Advent is the period of time leading up to the annual celebration of the birth of Christ. The word advent actually speaks of a season of expectant waiting for a notable person or event. Tis the season of waiting, expecting, hoping, dreaming, and if we’re going to be totally honest, Christmas is also a time of worrying. Our first thought is to think that expectation and anxiety don’t belong together, but when you look closely at the Christmas story, the story is full of things that don’t seem to go together.
In the course of the narrative about the nativity, we encounter a priest who can’t talk (Zechariah), a virgin that is with child (Mary). and a king (Jesus) sleeping next to a cow.
Both the birth of Jesus and special needs ministry are filled with moments that just don’t seem to go together. The gospel writer Luke records a moment where Mary and Joseph were hit with news about their child; it came across like a Christmas fruitcake. They were two things that just didn’t seem to go together.
Luke says that Joseph and Mary took Jesus to Jerusalem to dedicate him to the Lord. In Jerusalem there was a man named Simeon who was also in the temple. Gazing upon Jesus, Simeon took him into his arms praising God saying, “He (Jesus) is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel!” (Luke 2:32 NLT).
Luke says that Mary and Joseph were amazed at this news! I’m certain that they were gleaming with pride. The best compliment I’ve ever received about any of my children when they were born was that they look like my wife. In this passage in Luke, Simeon is giving Mary and Joseph the news that Jesus was going to be an amazing child who brings light into the world.
And then out of nowhere, Simeon turns to Mary and says, “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall and many others to rise. He was sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.” (Luke 2:34-35 NLT).
How is that for a follow up statement? Simeon basically told Mary that “everyone is going to hate your son, congratulations mom.”
When Simeon speaks of Jesus being the cause of the rise and fall of many, the best way to understand his statement is that he will be the rise and fall of the same group of people. In other words, the rise and the fall go together.
Now if it were up to most of us, we would insist on being in the group that rises. We want the good without the bad. We want the expectancy of God’s promise without the anxiety of waiting for it.
For many families living with special needs and disabilities, life can often feel like a never ending sequence of things that never seem to go together: ups and downs, good news and bad news, laughter and tears. If I have learned anything from the families I get to serve, it is that they are an incredible example of how to live with what seems to everyone else to be contradictions.
That’s the beauty of the Christian faith. It is the faith that Christ is with us in the times where things just don’t seem to go together. It is Jesus who is at the center of the rise and the fall, the grace and the grind, the expectation and the exhaustion.
Simeon’s words don’t just end with a heaviness, they end with hope. That hope is found in the fact that with Jesus the hard times are really “heart times.” “As a result, the deepest thoughts of the hearts of many will be revealed” (Luke 2:35).
Jesus is a complicated gift, because we don’t open him. He in fact opens us. He sees our hearts, searches our hearts, and if we allow him to, he will stay.
All of this is accomplished and available through our willingness to trust him in our rising and falling, and in the moments when life places us in the middle of two realities that just don’t seem to go together.
Families impacted by special needs and disabilities get this. They live it. They learn from it, and they can lead the way into a deeper and more intimate faith in Christ when we realize that the church is not as much a gift to them as they are to the church. When we receive them as the gifts that they are to the body of Christ, our hearts are revealed and our souls are made ready to experience Christ.
This advent season, find a way to intentionally invite, include, and be influenced by the gift of special needs families gracing your church with their presence. It just may be the greatest gift you can give to your congregation.
Lamar Hardwick is the pastor of Tri-Cities Church in Atlanta. For more information visit his website at www.autismpastor.com.
