Christmas Meditation
reflecting on the meaning of Christmas
Isaiah 63:7-9
God’s Mercy Remembered
7 I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord,
the praiseworthy acts of the Lord,
because of all that the Lord has done for us
and the great favor to the house of Israel
that he has shown them according to his mercy,
according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
8 For he said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will not act deceitfully,”
and he became their savior
9 in all their distress.
It was no messenger or angel
but his presence that saved them;
in his love and pity it was he who redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
[Photo by David Trinks on Unsplash]
I love Christmas time and especially the Christmas Eve service where we remember the story of the birth of Jesus and sing all the lovely hymns. But it seems sometimes that we are too far removed from the story. It’s too common, we have heard it too many times – it’s like it happened too long ago to people who don’t seem real to us – it has been mythologized.
The Christmas story is so familiar to us that it has lost all its glitz and glamour – we are no longer able to LOSE ourselves in the wonder of the story. And that’s too bad because it really is quite an AMAZING story. And I think that’s why often people will try to approach it from a different direction - to catch our attention - and call us to reconnect it to reality.
For the past several years in my mind I have paired the birth of Jesus with his death. It occurred to me one day that in order for Jesus to save us by dying on the cross he had to be born. So, at this time of year when we are celebrating the BIRTH of our savior, we are also anticipating the future - the sacrifice on the cross – we are celebrating a birth and a death at the same time because we already know how the story ends.
This time distortion seems very appropriate as we currently wait in anticipation of the SECOND COMING of Christ and at the same time celebrate his FIRST COMING in the retelling of his birth. I admit the timeline seems a little fuzzy – definitely not linear – there’s something magical happening here.
Of course, in order to die, we must all be born. But are we born to die? Since one logically follows the other, I would say yes. Yet, we resist death like the plague. I don’t think its too far of a stretch to say Jesus was born to die.
Though some people say that Jesus needn’t have died at all. That it was all a MISTAKE. That the religious leaders of the time killed him against God’s wishes. But that’s not what I read in the Bible. And this time of year, when we hear the words of the prophets again – the writings that through the centuries Christians have interpreted as pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, through their words a picture emerges of a suffering servant, a shepherd king, who came to serve the people. From Isaiah today we hear of God INCARNATE who became their savior (vs. 8). God in love and mercy redeemed the people (vs. 9) - but God did not just send another messenger (prophet) but this time came in PERSON to comfort them with the Divine Presence.
I really can’t help but hear a parallel to the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Matthew 21:33-46) in this passage. If you recall in that parable there was an absentee landlord who rented out a vineyard to some people who then refused to pay their dues to the landowner, so he sent some messengers to collect. The wicked tenants ended up tormenting the messengers, even killing one of them so the landowner sent a second round of messengers and they met the same fate. Then, since the tenants failed to receive the message, the Landowner sent his SON for surely these tenants would respect him and obey the son. And you can guess what happened then. They saw their opportunity to kill the son and take his inheritance (the vineyard/the earth) by force.
This story for me seems to encapsulate the entirety of the gospel. God through the centuries sent messages to the chosen people Israel through the prophets communicating God’s instructions and they rejected them – ignoring, tormenting or otherwise killing these messengers from God. In the end, God sent Jesus, the Son, the heir, to settle the accounts of the tenants and predictably they killed him too, thinking to take by force what did not rightfully belong to them. The question the PARABLE asks is the same one WE ask ourselves – when the landowner (God) comes how will he settle the accounts of these wicked tenants (us)?
Because, make no mistake, God is coming. Even though we are lulled into complacency by our own sense of self-reliance and have rejected the messengers of truth by overconfidence in our own reasoning. While we keep telling ourselves that there is no God and that’s only a story it isn’t real, we are lapsing in faith and failing to prepare adequately, which is, by the way, another theme that Jesus emphasizes in his teachings (i.e., Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids).
For we are only tenants here on earth and we have FAILED to care properly for Creation. We have disrespected this beautiful home that God made for us. We have forgotten that WE ARE NOT THE LANDOWNERS, that our wishes do not reign supreme. We have neglected the cries of the other creatures who inhabit Creation with us, those who have as much of a right to this space as we do. We have not been BENEVOLENT masters, but in our self-serving ways have neglected to show God’s love and carry out our Master’s careful instructions for the vineyard.
God the absentee landlord. We have all heard of God. By our confession we acknowledge God’s lordship over all of Creation, over all of our lives, yet I would say we often fall into the trap of forgetting that God ACTUALLY exists. We act like WE are the lords of creation!
But our greatest neglect lies in our dereliction of duty to the Lord. We mistake the land and everything we have gathered from the land (our possessions) for our own and attempt to exercise a maniacal control which leads to excessive greed and self-aggrandizement. It is only when we acknowledge the True Lord of earth, that we are more able to carry out God’s instructions and let go of our need for controlling every detail of life which leads to acceptance and peace in every circumstance.
When Jesus came – and he came EXPECTING to die – how many times did he say that and it is recorded in every one of the gospel accounts! And since the wicked inhabitants of this earth have not paid their dues to the Lord - he paid it all for them. And so, we may be guilty of killing the Son of trying to wrest creation from God’s control and we should be ashamed, but it was not UNEXPECTED. God knew what would happen. That’s the tragedy of it. God gave us every chance to do the right thing and we failed.
