I would wake up on Christmas morning and race out to the Christmas tree in my grandparents’ house where my dad had put together all the presents and my mom had arrayed them in cool positions or arrangements, ready for me to play. For many years, my family would make the trek from flat and dismal Alabama to the snowy mountains of West Virginia to have Christmas with both sets of grandparents. Uncles, aunts, cousins, and more gathered for festivities and food. Even though my parents didn’t play the Santa Claus game, our holiday season was like a magical bubble of happiness and love.
We went to church and knew the nativity story well, but at some point, I grew up. Despite knowing the Peanuts Christmas show by heart, I became disillusioned with the season. Too commercial. Possible pagan origins of certain traditions. In my artsy and idealistic early 20s brain, I struggled with and resisted Christmas. Then I grew up a little more spiritually. I read the Christmas story fresh like it was new. Like it was real.
I fell in love with Jesus and Christmas all over again. Christmas came alive in ways I never thought possible, and now every year my appreciation only grows deeper with more insight. What follows is only a few but important examples of those insights.
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I find it ironic that so much chaos and interruption surrounded the birth of the Prince of Peace. Zachariah, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, and Magi from the East were all minding their own business when angels show up (frightful beings, really) and give strange messages or a heavenly rock concert; perhaps an odd, unexpected celestial event shakes the educated world.
The world might have been rolling along, but it wasn’t at peace. If a group of people were rushing off a cliff to their deaths, wouldn’t we have to interrupt them to save them? Perhaps God’s inconvenient methods weren’t so ironic after all. God interrupts lives to save them, to invite people from their story of death into his redemptive story – Abraham, David, others down the line.
If birth occurs naturally, then no one can schedule that moment. It happens when it happens, usually at a most inconvenient time. And yet, because of the life it brings, we rejoice and welcome it. Two lessons here. First, realize that God reserves the right to interrupt us for our own good. Second, if our lives seem stuck and hopeless, God’s ready to interrupt with grace and peace. He’s just around the corner.
It wasn’t much of a silent night. The first couple chapters of Luke are like a musical. Mary sings a song. Zechariah prophesies. The skies are split open in the middle of the night shift and angels perform a deafening roar of praise.
God’s peace doesn’t necessarily mean that there is quiet and stillness. In traditional Advent, Joy is the next step after peace. Heavenly peace produces praise and worship, noise. When Psalms says, “Be still and know that I am God,” what is the next line? “And I will be exalted in the earth among the nations.” (Psalm 46:10)
Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was a very active person. The Apostle John tells us that if he had written down all that Jesus did over three years, the world couldn’t contain the books (John 21:25). That’s a lot. Heavenly peace is active and living like the Word of God, it’s just not anxious or fearful (Hebrews 4:12).
God loves to work in secret and reveal his hand later. It always begins in the unseen and later becomes seen. Women are often pregnant for a time before they know they are. Miraculous life has begun within them. It is yet another few months before they start showing and have to tell people.
The main characters of the Christmas story were all told in secret, away from people – Zechariah, Mary, Joseph. When Elizabeth meets Mary and the babe within her lept, it wasn’t on a stage somewhere for all to see. God literally closed Zechariah’s mouth to shut him up. The angels didn’t declare the First Noel over the capital in Rome or the Temple in Jerusalem but to poor shepherds in the middle of nowhere.
Christ was born around animals and placed in a manger. Let’s not despise humble beginnings (Zechariah 4:10). That’s what God does and uses. That’s the story he invites us into because in the end, it all rests on faith, and he gets the glory.
Aren’t we glad the story doesn’t stop with the Old Testament? The Messianic promise was all over the law and prophets, and yet it was unfulfilled. Israel, the Old Covenant, all of it ended in failure. The arrival of Christ redeemed the whole story!
Despite its failure, however, God still used it. The genealogies of Jesus are filled with people who had some serious failings (David and Bathsheba for example), and God kept his promise, the thread of him working through flawed individuals and broken history.
God’s promises endure and come to fruition because they aren’t based on our abilities but on the Father’s power and love. Thank God! We can trust in those good and precious promises available to us in Christ (2 Peter 1:3-4), if we surrender to him and his will.
That is Good News to all.
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Why the shepherds in a field? Why not the High Priest in the Temple? Within the prophecies of the Messiah, a central point is that Good News will be preached to the poor. We often try to interpret that as the spiritually poor, and it does, but not that alone. God is greatly concerned with the plight of those in physical need, many of whom are marginalized and taken advantage of in this world. They are creations made in God’s image and worthy of that dignity.
