Posts Tagged ‘Christmas’
Monday, December 21st, 2009
The Starbucks coffee cup reads,
We invite you to listen to your desires and to renew your hope. To see the world not as it is, but as it could be. Go ahead. Wish. It’s what makes the holidays the holidays.
Wishing, it says, is “what makes the holidays the holidays.” Try not to see reality, the world as it is. Wish for something else. That’s what the celebration is all about.
Doesn’t that seem sad to you? It does to me. Not bad, not evil, but sad. How does wishing help us to renew hope? Maybe by allowing us to imagine that things don’t have to be this way. Great reforms have been led by men and women who have said, “this is not good, and it can be changed.” These are dreamers, though—not wishers. They live their lives in pursuit of fulfilling those dreams. Wishes are passive. Without a wish-granter, like some lucky leprechaun or fairy godmother, they are poignant reminders that things are not as we would like them to be. Beyond that they do nothing.
But wishing is a child-like thing to do, and Christmas, they say, is for the children, so I suppose that’s why the coffee cup speaks of wishes. Maybe it’s intended to remind us of our wishes and hopes of childhood, before we saw the world as it was, or when we saw it for what it was but hadn’t learned yet that wishes by themselves do nothing. Except for this: when we were children, some of us discovered that expressing our wishes toward our parents resulted in our wishes coming true on Christmas morning. Parents can be wish-granters. If the wish-granter parent is wise, he or she will know when it is best to grant the wish and when it is best not to. And then if that parent has the resources to match the good wishes, children often do find their wishes come true.
Many of us experienced this kind of thing as children. Many of us wish we did. All of us would rather see the world as it could be than as it is, because regardless of where we came from, all of us have been disappointed with the way the world is.
Some have said Christianity is about believing in a magical wish-granter. Let us ignore (this time at least) the impact of such loaded language and simply ask, suppose someone has a wish and directs it toward God: is there someone there listening, or is God as unreal as the leprechaun? Could he actually be a wish-granter, in the same way the wise parent can be at Christmas? Is that such an outlandish thought?
Hope must have a real basis, or else it is empty wishing indeed. Israel’s hope for a Messiah was based on centuries of relationship with God, and on his promises. Celebration ought to involve something more than closing our eyes to reality: there ought to be something truly good and joyful to celebrate together. What has made the “holidays” the “holidays” for millions of people for many years has been that the “holidays” included Christmas, celebrating the fulfillment of Israel’s hope, and Christ as the basis for our own renewed hope.
My sadness is for those whose holidays are about what the coffee cup says they are: wishing the world was different. It is a cup that tastes of disappointments and empty hopes. In reality the holiday of Christmas is about God making the world different, full, and bright. It’s about hopes fulfilled and disappointments turned into joy.
My wish for you—my prayer to the really existing God for you—is that you will taste the reality of celebration. God has come to renew our hope, to begin to make the world what it really can be, even to make us what we really can be. And to show how great he is in doing so!
Don’t just “Go ahead. Wish.” Celebrate!
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
We’re in the season of expectancy, preparing to celebrate the birth of Christ. There was a season of expectancy before his actual birth 2,000 years ago–expectancy both on earth, where prophecies of a coming Messiah were passionately studied and only partly understood, and also in heaven, where the eternal God was preparing to break in to time and space and human life. It has been said that Jesus was the only person who chose to be born.
Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus’ birth “from the ground up,” through the eyes and ears of Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, and the Magi. John (John 1:1-14) gives us the view from the sky, as it were:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John [the Baptist]. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. 8He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Word became flesh on that first Christmas. We use words to express meaning and to connect with one another. From the beginning there was meaning and there was relationship among the three Persons of the Godhead. From the creation of man, God’s intent has been that we would live with full understanding of meaning, and in close relationship with him, with one another, and with all of his creation. No one needs to be convinced that we have not lived out that ideal. The Word became flesh to restore us to it. Merry Christmas indeed!
He was and he is both life and light. By coming to live as a human among humans, he opened to us the door to true life in true light. John says his own people did not receive him, and tragically some still will not see his bright light. But those who do receive him are born into new life through him. It’s a life of grace and truth: truth to guide us, to show us what is real and what is right, and grace so that we can recover from our failures in living by what is real and right.
The message of Christmas is not just about a stable and a star, not just a mother and a child. It’s about the glory of God shining on earth, through one who became flesh to show us his great glory.
This is what heaven was looking forward to during that first advent season. Merry Christmas indeed!
Friday, January 18th, 2008
The stage has been set in Parts 1 through 5 (linked below). The human race, meant to be great under God, in worshipful relationship with Him, has fallen mightily by rejecting that relationship. God did not reject us, though. The plan was prepared since before the foundation of the world: Jesus Christ, God Himself, second Person of the Trinity, maker and sustainer of all creation, would come and provide our rescue. His coming was prophesied centuries in advance, here and in many other places:
For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.
 Thus this glorious King and and Deliverer comes and breaks into our world–helpless and tiny, lying in a feed trough in a stable.
Nobody ever said Christianity was without paradox and surprise. This is one of the greatest of them. God humbled Himself to become one of us, far more truly so than anyone had ever anticipated. The image here well conveys the stunning reversal. He came because of His love for us, but the glory of that love is completely veiled, so that what we notice instead is Mary and Joseph’s adoration.
Not all His greatness was darkened when He came. The angels announced His coming to the shepherds in great glory. But this, too, is a reversal. Shepherds were of a class not much more respected than garbage collectors in our day. Why did God grant them this great privilege?
One author called Jesus’ rule the “Upside-Down Kingdom,” where humility reigns and the proud fall. This upside-down-ness of Jesus’ way began right at His own beginning on Earth. He laid aside His divine privileges, and as we saw in Part 5, became united with humanity.
What does Christ do for us? This was His first action on our behalf in the human form of Jesus, the person who revealed God by walking among us. His first action was to join with us.
His joining with us would extend to growing up and sharing in human joys and grief, in laughter and in pain, in weariness and refreshment, in friendship and in rejection. Ultimately it would extend to experiencing what none of us should ever face, though too many have: immense injustice, torture, and death.
What Christ does for us is love us intimately, from nearby.
There’s more to come.
Part of a Series: What Christ Does For Us
Related: How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. This post elicited a short question, to which I’m writing a very long answer in the form of this series.
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