Linda, will ya look at what that fool fossil from the Jurassic period is trying to do now. That bird thinks he is a delicate flying dove instead of a lumbering Pterodactyl." I was standing at our living room window pointing with disbelief.
"Yikes!" said Linda. "It looks like old Gronk has really lost it this time. I thought he was showing the early signs of senility when he stayed so long past the usual departure date for his winter holiday. It's the beginning of Advent and here he is trying to perch on the very top of our largest snow laden spruce tree like he is a robin."
We had no need for binoculars to watch the spectacle. Gronk is a huge Great Blue Heron (Ardea herodias) who has been limbering around and over our lakefront home like some prehistoric creature since the time we moved here 15 years ago. We call him Gronk because that's the sound he makes, his "bird song" you might say. Gronk is quite a bit larger than the norm for this species, which makes him even more awkward in all things, especially the finer elements of flight. Whenever I see him attempting to fly over our house I get extremely nervous. Once when he was attempting to do a fly over he surprised a flock of starlings that were feeding on the lawn on the hill in front of our house. Scared half to death, about 50 starlings flew straight up into Gronk's flight path, which by this time was fully committed to the top of our house. Gronk was shocked with all the starling flack, lost his concentration and headed for our picture window. I am not sure if Gronk jettisoned all that was in him out of pure fright or as a deliberate flight maneuver, but it enabled him to barely scrape his belly over our rooftop whilst whitewashing our window with about five gallons of heron effluent. It was not a pretty picture.
Even when Gronk is landing in the marsh just to the north of us he seems more like a crashing, eight-engine Spruce Goose with a crazy Howard Hughes at the controls than a bird designed for flight. I have never seen any blue heron attempt a landing on anything but marshland before. To see the most awkward one of all time attempting to land in the delicate bendy top of a spruce tree 150 feet tall, well you just have to be there.
"Will you look at that!" exclaimed Linda. "He actually did it."
And he did too. After three attempts, he somehow clung to the very top of the spruce tree with his great gangly legs, cautiously got his balance and stood up, bending the top of the spruce tree nearly in two. He shook back his two long black head plumes in a James Dean imitation and seemed to stare at us through the picture window with, "There, thought it couldn't be done didn't ya?"
"He looks soooooo out of place on that snowladen spruce tree," I said. "He looks like that great heavy angel contraption we argue about each Christmas when you insist on putting it on the Christmas tree."
Linda smiled and continued studying Gronk in a treetop. Gronk continued to survey his world from atop the spruce tree as though he had done this every day of his life. We had invested heavily in studying the old bird, spent hours watching him and yet he had delightfully surprised us. I was so blown out of the water and awestruck with his latest trick that I ran downstairs to the library to find Clarke's Bird's of Canada to check out Gronk's sanity according to Canada's greatest ornithological authority. It turned out, according to the bird bible, in spite of all our personal study and as unusual as it seemed to us, what Gronk was doing was completely to be expected. Great blue herons not only roost in trees, but they nest in them too. Go figure!
Gronk in a treetop, a delightful surprise that enthralled us all. Later in the day when I had stopped shaking my head, I began to think about Gronk's angel on a Christmas tree imitation and I thought about how it was a lot like the first Christmas. When you are really interested in something and then that something surprises you, it just blows you away. And that is the theme that strikes me now as I read the Christmas story. Even though the Gospel writers, especially Matthew, go to great lengths to show that God's Messiah, Jesus, came exactly as it was written about in the authoritative book of the Hebrew Bible; that Emanuel, God With Us, was to come in the line of David, born in a stable in Bethlehem, Born of a Virgin, even though all this is in the "Book" and the book was well studied by everyone in Jewish society, when it happened everyone was blown away by it. From Temple priest to the shepherd boy and everyone in between including Mary and Joseph, all of them were awestruck with the advent of Messiah.
I have sat in on all kinds of small group Bible studies and heard all kinds of people, perhaps including myself at times, contend, surely if those folks were really reading and studying their Bibles they would have expected Christ to come exactly as he did come, or at the very least, not been so blown out of the water by it. But such arrogance towards the Bible and its characters totally misses the point. The point is that when the Messiah comes, the only appropriate response is to be blown away by it. The only suitable reaction is to be awestruck, mesmerized, spellbound, enthralled and fascinated by it. And it strikes me that this is missing from my celebration of Christ's birth, from my response to his continued coming into my world as well as from my sense of expectation of his full return. If Gronk in a treetop can blow me out of the water, surely I can be just a little bit awestruck with the advent of Christ.
Complacency is a maggot that eats holes through faith responses. It is the maggot that steals away our sense of awe and expectation, that which castrates our response to Christ's Advent. How do we deal with it? Chelsea, my teenage daughter, reminded me the other day about the time I made an Advent apple in church. She said she would never forget it and that it would forever inform her response to Christmas. One first Sunday of Advent I started out by showing a nice red apple to all the kids in church. I asked if anyone would like a piece. Half the kids nodded their heads, sort of. The other half kind of just shrugged their shoulders; they'd sooner have some candy. So I took out my old pocketknife and started to slowly peel the large apple, talking about how juicy it seemed and letting the juice drip down from my hand and the smell fill the room. All eyes were on the apple. Then I said, "Well this apple needs a little further preparation." So I took out a bag of sugar and slowly poured out a dollop onto a large plate. Then I tasted it with my finger and said, "Still needs more preparation." I then took out a container of cinnamon and added some to the plate and slowly stirred. I tasted it again and said, "Nope, needs more sugar." I slowly added some sugar, sliced a small piece of apple into the sugar-cinnamon mixture and then looked at the kids. Every eye was on that apple. There was no complacency towards that apple, I can tell you. Every kid and adult in the room was ready, Advent apple ready.
You see the very reason the people who showed up for the first Christmas were so wonderstruck and enthralled and blown out of the water by Christ's advent was precisely because they had been spending a lifetime preparing for it and expecting it and looking forward to it. They did so by reading Scripture, talking, wondering when it would happen, what it would be like, and looking forward to it happening. And so, when it happened, these folks were fully stoked.
It is in the act of observing and preparing and actively waiting that wonder and awe are born, and that's what we need more of now in our Christian churches than ever before. The early Christians lived a life that was vibrating around the Lord's return, his second advent. Just read the Epistles and Revelations. It deeply affected how they experienced his coming daily into their lives and celebrated his birth. They expected him to show up whenever two or more gathered in his name. They looked for his presence at each Lord's Table. Can you imagine a Lord's Table like that, a Christian life like that, an Advent and Christmas like that? Well get about your business of actively preparing. Maranatha, the Lord comes! (1 Cor.16.22; Rev.22.20)
