Advent Works: My Worst Christmas Play Ever

The Christmas Eve play was going so well. Adam and Eve came out first, wistful in their exile from Eden, pining aloud for a savior. Abraham came next, hauling Isaac down the aisle on his shoulders like a sack of potatoes, not yet knowing the ram would come to take Isaac’s place. Then Moses, King David, Elizabeth, and Anna. I was Anna.

We each gave our monologues and froze, creating a tableaux of waiting: waiting for a king, a savior, a redeemer, a rescuer. Each one stood, locked in centuries of waiting. What would answer all our longing and need, all our desire and hope? Someone was coming! And we knew he would be mighty; we knew he would overturn the nations; we knew he would bring a great deliverance, and even conquer death. There we all were, in costume, in dramatic anticipation.

Here is what should have happened next: the sound technician pushes a button and the wail of a newborn baby breaks the pregnant silence. At the sound of the cry, we melt, we turn, astonished. A baby? A helpless baby? This is God’s rescue for death and destruction and the hopelessness of humankind? I want all of us Christmas-weary pilgrims to feel it again—the wonder and audacity and perfection of this—that God delivers us—through an infant.

Paralyzed with Longing

But on this night, the baby Jesus doesn’t cry. We stand there, all of us, a parade of paralyzed longing and leaning, while the seconds tick by in deathly silence, and the audience watches us confused, expectant. Unmoving, I glance above me to the sound board where a woman is frantically pushing buttons. This baby will not cry! Jesus is not coming!

What do I do? How do I save this play?

Finally, many seconds later, desperate, I shout out into the cavernous silence, pointing forward, “Look! A baby is coming!” Everyone on stage melts in relief that someone has done something to end our collective misery. I hold my pointing pose for five seconds, manage an awkward bow, and signal with my eyes to the others to do the same. The congregation claps hesitantly at this anti-climax, but they, too, are relieved that whatever had just happened was now finally over. Thank the Lord! We are delivered indeed.

Feel the Waiting Anew

I take this seriously, the writing of church dramas for Christmas, Easter, and any other days God so moves me. I believe this is part of the work God has called me to. So as I left the stage that night, I could have cried. All my work was undone. I wanted everyone to feel the waiting and the wonder anew. Later, though, I realized that maybe we had felt it, after all. After all, the congregation did wonder at these strange events—just as all the prophets and saints before us had wondered at the chaos of events in their time. And those of us on stage did feel it: the agony of waiting to be rescued from a position and place we couldn’t sustain. For us, it had just been an eternal few seconds; for them, generations … but we felt it, all the same.

Here, I realized, is a further truth. This season, hundreds of thousands of us will attempt to depict the story and the glory of God-born-to-us. We’ll fall short, some hilariously and humiliatingly so. But no matter how practiced or clumsy our efforts, we are all enacting our deepest and most essential human longing and truth: “See how much we need a Savior? Please, Come, rescue us Lord Jesus!”

And whether the baby cries or not, He already has.

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Advent Works

If work is God’s gift to us and an invitation to participate with him in the work of redemption and restoration, it makes sense that we would experience grace and also be the conduits of grace in our work and workplaces. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ to do good work. So, in this season of gift giving and celebrating the gift of grace through Jesus, join us as we consider how to find grace in our work this Advent, in this series, Advent Works.

Feature image by Kurt Magoon. Used with Permission. Source via Flickr.