Christmas in the village

We celebrated Christmas eve in Amma's anscetral village of Lankalakoderu. As dusk fell, we saw gradually almost the whole village gather at the local Lutheran church. Loudspeakers – LOUD ones at that – came to life and provided a sonic wallpaper as the village Christmas programme gathered steam.

Lights garlanded the church and the path on both sides. At one end the lights culminated in the illumination of the village Ambedkar statue. He was trussed up in lights that would have done any Christmas tree proud.

Earlier in the day, while visiting some relatives in a nearby town, we went for a walk. Next to another Ambedkar statue I saw a group of drunken young men fighting. I couldn’t help but take a photo of the larger than life Ambedkar figure. Some of the men approached me and not wanting to get dragged in I scurried off to the drunken calls of ‘Merry Christmas.’

The picture below - taken just next to that Ambedkar statue - shows a sign announcing the local Christmas celebration in Telegu. The row of lights laid out on both sides as well as the white bands of DDT sprinkled on roadsides announce that serious work has gone into preparing for their local Christmas celebration. Its no wonder that many places where Christians live in our country are called "Sharabpurs" (liquor towns).

The august Hindu newspaper – the only English paper worth reading in the south – had a column by a veteran Communist extolling the revolutionary nature of Jesus. The Telegu newspapers all had special sections with Christmas trees on it, and men and women dancing and various avatars of the Red-coated imposter. I can think of no other major religious festival which replaces its central to-be-glorified deity with a fat European male. The manifestations of this incubus of Satan oh, sorry, I mean Santa ranges from the amusingly bizarre to the down right grotesque.

Cut to the chase.

The majestic opening words of the Gospel of John totally and completely link the Living Word – as the supreme, all-creating, all-light, all-life Deity. And then it takes the totally unexpected statement that “the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Eternal essence of God, now participating totally in the meat-bound, breathing / eating / sensory-sensate finitude of the human body. And that too forever! The scandal of Christmas is not that Christ was born in an animal shed (any palace on earth would have the same stink compared to the holiness of His great throne) – but that Jesus takes on human form – and will remain in this human form for all eternity hence!

The depth, the explosiveness of this news – coupled with the total anonymity and bizarrely crude first messengers has brought three main responses over the ages.

The first two are understandable and depressingly common.

The first – and the saddest response of all – is to totally ignore the news. A saviour? Ho hum. I have more important things to do. Where is my game-boy? A lord you say. Well, lets talk about the weather instead. How about that cricket match eh? Those politicians – never can trust them I say… and so it goes. John says that he came to His own, but His own knew Him not. Depressingly, that’s what we continue to see.

The second response? Active hatred. Some of the most horrible things have happened to people who profess to follow Jesus – and make active steps to live this out in their lives. Forced conversions? Well the only ones taking place in Orissa are when villagers who had fled to the jungles are told that they must ‘re-convert’ to the ‘sanathan dharm’ or pay the consequence. Some have. We will meet these saints in glory. The interesting thing is that many of the states and groups that have been most active in trying to stamp out the truth of Jesus have found themselves on the ash-heap of history. Dialectical Marxism anyone? Where in Enver Hoxha when you need the man! Danger of this response? Some of the most ardent proponents may turn and become Jesus followers. Happened to a man called Saul who would have been meeting the children and grand-children of people he had helped martyr throughout his public service for Jesus.

The third response? Worship. The only really sensible one in relation to the radical truth of God Himself becoming known to us. We have seen Him full of glory and grace. The amazing fact of God’s very nature being displayed in Jesus himself demands worship. Nothing less.

How sad our own feeble attempts at worship are. How quickly we replace devotion and adoration with ersatz goods. Ho ho ho.

And yet, how amazing to keep seeing the great cosmic gamble – God putting His reputation in our hands. In our worship.

Last night, while the loudspeakers of the village church announced the latest ‘special number’ (it was slated to go on till 4 am including the auction of banana bunches for charity) we gathered in Uncle David’s home. A small group of four nuclear families – all related to each other through Amma’s wing of the family – but more importantly – all linked together by being adopted into our Lord’s big family. We sang a few songs of thankfulness and then wondered at the amazing Word. He whose birth was foretold by the prophets and angels, who escaped the cruelty of the roman swords, and who will rule the nations with an iron scepter. This is our Lord, the Servant King, He calls us now to follow Him, to live our lives as a daily offering, of worship to, the Servant King.

After a time of rejoicing in God’s word, we prayed for our brothers and sisters in Orissa, rededicated the home to God’s service and then walked in the star-punctured darkness to the empty single platform railway station. As we waited for the 11.15 PM night passenger train in the utter darkness of the unlit station, we could hear the loudspeakers from the village church through the dark groves of coconut trees and across silent the rice fields.