Traveling in Place

Ready for Christmas?

“Are you ready for Christmas?”

A teller at my credit union posed this question while he was entering my account number into a computer and looking intently at the monitor.

I honestly didn’t know how to answer. What I thought to myself was, “Well, that depends.”

And if I had expressed this thought out loud, the teller, his eyes still scanning the data displayed on the computer screen while he tapped away at the keyboard, might have responded, “Depends on what?” Then, I might have said, “It depends on what you mean by ‘you,’ ‘ready’ and ‘Christmas.’

“Are you addressing me as a member of my family, as the pastor of my church, or as a Christian? Are you asking whether I have finished buying gifts for the significant people in my life, put up a tree, and decorated my house? Or do you want to know whether I have planned the Christmas Eve worship service, prepared a sermon, and contacted all the church members I want to see before Christmas? Or are you asking whether I am spiritually prepared for Christ to be born anew in me? Are you referring to the cultural holiday of gift-giving, twinkling lights, and merriment, the liturgical festival of Christ’s birth that follows the season of Advent, or a time to rededicate myself to letting the light of Christ shine through me?”

Imagining the Annunciation

In the city of Nazareth, in the Galilee region of Israel, there are two churches of the Annunciation. The city’s most prominent building, situated right in the middle of town, is the Franciscan Basilica of the Annunciation, built over the top of a genuine first-century cave believed to be the home of Mary, the mother of Jesus, before her marriage to Joseph. Within this grotto sits an altar with a Latin inscription that reads, “The Word was made flesh here.”

Out toward the eastern edge of town is the Greek Orthodox Church of Gabriel, which is built over a running stream. Within this smaller place of worship, visitors may follow a dark pathway that leads to a hole in the floor revealing babbling water. A mural in the sanctuary depicts the orthodox teaching that the angel Gabriel came to Mary, not at her home, but at the side of this stream where she had come to fill a water jar for her family. The story goes that, when she received the news that she would be the mother of the Messiah, she ran back home, leaving the empty water jar by the stream, for now her womb was filled with living water.