December and Christmas

            December began with endings. JUC finished its term in early December this year. Students and friends trickled away for home and country. Two fellow grads and I were given the task to care for campus while the rest of the staff went on holiday leave; so by the middle of Hanukkah the campus was empty and quiet, save three.

Plenty of chores and holiday activities kept us all quite busy as we continued with our own respective communities off campus. I have been doing a bit of preparation for the Olive Branch Institute's Israel tours that I have scheduled for January while trying to gain momentum on my school work.

It shouldn't be too surprising that the holiday allows for more opportunities to get away from the routine. The city, after all, has been full-up with celebrations. Hanukkah celebrates the miracle of the long-lasting oil; this, a provisional symbol of God's approval with the Maccabees' revolt. During this Festival of Lights, each new day is begun by lighting another candle. This year Hanukkah started December 8th and lasted until the night of the 16th. 

Christmas has a similar intrigue; secular and religious folks celebrate, albeit in their own way. The overlap, Christian and Jewish, secular and religious, spills into the streets and lights flicker all over the city express with connections to one of two holidays.

For us also, this time of year ushers in the best of spirits. It’s familial and meaningful, colorful and bright. The holiday has all but usurped the month, too. We wish our days faster, prepare with ornaments and symbols, buy and write in preparation for a brilliant celebration. 

And celebration ought to be thick with luster because celebration is a really good thing; a day or season to venerate important sacrifices and memories. However, isn't it our tendency to embellish and recreate? Andrew Peterson’ song “Labor of Love” starts out, “It was not a silent night, there was blood on the ground.” This is a stark kind of realism that routes-off fantasy away from incessant recreations. Our tendency, I think, is to mythologize and embellish until all that are left are the narrative’s names and places - to celebrate silly things and trivialize the more important bits.

A lot could be said to help Westerners filter out images of Motel 6-no vacancy and wooden stables and mangers because the stories greatness, after all, is not in what is made up about it (I never did like flannel-graph), but it is in what is so mysteriously real. Here, the raw moments that accompany the human experience are shrouded in God.

God humbles Himself by restraint and imposed limitation – placing His heir in a woman’s womb. She has to travel an awfully uncomfortable journey in and out of rain all for government dues; and this only to find their family's accommodations a bit less kind, you might say. 

This birth and His life will be terribly normal. Of course, this is what is so exceptional. He suffers the silliness of learning; learning to eat, speak, and walk with all the imposed ignorance of an infant. A story of common cycles envelopes His life. And then, after having succumbed to something so far below Him, He establishes his ministry restraining so much in his own attempt to help the world see that He is Emmanuel. This harsh reality takes on greater terrors when He is met with rejection and curse. That it, though. He offers Himself up… according to plan... at the right time. 

 This, after all, was what Jesus said to Pilate, essentially, “I was born for this!” We celebrate, now, the undoing of every dark thing, venerated in the connection this celebration has with His life lived on our behalf and His death died in our place, vindicated by an approving Father who raised Him from the dead. Everything sad is going to come untrue. Is not this what Christmas is all about, anyway?

Hope yours is lovely and meaningful - Merry Christmas!

Seth Hague

November Reflections...

November marries autumn and Thanksgiving; football and turkeys; pumpkin pie and people. The Hague and Augsburger clan stitch birthdays, Thanksgiving, black-Friday shopping and Christmas all into one. It’s the season of giving and going, rest and reprieve. And somehow we manage to craz-ify it, filling the holiday with acrobatics, baseball injuries and music, not to mention our staple hand-and-foot tournaments.

Last year these things changed. It’s the inevitable journeys end that comes to us whether we like it or not. The end always comes - hopefully birthing something that remembers and cherishes the past just as it embarks on its own new voyage. Last year, Aunt Erma and Jean left this life for another. My brother Samuel married two weeks later. These events were the get-togethers that marked our holiday, so it was, therefore, more tight-knit and sober filled with tears and laughter surrounding different memories: one final and one beginning.

I have been in Jerusalem two months this time around. School has just finished its term and students are trickling out catching their respective flights home. I have been leading tours for the OBI and am tending the JUC garden, this all falling under the priority to get my thesis done. Though my responsibilities keep me rather busy, I have taken time to arrest some of my holiday reflections and interface them with this estranged and lovely Jerusalem context; this to offer a few update-anecdotes and wish you a Merry Christmas.   

As you know, Jerusalem has never been free of drama. November’s included Gazian rockets and return fire, people coming and going, and now a mishap-pole incident. I am sure in a donkey-driven world more than one Jerusalemite has fallen off or, in my case, ran right into something hard and stable. I will be well, soon enough. Thanksgiving football has provided an extra measure of continued entertainment for those who have seen the video of my little accident.

Even more, conflict and sojourning seem to characterize Jerusalem from the time of Abraham and Melchizedek, Joshua and Adonizedek to the lives of Zerubbabel and the returnees during the Persian period through to Jesus and the Romans, and so on and so forth. Remember, history highlights happenings and conflict sells; so it may take a bit of added effort to gain a better sense of what is really going on. In any case, every age knew folks who journeyed ‘round like strangers in a foreign land and I feel as if I can identify.

The long drives and short stays have become a normal part of my narrative. Though I have found a temporary home here, soon enough it will be time to move on. So it’s actually quite a marvel that I have now spent over three years in Israel. Though I have moved from place to place, Israel has taken on a sense of familiarity - the people and places. For this I am becoming more and more thankful. 

Just last week, as I toured in the north I found that every site offered more perspective than my previous visits. Even walking ‘round Jerusalem, trekking with a colleague I found things I had not seen before and appreciated things that I had before resented whether it be Egyptian building features at the Garden tomb or the Jerusalem rain. Amazing what you see when your eyes are open or receptive.

This is summarized well in a parable told by David Foster Wallace. He tells a story about three fish. An older fish said in passing to two younger fish “How’s the water?” The younger fish were perplexed by the question because they had no ideal what water was. Wallace’s point is so obvious and perceptive. Their whole lives were inundated with a reality that they had never taken time to appreciate.

It is high time that we begin paying better attention to the life-situation in which we have been called to live. While I find it particularly remarkable that God has chosen to work with a bunch of boneheads i.e. Isaac, Samson and Peter, it seems to me that he energizes us to engage our generation - living in this world as bright lights thoroughly equipped for every good work. We must have answers that are Gospel-informed. Answers for how to engage with situations that are right in front of us, whether it be couple-drama or country-drama. Forgiveness is a power won by the Christ's cross. This after all is why Jesus came.

I do hope that your Christmas Holiday is filled with wonder and blessing. I hope, too, that this Advent season would awaken your numbness and quicken your spirit. 

Blessings from Jerusalem,

Seth