The Party of Life

The life we celebrate at Christmas is not the life of the party. The new life in Christ — the life that we celebrate around the Lord’s table — is the party of life itself.

“What has come into being in him was life …” (John 1:3b-4a)

Soon our people will be packing up the Christmas decorations, if they haven’t already. The artificial tree will be dismantled, branch by branch — or the real one dragged out for recycling, trailing dry brown needles in its wake. The wreaths and garlands will be lovingly laid, one upon another, in boxes. The ornaments will be sorted into partitioned containers, where they will endure a drab existence in the attic for the next 11 months.

Epiphany will begin just a few days from now and the “12 days of Christmas” will be over. We in the church will return, reluctantly, to what the Christian calendar bluntly — almost harshly — calls “ordinary time.”

As the poet W.H. Auden writes,

     There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair,
     Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem
    ...