The poor are rich in faith (James 2:5). Our true religion is to care for the widow and orphan (James 1:27). The separation of sheep and goats was based on who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and visited those in prison (Matthew 25:31-33), not based on what they deserved but from love. In this, we are like God. When we give to those in need out of love and compassion, we are examples of the love of God who saw the world headed to eternal destruction and gave of himself so we could live for eternity.
Poor shepherds were God’s chosen vessel for the first evangelists. It is important to remember those in need all year, at Christmas and in every season.
It’s not only Good News to the poor or the Jew but to the Gentile and the wealthy. The Good News is for everyone. Jesus ministered in Judah but made it clear the message was to go to every living creature (Matthew 28:16-20). The Apostle Paul tells us that the Gospel was for the Jew first, then the Gentile (Romans 1:16).
We see this play out in the Christmas story. The shepherds around Bethlehem were poor and Jewish. The Magi were educated wealthy Gentiles. In this, we see that even at his birth, the gospel of the Kingdom was for all people. These wealthy Gentiles from the East knew the correct response. “Where is the King? We want to worship him.”
These Gentiles understood that this Jewish King was for the world, for them, too. For all who would come to him. And their gifts revealed that they comprehended the Messianic promise.
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The Old Testament prophecies declared the Messiah a king in the line of David, but the Anointed One would also be a priest (Zechariah 6:11). Hebrews in the New Testament details the High Priest role of Jesus, a priest in the order of Melchizedek, who himself was both a king and a priest (Psalm 110:4, Hebrews 7:17).
The Magi show up with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Gold is a kingly gift, to be sure, but Solomon’s Temple was also covered in gold. Frankincense and myrrh were fragrances used in the holy incense before God (Exodus 30:22-28, 34-38), also to embalm the dead.
These were priestly gifts for a king. The Magi understood that Jesus had both functions. He fulfills both roles for us, too, for he is eternal, as Hebrews describes. He is King and Lord over us, a loving and absolute authority. He is also the mediator between God and people (1 Timothy 2:5), a continual sacrifice before his Father.
God kept bringing people together throughout the Christmas story. Gabriel tells Mary to go visit Elizabeth, which encouraged them both. The same angel won’t let Joseph leave Mary and isolate her by putting her away quietly. God sends the shepherds to the manger, Magi to the house, and Simon and Anna as prophets on the day Jesus was circumcised at the Temple.
Grief hangs over many during Christmas. The first holiday season without a loved one is extremely difficult, expressly because we long for connection and community, and someone we care about is missing during what should be a happy time. That grief can further isolate us, leading to depression and more.
The Father expanded his family over Christmas, including us now as children of the loving, holy Trinity through Christ. It has amazed me this past year how many Christmas movies are about creating family or expanding one to include more people. Many are lonely during this time, hiding it well, and we must be intentional about reaching out and checking in with people in our neighborhoods and churches and inviting them into our homes and lives.
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The gospel of the Kingdom of God isn’t about coercion, force, or manipulation. If anyone could force us to follow him, it’s God, the one who is all-powerful (1 Timothy 6:15), but he doesn’t. He invites, he asks, he reasons, he loves, he speaks, and gives merciful chance after chance, but he will not force us. That’s not love.
This is expressed wonderfully on Christmas Day. The most powerful being in all of existence, God himself, came in the weakest, most vulnerable package possible. A baby can’t force us to do anything. He or she has no power for that. He can’t manipulate or coerce us. We must come to the baby to love him or her. Love is the only motivator.
In God’s love, even when Jesus grew up a man, still all-powerful, he didn’t have any position of Earthly authority, wasn’t super charming or handsome (Isaiah 53:2). He was truth, love, peace, and grace. That was authority enough. Enough for others to be threatened enough to kill him. Even then he didn’t hit back, though he could have called down legions of angels. It’s a gospel of love. Christmas makes that abundantly clear.
To conclude, I’m in no way against Santa Claus. I’ll be making a gingerbread house tonight with my daughter while we watch Grinch on the TV and then maybe another Christmas movie. But we don’t need a cartoon character to make the Christmas Story more powerful or wondrous. There is plenty within the birth of Jesus to inspire and fill us with joy, infinitely and eternally enough. The Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest gift and the best story.
Read the Scriptures, sing the carols, enter the powerful, mysterious adventure of Christmas today. I hope you have a Merry Christmas! Peace.
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