Friday, December 12, 2014

What do you want for Christmas?

The Christmas story is not just a story about light. It is a story about light coming into darkness. As we celebrate the light, we ought not to miss the darker tones in the story; the deeper richer hues grounding this heavenly story in our earthly humanity.

A peasant girl, in a backwater village. No majestic hopes or grandiose expectations for life. 

Suddenly, a stranger breaks in to her presence, shattering her life. He greets her with words of honour, words she cannot understand. His words of explanation only deepened her confusion and consternation. His words, intended to communicate a blessing, in fact condemn her to death. How could an unmarried virgin become pregnant and not be killed to restore the honour of the family? This miraculous visitation would have to be followed by many more miracles or the story would be cut short, brutally short.

An old priest and his barren wife. Whatever hopes or expectations they had carried in their youth, now long forgotten.

Suddenly, a stranger breaks into his presence, interrupting his worship, shattering his life. The stranger greets him and brings him a startling message. His wife will have a child after all, not just any child, but a great and important prophet. The old priest in the midst of his religious ritual fails in faith and is struck dumb. His lack of faith notwithstanding the strange words of the interrupting angel come true and the miraculous baby is born.

A miraculous baby, now grown into a mesmerizing prophet. Arrested and imprisoned by an unrighteous king, his hopes and expectations lay scattered like so much soiled straw.

Suddenly, nothing…. No interruption. No angelic visitation. The passion, faith, vision, and hope that had blazed in him, attracting followers like moths, is fading. His job was to prepare the way. He had done his part. He met the One to follow. He handed over his ministry, his crowds. He decreased so that the One could increase. One day, visited by some friends, he gives voice to his fears. Maybe he got it wrong, and the one he thought was the Lamb of God was just another pretender. “Go to him! Go to him and ask him, are you the one?”

Jesus, the Lamb of God, the daughter of the virgin peasant girl, responds to the friends of his cousin John, the first miraculous baby in the Christmas story. He compassionately recognizes John’s fading, failing faith. He encourages John’s friends to share what they have witnessed, and by implication to look at the things He is doing rather than the things He isn’t. Jesus affirms the previous ministry of John, even as he recognizes the fickleness of faith and the perils of perception.

How many times? How many times are we frustrated and disappointed? Either God comes to us and does something that feels like it’s wrecking our lives, or He interrupts us with surprising words at an inconvenient time, or God doesn’t show up at all and doesn’t do the things that we ask and expect. How often are we disappointed with God?

But this God, with whom we are disappointed, delights to give good gifts to His children. We know how to give gifts to our kids. We may not cater to their every whim, but we do like to give them presents. We want to make them happy. God, delights to give himself to us, not only at Christmas, but every day. The God who enfleshed Himself that first Christmas, giving Himself in the package of a baby boy, now gives His Spirit to all who ask Him.

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