Dear Friends,
Over the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to talk with several of you about the existence of God, which is, perhaps, the most basic questions of faith. Montclair Presbyterian Church is a congregation in which quite a few people describe themselves as atheist and even more people are self-professed agnostics. To be honest, this probably is true of most Presbyterian congregations, but what makes MPC special is that so many of you are willing to tell your pastors about your doubts and disbeliefs. I love you for that. The honesty leads to rich conversations.
Part of what makes Advent and Christmas so wonderful is that the stories of Christ’s birth have the potential to speak to us in places that lie beyond the simple binary of belief and disbelief. During this time of year, stories of Mary’s faithfulness, Joseph’s wisdom, the Shepherd’s wonder, the angels’ beauty, and the Magi’s curiosity can inspire us even when we don’t believe the stories are historically accurate. Motifs of light shining in darkness and of relentless joy that abides against all odds are universal.
It’s probably not a coincidence that Jean-Paul Sartre, who was, famously, an atheist (and who was, less famously, Albert Schweitzer’s cousin), wrote and directed the performance of a Christmas play while in a German prisoner of war camp during World War II: even when we don’t believe, still we long for tidings of comfort and joy and we incline our spirits toward the light in winter’s darkest hour. And the language that (perhaps) best articulates these aspirations is the mythic vocabulary of sacred story. Here is a passage from Sartre’s Christmas play Bariona, or the Son of Thunder. The character speaking is Balthazar the Magus; he’s addressing the protagonist, Bariona, a shepherd who does not believe the message of the angels:
…You were telling me before that God has no power of human freedom, and it’s true. But so what? a new freedom is going to shoot up toward heaven like a great pillar of bronze. Would you have the heart to stop it? Christ is born for all the world’s children, Bariona, and each time a child is born, Christ will be born in him and through him to be forever mocked, along with him, by all the pains of life, and in him and through him, to escape all those pains. Forever. He is come to tell the blind, the disabled, the unemployed, and the prisoners of this world…for even for the blind and the disabled and the unemployed and the prisoners there is joy. [From The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, Volume 2: Selected Prose by Jean-Paul Sartre, edited by Michel Contat and Michael Rybalka, translated by Richard McCleary (Evanston, Il: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 131]
So whatever you do or don’t believe, come to the manger-side where you are welcome regardless of your faith, lack of faith, or faith that rocks back and forth, squeaking like the rusty chains on a playground swing. There is room for you in Bethlehem’s stable.
God’s Peace,
Ben