My new trend on Christmas Eve is to notoriously find something incredibly depressing to do--or at least in the opinion of my family. Last Christmas Eve I finished up reading and subsequently blogged on Lord of the Flies. This year, it's Revolutionary Road.
I'll admit, I didn't like the movie, but I appreciated it. "Boy, isn't that a movie to get you into the Christmas Spirit," my Dad said. I wanted to laugh, but as I sat back and thought deeper about the movie after watching the special features, it hit me that perhaps this is an appropriate film to get me into the right Christmas spirit.
The movie depicts a couple in the 1950s who find themselves struggling to get a hold of their lives. They had met and fell in love. Two kids later and hitting the 30-year mark, they realize that life in the Suburbs (which society told them would fulfill them) turns out to be a place where they are living, but in a state of desperation. They have a chance to turn things around, if only they are willing and strong enough to push against the current. If only they are willing ot appear crazy in the eyes of the rest of their friends, family and society. There are a lot of questions as to what derails their attempts to find ways to find truth and life, but there is a theme running throughout the film that highlights that maybe they don't have the courage it takes to appear crazy. Because they don't choose to follow what appears to be crazy, they become psychologically crazy. They become even more broken then they were before.
It makes me wonder about Christmas. We do all of this push and shove to make Christmas be this perfect suburban image. We pretend that we like our neighbors, that we are happy with our lives (and we even right it all down in a Christmas card each year or memorize it for those people we haven't seen in a year). In reality, we aren't close to living that life. Christmas is about the coming of complete hope when there was no hope. How can we feel the joy if we cannot access the reality of our own hopelessness? How can we appreciate what Christ has actually come to save us for?
Now I will admit, this year has been a place of growth for me as far as learning to recognize resurrection hope, that the way things are are not the way things have to be (thank you, Chris Rice for that line). But I think the place of the resurrection is to pursue a place of radical difference in a world of conformity. In reality I don't have the courage to be different. I don't have the courage of radical discipleship, as Luke describes it to drop my nets and follow Jesus, to sell all that I have and give it to the poor--so that it won't get in my way of following Jesus. But I think the ability for that courage is not inherently in ourselves, but in the hope that comes with the incarnation, the resurrection and the advent of the Kingdom of God. But before we get there, before we can experience that joy and hope, we have to recognize the absolute state of brokenness that is before us. Christmas must also include this truth so that the grace that we claim is not cheap grace, but life-saving and life-changing grace.
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