It's only eight more days until Christmas. It's cliche to say, probably even pedantic to comment on, but time flies! How is it that Christmas is already here? What did I do for the past 350 some odd days? Either way, I'm glad Christmas is here. It's the best time of the year as far as I'm concerned (I started listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving) and I can only speak for myself, but this season has been more enriching than years past. I figured I'd share a bit about why.
In my younger years my heart leapt in anticipation for Christmas due to the excitement of the season, and who wouldn't? Trees, lights, music, special food, and presents! But I'm finding in my early 30's my anticipation changing. I care less about the music, the trees, everything (p.s. it's interesting how online sales and times keep extending...pretty soon black friday will be in June...). I find that I care less and less about what the world has to offer me and more about what God has in store. Why?
For a world that hates on Jesus, it's weird to me that Jesus has been the stereotypical sign for the marketing of consumerism. We see the baby Jesus and somehow we think "buy, buy, buy!" I was at a Christmas party the other day of my wife's coworkers (who adamantly think faith and church is silly) and yet when we walk in we find a manger set as the prominent display. "How interesting" I thought. Jesus really is at the center of this time, even for those who dismiss him. The marketing of Christmas is accurate in the metaphor that a gift is what a person needs. We got that one right! But what we miss is that xbox's and movies, iPods and Kindle's are small kibbles for the hole in our hearts. When Blaise Pascal said "every man is born with a God-shaped hole in his heart" he was right. Christmas "gifting" (I just made that up), at its core, unconsciously considers a different equation. What if we could calculate how BIG God is and thus determine the amount of gifts I could buy to fill that hole? Blaise wasn't being comically whimsical, making a jab at the natural logic of deism, but rather he was stating an ontological reality. By definition God is beyond our comprehension and thus by implication beyond measuring. If God cannot be measured then in reality no amount of gifts will ever fill that God-shaped hole. What is incredibly interesting is that parents who don't believe in Jesus somehow intrinsically recognize that a hole exists and want to give gifts to their kids with hopes of lasting happiness. Yet Christmas comes year after year and we still give gifts? Why? Because they don't satisfy. Xbox games get old, teddy bears rip, movies mundane. This whole event is ironically similar to the Old Testament sacrificial system, when year after year the people had to offer sacrifices because the blood of bulls and goats was never able to eternally purify one's heart. So why do we keep buying? Because we fail to see the gift of Christ as the BEST gift, given ONCE and for ALL.
We're all in the midst of this process. Kids dwell in the greatness of the miracle. Teens need to reminded constantly of the Truth of Christ's gift. Now in my 30's I'm finding a change in how I see this manger Jesus. I no longer see him as a symbol of a time to celebrate (though that's true) but I have begun to see him as a real baby. Of course with a seminary degree I have always understand and could articulate his historical presence and theological necessity, but he's somehow become more real to me. I see a baby small and fragile yet adamant and determined to be born as if he had a purpose for which he longed to complete. Though he could not speak as an infant, I somehow see in his eyes "I will not be thwarted"...like nothing would stop him (reminds me of Romans 8:31!). How blessed are you Jesus, the baby that with everything small, and with a simple smile and faint giggle somehow in your innocence give hope to all. How is it that this is true? Why is he somehow more real? Because the older I get, and the more I begin to crave a child of my own (my wife and I have been married for three years), intrinsically the father nature inside of me no longer sees Christmas as a time to get, but as a time to give. If my wife and I had a child, my instinct would never be "what can this baby give me?" but rather, "what wouldn't I give for this baby?" When Mary and Joseph looked at their baby boy, knowing was he born of God by the Holy Spirit, and that he would be great, inheriting the throne of David, reigning forever, how little did they realize what this baby would one day do to fundamentally change the world. He would die on a cross, brutally, for the sins of all men, and raised to life making possible the reality to be freed from the bondage of sin and death (by the work of the Holy Spirit).
So if we connect the dots, we find three things to be true: a) as a parent we would never ask what a child will do for us. b) we know that Jesus did do something for us, and c) it inspires us to say with greater depth, "what wouldn't I do for this baby?"
