No, not “Is Santa real?“…. Although that’s also a question I never asked (but, like most of us, just figured out on my own!)
My real question was actually prompted by a Christmas carol we’ve all sung probably a hundred times.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.“
I remember how, one day, I finally paid attention the words – and it struck me as truly strange.
Babies cry. That’s what they do. It’s not a flaw – it’s how they communicate, how they survive. So what does it mean to sing that Jesus didn’t? Was he not really a baby? What would Mary have thought of her untypically silent infant? Or did the carol writer just need a rhyme?
I filed it away. It felt like the kind of question you weren’t supposed to consider too much.
But then others joined them… The virgin birth, for example. I believed it (or thought I did), but I was never entirely sure what I believed about it, or what it would mean if the story was more complicated or nuanced than what I’d always been taught.
I didn’t feel I could ask. Not because anyone had told me not to. It’s just because some questions feel like they carry risk – like asking them might begin to saw through the tree limb you’re sitting on. And I don’t think I’m alone in this…
Christmas, more than almost any other time in the church year, accumulates these questions. It’s the most familiar story in Christianity, which means it’s also the most layered – with tradition, with assumption, with things we’ve always sung without quite knowing what we meant by them.
This November, before Advent arrives and Christmas rushes in, we’re creating a bit of space to actually ask some of them.
Keith Dyer – a biblical scholar who has spent decades at Whitley College teaching people to read the Bible carefully and honestly – is opening three Tuesday evenings with us. Not to give tidy answers, but to think through the questions together. And to help, we’ll be having a segment each night called “You Can’t Ask That!” – which is, of course, an invitation to do exactly that.
Keith has said that what he valued most about his years of teaching was that “you can ask any question and be surprised by people’s answers.” That’s the spirit we’re hoping to share these coming Tuesdays.
If you’ve got questions you stopped letting yourself ask – about Christmas, about the story, about what you actually believe – you’d be welcome.
Unwrapping Christmas runs on Tuesday evenings, 10, 17 and 24 November, in the Gallery at Box Hill Baptist Church (cnr of Ellingworth Pde and Station St, Box Hill.
Doors open at 7.15pm for a cuppa, and we get underway at 7.30pm. Drop in for one evening or come to all three – details here.
