Human, A Christmas Carol

Last week while driving home from dropping the kids off at school, I heard the first Christmas carol of the season. Well, sort of. It was an accident, and it wasn’t necessarily a Christmas carol by nature. Because Switzerland does not inundate their radio stations and stores with traditional Christmas songs weeks before Christmas, Human by the Human League, at least on one level, served to be the first one I heard all season.

Now before you think I have been drinking too much Gluhwein, let me try to explain. I admit that I am an 80’s freak, so anything from the 1980s is ranked high on my list. The music, the movies always put me in my happy place. Ok, maybe not the mullet, but just put on Rocky IV or Teen Wolf, and I am in heaven.

More so, the ’80s for me was a time in my life as a young boy that I felt both comfortable and safe in my surroundings while being introduced into the adventure of exploration and discovery. It was a time when I spent the days exploring the woods near my house and riding my bike around the neighborhood on “secret missions,” all the while having a safe home to come back to when I was finished. It was a time in my life when comfort and being uncomfortable were both present and in balance.

Last week for the first time since we moved to Switzerland, the feeling of being uncomfortable was starting to wear on my psyche. For the first month or so into the move, the feeling of being uncomfortable is overbearing, but the excitement of adventure gets you through it. Then after a few months, you begin to feel comfortable with being uncomfortable. But last week, the language barrier and the immersion into a different culture that make the trips to the grocery store, ordering food, driving on the roads, all while trying to make your kids feel safe, hit me hard. The presence of my family in our home and the great people within the school community who are also experiencing the same struggles helped me feel comfortable during this time. The balance remained.

It seems that within this balance, which is the harmony between safety and adventure, we experience our lives more fully. Consequently, it would also seem that when our lives become unbalanced, we experience either too much safety or too much adventure that we begin to lose ourselves.

Maybe this is the reason why the song Human hit home last week. It made me think about a period in my life, the 80’s, when I learned some characteristics of being human, which I once again was experiencing every day in Switzerland. And maybe this is also why the song became sort of a Christmas carol.

When we celebrate perhaps the greatest mystery that there is, God, becoming human, we praise God for breaking into time and space during this season. We celebrate God becoming one of us to show us what it means to be fully human. Therefore in the very person of Jesus, we are invited into the ultimate safety zone while at the same time propelling us into the journey of truth, which can be very uncomfortable at times. Our faith in Jesus becomes the avenue to experience the balance of being human; thus, the reason the 80’s song struck me so much.

Yet, on the other hand, the song does have a flaw.

When you listen to the song, it hones in on the notion that being human means being imperfect. That is, to be human is to be “born to make mistakes.” Although making mistakes is part of life, maybe it isn’t a prerequisite of being human the way we like to use it. Maybe there is a difference between mistakes and sins that this song refers to.

Mary, the Mother of God, is called full of grace by the angel Gabriel. In our theology, we view Mary as sinless. Therefore she is fully human. We also view Jesus in His humanity as the One who has never sinned, therefore also fully human. Now does this mean that Jesus never spilled the milk as my pastor would often say…probably not. Does this mean that Mary never forgot anything or made mistakes in her life…no. This suggests that making mistakes is one thing yet sinning is to be inhuman, not human. For it degrades the very essence and dignity of ourselves and others.

As a result, the challenge for all of us is to be perfect. To become human, just as Jesus did on Christmas morning. And it is within this journey of becoming fully human that the comfort of mercy for the times that we are inhuman gives us the courage to face the road ahead of us. Thus the balance is created.

Staying in my childhood home in Pennsylvania for Christmas certainly gives me a great sense of safety and comfort. Yet we leave again in one week, back to the great adventure of living in Switzerland. Therefore, this year when I look to the “baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,” I can’t help but to also see Him as the One who will sweat blood in the garden before being crowned Lord on the cross. And it is here that I feel safe and dare to enter into the unknown and times of feeling uncomfortable.

A friend of mine last week sent me a video about A Charlie Brown Christmas. We have all seen the story and know the characters. Linus can never seem to put down his blanket throughout the Peanuts narratives. It serves as a source of comfort, so much so that he is often ridiculed by Snoopy, Sally, and Lucy. That is until he recites what Christmas is all about. And it is here that he drops his “safety blanket” and finds both comfort and courage.