Now, as we wait in perpetual advent for the appearance of the Lord of Creation we wait in trepidation, some unknowingly, wondering what our fate might be – will we get what we deserve?
I believe that is one source of DESPAIR which fills the earth. The waiting for the other shoe to drop, the waiting for the punishment of deeds done and undone. As time goes by some may fool themselves into thinking that the reckoning will NEVER come as they continue to live in their own excess, in selfish servitude. Because who is going to stop them?
We on earth hope that everyone gets what they deserve but the hope communicated in the gospel is just the opposite.
You will NOT get what you deserve.
Jesus died and HE got what you deserved.
But what will the judgement of God bring for humankind? What will the Lord of Creation do with the wicked tenants of this earth? This is what we await – the FINAL JUDGEMENT – the final accounting- the settling of the accounts.
The author of Hebrews understood Christ to be the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices and thereby understood the sacrificial death on the cross to be a necessary part of our salvation history. Jesus WAS born to die.
And why did God come as a helpless infant? Why not come as a full-grown man? Better yet – a fully vested powerful deity?
When Jesus lived on earth, he experienced the childhood and young adult stages that we all know and remember. He came weak and powerless. He came to experience life as we experience it. Jesus loved his mom and dad and brothers and sisters, made friends, learned how to write and speak, learned all of the human customs of the time – what was polite and what was impolite – learned about God and the Temple rites, learned the difference between Romans and Judeans, the haves and the have-nots. Learned the hard lessons we all learn in life.
Then he left his home and struck out on his own – with a message that few understood. But soon his message gained traction as the word spread and people recognized the Truth contained in the words he spoke. Words containing an otherworldly hope, words proclaiming an impossible peace, words of love for all people carrying unspeakable joy. These words formed a vision that came from another place - not from a human mind.
Because the Messianic vision that pervaded Judea at that time was one of a king of power, a King to repel the Romans and restore their homeland.
God did not send Jesus to fulfill the greatest hopes of the PEOPLE and if the people had paid attention to the messages of the prophets they would have known what God had in mind. But the people were ever willful and recalcitrant. Some things never change.
Our hopes, too, fall short of God’s vision. Our hope that everything should be fair and equal, our vision of justice, doesn’t quite sync up with God’s plan and to get a good grasp on that all we have to do is listen to the message and allow it to penetrate our hearts and minds and souls.
A lot of time the message bounces off our finely polished exterior, reflects off our ego, barely illuminating our surface understanding. It sometimes hits an immoveable stone – some pillar we have built our identity on. Open your eyes, unstop your ears, open your hearts, scratch up your exterior gloss and shatter those stones to soak in this life-giving Truth.
The Bible as a whole is a document of hope written in times of extreme duress. It speaks to us today because ALL TIMES are times of suffering, times when some are feeling displaced, or mistreated, oppressed, under some tyrannical thumb. You don’t have to go far in this world to find someone who complains of suffering unfairly.
We, through our collective memory, look backward through time to find that place that felt safe and good (though only in the deceitful shades of memory) and so we wish to return to that place of shelter. The Israelites wished to return to the surety of a strong monarch, as they remembered David. They expressed this hope in their prayers, their singing, their poetry, their dreams and their visions.
But you can’t go home again…
Currently our understanding of time is linear but I am sure it is incomplete. Our understanding of justice seems right, but I bet there is a better way. Our vision for the future falls short of the glorious vision that God has in store for us and so we wait and hope, remembering the wonderful past and imagining a better future.
The birth of the Christ child reminds us that important things are not always big and grandiose.
Babies, born dependent and helpless, come into the world with a disarming cuteness and a little reflection of you showing in their face. This helps ensure their survival. God came into the world as a human infant needing care and attention. The message of the Christ child is not a trumpet blast but a helpless whimper. In order to hear this MESSAGE that God sent to us in this small fragile package we are going to have to reorient ourselves. We are going to have to still our inner voices to hear the sweet murmurings of the baby Jesus. We are going to have to reduce our focus on ourselves, to allow us to meet the needs of this small child.
Maybe God came as a little baby to show us that no matter where you start out you can always grow into something better. The baby Jesus didn’t come into the most ideal circumstances – in fact you may say that he suffered adversity. Born under suspicious conditions, unwed mother, unknown father, born away from home, born into an occupied country beset with civil unrest; required to embark on a treacherous journey to escape death, born to raise a ruling king’s ire initiating a torrent of innocent blood. Do you really have that much to complain about?
This Christmas remembering that great things often come in small unassuming forms can help us to open our hearts JUST A CRACK to receive the message one Word at a time, knowing that once it takes root it will grow.
The baby, with proper care and attention will grow into its full potential. The message once planted in our hearts will grow in a similar fashion. With God’s help, it will grow into something beyond our wildest imaginings.
Prayer
O Holy Incarnate God, we come before you today to receive your presence in the form of this helpless infant. Remind us that you need our tender loving care and attention. Speak to us in hushed tones and open our ears to hear. Soften our hardened hearts with your smile, break down our stone pillars with your loving gaze. One day the message you offer will be planted in the willing soil of our hearts. Help us daily to listen for your message of hope and to turn our attention from our own needs to yours. AMEN