Surprise

“Surprise!”

My brother, Jamie, and I shouted from the bench where we had been sitting, waiting for our mother to notice us there. She sat at a sidewalk table, six feet away, where she had come to meet a friend for coffee.

It was the day of her 60^th birthday. Jamie had flown in from New Mexico, where he was living, and I’d flown in from California, where my road trip of the American West had taken me. No one but our father – who’d orchestrated it all – expected to see us sitting on a bench in Northampton, Massachusetts.

“Surprise!” 

She turned toward us. Incomprehension turned to shock which morphed into terror. I’d never in my life seen a look anything like it. She was so surprised, she was scared. Reality unraveled in front of her. She would later explain that in that moment life became a dream. What she saw made no sense in the waking world. For one half second I truly thought that we’d caused her a heart attack.

The surprise was so great because our presence was not merely unexpected; it was impossible.

The news of Christmas is this kind of a surprise. Bearing the news to Mary, the Angel must assure her that “nothing will be impossible with God.” And in separate visitations to Mary, to Joseph, and to the shepherds, the message is the same: “Do not be afraid.”

Fear is not an emotion that I generally associate with Christmas, nor is surprise. There is a comfort in the sameness of Christmas from year to year – the same songs on the radio, same movies on the TV, same ornaments on the tree, same foods on the dinner table, same bodies around the table, and the same story told yet another time. 

The layers of tradition are so thick it can be difficult to remember how surprising the story itself is. And the more we try to capture that surprise – through retelling – the more familiar the story becomes. Part of Advent’s challenge is to listen again with new ears. 

Stay awake. Pay attention. Be open to surprise.