What wouldn't I do for this baby? Unfortunately I, probably all of us, can think of things we would rather not do. But if we see Jesus for who is really is we cannot afford to not. For me, it has been because I have lacked the ability to really see Jesus as real. Permit me for a second a brief interlude to help us better understand that single moment in history. If I close my eyes I can picture myself in the cave. I'm not a ghostly figment like Scrooge overlooking the past, but I'm real. I'm dressed not in jeans and my American Eagle sweater, but clothed with a simple tunic, light, thin, not very warm. I'm kneeled down with Joseph next to Mary as she lay prone against the cold rock and dirty floor. I can feel the chill of the night creeping in and the soft mooing of the animals. There is hay scattered over the floor, with droppings of manure amongst the patches. I can hear the breeze whistling outside the manger-cave at his birth; a response of the changing times, carrying on it the sound of New Birth for all men, the reassurance that this baby would change everything. Fear struck the hearts of prideful men and all who had power sought to take it from him for their own. But it could not be undone. Such humble beginnings, yet with his first cry a noise echoed back through the ages heard by the bones of men and women long gone and I can almost hear the sighs of the many in their tombs who for so long had awaited the fulfillment to the promise they held onto so feebly for they could not see what they hoped for. With the baby's birth their fears were settled as they heard the cry that with it trumpeted and sounded the inauguration of the end. Eternal rest is soon to come. It marked the defining redemptive moment when God would fix what we messed up, not like a deistic cosmic janitor, but rather as a Father who so deeply loved his children that he paid the price; a price only as large as one can pay, the death of his Son. This was a real moment in history. A moment that beckons me to question, "what wouldn't I do for this baby?"
Fast forward. So what what am I asked to do? Simply put, in a world where people buy gifts to fill the God-shaped hole, I do what is difficult - I bring them the real gift. Paul says "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!' But they have not all obeyed the gospel. for Isaiah says, 'Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?' So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ" (Romans 10:14-17).
Christmas time is filled with all sorts of gifts. The gift of family, friends, fellowship, food, and fun! But the most literal gift are presents themselves, wrapped neatly under the tree, causing anticipation and hope in what we cannot yet see, that this gift will somehow bring joy to me. Christmas is a time to give and to receive; a time to fill and be filled. Indeed anticipating what we cannot see is a Biblical theme and a great metaphor for how the men old waited, and how we must also wait. But at the end of the day one must never forget the greatest gift of all. It is an understatement to say that we have much as Americans, yet God's promise (and warning) to his people long ago stands just as true today: "and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, about of the house of slavery" (Deut. 6:11b-12). The exodus stands as the single greatest Old Testament motif to parallel the New Testament. God's people were enslaved by Pharaoh, bitterly treated, with no hope. Yet God released them from their bond of slavery (see NT theme in Romans 8:1-4) and brought them into a new land. Yet as the author of Hebrews reminds us that if God was just to punish every disobedience under the Old Covenant, how then will we escape judgment who have a greater form of revelation: namely the birth, death, and resurrection of God's Son Jesus. I cannot dismiss this. I cannot allow Christmas to turn into a mere exchange of goods. The point I'm making to myself and any reader is not to strike materialism out of our hearts for fear of judgment, but rather experience the desire that Moses wrote in the same Deuteronomy passage above: we are to "love the LORD our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with our might." Jesus himself quoted from this passage directly when asked what the greatest commandment was (Mt. 22) and he also quoted another portion elsewhere when being tempted by Satan in the wilderness. "If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours." And Jesus answered him, "It is written,
'You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.'" (Luke 4)
This all makes sense after all since we have heard that we cannot serve both God and money. Certainly it is too reductionistic to think the money is the only antithesis to worshipping God. As Tim Keller has stated, "any good thing that becomes an ultimate thing ceases to be a good thing." Anything that grasps my heart more than God is worship. Christmas is about what we get. We get salvation. The forgiveness of sins by grace through faith. Eternal life. But it's also about giving. That's where my heart has found a new joy. Seeing past the lights, past the trees, past the songs, and into the heart of who Jesus really was. He may have started as a baby, but he grew to accomplish something far greater than this world ever expected. I am called to serve the Lord only. I am called to do the difficult - to bypass fear, to bypass the desire to self medicate with new toys and things, and I go and give the BEST gift.
This season I pray for myself, and for any who might read this post, that the faint cry of the baby Jesus would now echo centuries forward into our own hearts. And that as we hear that cry it would dismantle thoughts of anything else. That his real smile would warm our hearts. That in somehow touching him, holding him, letting his tiny fingers grasp one of yours that you would become more real to you: his very existence and purpose more real and that feel the intrinsic response, "with what he has given me in his life, death, and resurrection...what wouldn't I do for this baby?" Again, how beautiful are the feet who bring good news!
Lord help me, help us, see that filling my life with the treasures of this world puts me in danger of forgetting our greatest need. Whatever we need to do, whether it's create new traditions, or delete old ones, we must never lose the meaning of the metaphor. I have must never be so full of Christmas gifts that I forget its greatest gift.
