Standing in the cold at a bleak place
The Christmas turkey and pudding have been enjoyed and the family games played afterwards are back in the games’ cupboard. “Let’s go to our parents’ graves”, suggests my wife Martina. A good idea. At 4:30 p.m. we are standing on the Wiesbadener Südfriedhof at exactly that spot where we buried my father roughly seven and my mother nearly eight years ago. Dusk’s shivery twilight was starting to spread over the cemetery. It is crystal clear to me that the truth about Christmas is decided here.
The Christmas services are neither the adequate time nor place for a political sweeping blow against the world’s social squalor. I have no problem talking about these topics at Amnesty International or at a party conference. In the Holy Night Jesus claims to be the Saviour of the World. God so loved the world that he sent his only son so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. The Christmas message claims that transience and death have been conquered. Christ’s birth, death on the cross and resurrection belong together like a triad.
Will I see my parents again who are now lying and rotting in wooden coffins two metres below me? If Jesus is wrong, then we should turn all churches into museums or shopping malls, but if he is right, then everyone should have joined in the big “Hallelujah” in the churches on 25th December. The fundamental problem of man’s existence has been solved. Thanks be to God! That is why the Christmas message is so ingenious, liberating, hopeful and revolutionary. Truly, there is nothing better.
But why is the core of Christianity so rarely proclaimed in churches across Germany? Do the pastors no longer believe in the Man on the Cross? If so, that would explain the yawning emptiness in Protestant Churches in 51 services a year.
Only at Christmas are the church naves filled due to sentimental emotions and cultural conventions.
What do you make of Christmas? Standing at our parents’ grave it becomes clear that the answer we give becomes a matter of life and death. /KDJ
