Empty Chairs and Empty Tables

Several weeks ago I was watching an online streaming Christmas concert. It was the Austin, Texas based choral group, Conspirare. Like many such events this year, there were some pieces recently recorded, several virtual choir renditions, and a few things from previous years. The event was simultaneously familiar and eerily unfamiliar. The conductor--who also sings solos—was positioned in the same concert hall they have sung in for years. The decorations more sparse than usual. The evening ended with the same two songs that close all of their Christmas concerts.

The final piece is not what you’d expect at Christmas: “I Could Have Danced All Night” from My Fair Lady. Perhaps it suggests the joy of Christmas Eve lasting all night long. Or dancing with the divine. It’s a mash-up, though, as Ernest and I call it. There are hints of Christmas carols here and there.

It wasn’t until the very end that it hit me. After the moving piece concluded, there was no applause. At that moment the emptiness of the vast concert hall sunk in. And I was overcome and broke down.

On this Christmas Day we can’t but help call to mind the empty churches. Worship online: without the crowds, the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the singing!

We call to mind the empty restaurants, the empty stages, the empty stadiums, the empty schools and colleges of these past months.

But so much more profound: in homes around the world, there are empty chairs at empty tables. Which means empty hearts—hollowed out by grief, or separation, or what safety requires of us.

Into a weary world, a sorrowing world, an empty, desolate world Christ is born. On Christmas Eve we hear the story version from Luke 2. On Christmas Day we hear the meaning from John 1. The Word is made flesh and lives among us. Literally: God tents and tabernacles among us. The Word makes its home among us—and this year we hear it differently, from our homes.

These lofty words usually lead me to extol the beauty of human life. Yet John wants us to know that God join us in our frail, mortal flesh. And amid the emptiness, there is fullness. Grace upon grace. It will take twenty-one chapters for John to flesh out—pun intended—this mystery.

What it looks like, tastes like, sounds like, feels like. This Word made flesh is water of life, bread of life, light of the world, seed in the earth, good shepherd, door, vine and branches.

Maybe it takes emptiness to grasp the fullness of Christmas. Oscar Romero, martyred for his prophetic witness in El Salvador several decades ago, wrote:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.

The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything,

look down on others,

those who have no need even of God—

for them there will be no Christmas.

Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf,

will have that someone.

That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

In an empty kind of Christmas, musicals can raise our spirits. And like everything else: if not in person, why not online? This week we watched again the 2012 movie version of Les Miserables. 2020 has been a miserable year for many. Les Mis means the Miserables but could also mean the Wretched Poor, the Dispossessed, the Victims, perhaps even the Deplorables. In 2020 a surprise pandemic and the death of George Floyd, especially, have revealed even more the great disparities of our day.

Near the end of the musical Marius sits alone at a café, the only one who survives a brutal battle in the revolution uprising. There is regret as he grieves the loss of friends and sings: There's a grief that can't be spoken, There's a pain goes on and on. Empty chairs at empty tables where my friends will meet no more. Oh my friends, my friends don't ask me, What your sacrifice was for, Empty chairs at empty tables, Where my friend will sing no more.

Despite the loss and grief in the musical, there is great beauty and hope. Fullness in the emptiness. And some awesome lines: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Or from the epilogue: “even the darkest night will end, and the sun will raise.” Or this one: “The word which God has written on the brow of every person is hope.” Incarnation, indeed. Word made flesh.

So many empty things, so many empty hearts. Empty pews in empty churches. Yet the paradox of faith is perhaps clearer than ever this Christmas Day. Light shining in the darkness. Hope born out of despair. A fullness even in the emptiness.

Christ—the Word made flesh—is born anew, make a home wherever we reside. For many of us, we’ve spent more hours in our homes in ten months than we can ever remember. If with others, bumping into them; if alone, wishing there was a body to bump into!

Think back to your table over the pandemic. Some of you have cooked more than you have before. Others have ordered take-out to support struggling restaurants. Whether gourmet creations, or leftovers, or carried in, whether alone or with a few others, these tables have been places of continuity, nourishment, spiritual sustenance.

So how appropriate, on this Christmas Day we celebrate eucharist, we give thanks, at these tables.

At the tables in our homes, Christ blesses our food, our prayer, our work, our service, even when we cannot leave home. And so, gathered as a community online, we bless bread and wine. The Word makes holy our flesh, nourishes our bodies, sustains our souls. And as at church, we trust that the Spirit comes upon us and gifts of bread and wine on our table. Emptiness and need are transformed! Real presence! We become Christ’s body for the world, even when we rarely leave our homes. We serve through practices of generosity, hospitality, service—even if on Zoom or online giving or tending the little part of the world entrusted to us.

The classic Lutheran table prayer, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest” takes on new meaning this Christmas. Because it still feels like Advent. In many ways, to be human is to always know Advent: the stillness of waiting. Even on this day of fullness, we wait. And yet. And yet, even at empty chairs and empty tables, Christ comes. To empty, sorrowing hearts, Christ comes.

Even in a miserable year, Christ is born! From his fullness we have received grace upon grace. This is God’s promise. This is our song. This is our hope. Evermore and evermore.