.B. Phillips
I want to be like the shepherds–awed and aghast at the glory they heard and beheld. Like the shepherds, I am flattened with so much fear that I am told “do not be afraid.” Like the shepherds, I am never to be the same again, my stubborn self-sufficiency now shot through and leaking dry.
Then my heart will be ready to receive him. Only then.
Barnstorming 