Listening and Learning

             

            I’ve always wondered about the argument about Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays as a greeting at this time of the year.  I know that Christians want to celebrate the birth of Jesus in this season, but it seems to me that Happy Holidays is really an inclusive term to offer good wishes to people who don’t necessarily celebrate Christmas.  It certainly isn’t an attempt to create a “war on Christmas” as some political people try to say. 

            If there was a war on Christians it was certainly waged during the days of the Inquisition, when proper belief was demanded and those who deviated were severely punished.  It was also waged when the Puritans came to America to avoid persecution in England and then began persecuting everyone when they got to this continent.  I’m not surprised by some of these “wars”, they come from the idea that somebody’s ideas are the only correct ones and that those who deviate from them just have to be wrong.  This has been the basis for discrimination since the world was founded. 

            The cure for this, it seems to me, is that we need to listen more and talk less.  When we listen, we learn.  That is increasingly important in a time when certainty seems to be in vogue and those who don’t agree with the prevailing ideas are told that they are wrong.  Certainty is very common in our politically charged world.  It has been made more so since our political parties have drawn away from each other in an attempt to gather power.  The keeping of gathered power seems to account for more and more outrageous claims of whatever they project “truth” to be.  There is less and less listening going on in the halls of power these days and an excess of talking.  Finding solutions requires people listening to each other to find compromises that really help people in their lives.  The final stage of not listening is an autocracy that simply dictates what will happen and fails to take into account the negative effects that their proposed actions will create. 

        In the Old Testament, Isaiah is talking about a time of crisis, when the people have gone on their own way and have become lost in this world.

                      Isaiah says:

                                               We have all become like one who is unclean,
                                                  and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.

                                              We all fade like a leaf,
                                                  and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

                                              There is no one who calls on your name,
                                                  or attempts to take hold of you;

                                               For you have hidden your face from us,
                                                  and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity

             The prophet calls upon God to come down, to make the mountains quake and to make the world new again so that the people who have strayed can again be happy.  This is a great cry here at the beginning of the Advent season as we wait for the coming of Jesus again with our own hopes that our Lord will help us to make the world right again after all of our certainty has faded and our sins that have erupted because of it have overwhelmed us.  Isaiah’s cry to God can mirror our own yearning for justice and hope in this world where so much seems to have gone astray. 

            That, for me, is the power of this wonderful season leading up to Christmas.  Our desire is for God’s hope for humankind to be restored and for us all to live together in the harmony that our Lord wants for us all.  As we once again wait for the birth of our Lord Jesus at the great moment of Christmas, let us try to listen better to each other and to learn rather than dictate our certainty in this world.  God bless us as we work together on helping our God to renew our culture and our lives.