Advent Recovery Reflection by LA
“Go, tell It on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere.
Go, tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born.”
For much of my life, I was not only unwilling to speak on godly things in any public forum, but I was unwilling to even engage with them, at least not with my full weight. If asked three to five years ago, my mind would likely take me to a pulpit, a wireless microphone under a podium ornamented with an open bible from which life-altering truth would spring. But a deep shudder would come not far behind the visual. Noone would be willing to glean anything spiritual from someone contently living in sin, I would think, someone adept at destruction, one who proudly called evil good and good evil. God’s providence, however, often works most powerfully through even the most ambivalent human hands. Before I knew it, my rap sheet was replaced with accountability, and my life as a gay man turned into something I would never have imagined. In the African American Baptist tradition, “Go Tell It on the Mountain” exists in more variations than can be counted and, having served in the choir for the past seven years, I’ve sang nearly all of them. One thread remains, though, regardless of added verses or extended vamps: the call for us as believers to boldly proclaim the birth of Jesus our savior. Only, the idea that this call for proclamation can only come across a raised platform or over a speaker system is narrow, an idea that barred me from sharing the gospel nearly my entire life. Christ’s immaculate birth into the folds of sinful humanity was prophesied amid national and spiritual upheaval in ancient Israel, the very word of it came from God’s mouth to the often persecuted ancient prophets’ ears centuries before it happened. But Christ’s birth was not divine fodder or an arid demonstration of bravado; God sent his Son as a lamb, the ultimate unblemished sacrifice to do away with sin, both its penalty and its power. For members of the laity (like myself), this proclamation is too wonderful, too weighty. But I’ve realized that this proclamation can take many forms. When we refuse an activity that fits squarely into our middle circle, we proclaim Jesus’ birth. When we carve out time from hectic lives and attend meetings and share with brothers who are struggling, when we snatch the reigns of our day, our time, our attention away from acting out, we shout from the mountaintops that Jesus Christ is born!
As Jesus prays to the Father,
“I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
-John 17:22-23
