[easyazon-image align=”none” asin=”0664239153″ locale=”us” height=”110″ src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Ze90UEloL._SL110_.jpg” width=”70″]Page 2: Katherine Paterson – A Stubborn Sweetness
As a pastor, I decided long ago that my philosophy for Christmas Eve messages was this: tell the story. The original story. All anybody really wants to hear is the story of Joseph – the biblical one, not the Paterson one – and his betrothed Mary, making their way to that stable behind the no-vacancy inn, welcoming the newborn Jesus into the world with some help from a host of angels and a ragtag band of shepherds. Maybe, if we’re feeling loosey-goosey with our Luke and Matthew versions of the story, we can even throw a few wise men into the mix. Of course, there is a great deal of sweetness and roughness to the original Christmas story. There would have to be, when the baby in the trough is fully human and fully divine. And lest we forget, the story doesn’t stay particularly sweet for long. No sooner are the candles snuffed out that the wise men flee for the East, and Jesus – thanks to Joseph’s dream – narrowly escapes Herod’s slaughter of the innocents.
Perhaps my problem with these stories isn’t that they stray too far from the story I think should take center stage on Christmas Eve. Perhaps my issue is that Paterson’s tales are uncomfortably faithful to the Incarnation. Paterson does what I am often too chicken to do: take the birth of Jesus out of that perfect Christmas Card scene and ponder what it means for illegal immigrants and persecuted Christians and cranky neighbors and dirty-faced children and (we cannot forget) the strangers walking along the road at night. And I don’t mean pondering this in some theoretical, generalized way. I mean when the stranger standing before you makes you nervous, when the stranger has a story to tell that you just don’t want to hear, when he’s making you late for your holiday dinner, when she’s pressing that fake gun into your shoulder blade.
Or when he’s standing in your office holding a very real gun. I’m reminded of a true story that happened this past year: the day Antoinette Tuff talked an armed man out of shooting anyone at the Georgia school where she worked as a clerk. She accomplished this extraordinary feat by speaking to the gunman – 20-year-old Michael Brandon Hill – as if he were a human being. She connected with him, encouraged him, gently but persistently convincing him that he could change his mind and not commit the violence he was determined to unleash. (Their entire conversation – or rather, Tuff’s half – was recorded during the 911 call; you can listen to it here ) It is the kind of story – sweet, rough, utterly amazing, and necessitating more than one tissue – that could seemingly only happen in a Katherine Paterson collection… which makes me think A Stubborn Sweetness might be kind of brilliant after all.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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Lovely review, Katherine. Guess I’ll be putting this one on my list. . . Thanks.
Since I reference Katherine’s great review, I’ll offer up mine as well. http://www.bobcornwall.com/2013/12/a-stubborn-sweetness-and-other-stories.html