[What follows is a devotional reading put together for a Christmas Eve service a few years ago. I dusted it off the other day for a Christmas concert I did recently. If you can use this for your Christmas service or event, feel free do so.]
Another year. Another Christmas. Another holiday “special” on TV. You know the kind: family values woven in with “holiday magic”—an angel, Santa Claus, or some other ghost of Christmas. We are told this holiday is about giving and joy and loved ones. But in reality we mostly find that the “giving” drains our checking accounts and maxes out our credit cards. And with each “loved one” that visits at Christmas, comes the “ones we don’t love so much,” and we’re relieved when the family gathering is finally over. And for too many people, instead of joy, Christmas is another reminder that they are alone. Alone by themselves. Alone in a lifeless marriage. They could even be alone with family and friends on all sides, because loneliness comes wrapped in a lot of different types of packages.
So in this season of joy and giving and being with loved ones, our lives often bear little resemblance to the happy ending in the latest “Christmas special” on TV. And instead of a Norman Rockwell, our holiday looks more like a Clark Griswold. For many, it seems Christmas is now something to be endured rather than a season to be embraced. Somewhere along the line, Christmas has been stripped of its true joy and nature. Whatever power "Christmas-past" wielded seems to have fizzled and failed. It’s as if Christmas has been diluted. We might even say the power of Christmas has been tamed.
We can blame the culture for this taming of Christmas, can’t we? For most, the central figure of Christmas is no longer the Messiah for which the holiday was named. But a much more jovial and safer icon has taken His place. His only requirement is to be “less naughty and more nice.”
I suppose we can blame the marketing people on Madison Ave. and the malls of every suburb. Who over the age 30 didn’t grow up looking at the Sears “wishbook” from late September until Christmas Eve.
But our culture hasn’t forgotten Mary and Joseph and the Baby Jesus. On the contrary, they still have their prominent places in church lawns and even a few town squares. And on countless coffee tables and mantles the shepherds and 3 wise men continue in their motionless approach to the manger.
And now we no longer have just the stoic looking figurines, but happier, and more sentimental, representations of that holy night. Mary and the gang are now Precious Moments, snowmen, teddy bears and even Fischer Price Little People. The Christmas story becomes far more “cuddly” when a stuffed animal is wrapped in swaddling clothes.
So is our culture to blame? On the surface, it may seem that way. But a more likely conclusion is that the culture was only taking its cue from the church.
You see we like the Christmas story, because we like the baby Jesus. Babies cause us to be sentimental. Babies are cute. Babies are loveable. And babies are safe. The most pious among us may scorn the idea of baby Jesus being shown as furry woodland creature or a child’s play toy. But our notion of the Incarnate Deity isn’t too far away from that.
We talk about the stable and the manger, with the fresh bed of hay and the company of quiet animals. But we forget that a stable is a barn. And a manger is a feeding trough. And we forget to mention in our stories of the nativity that farm animals stink.
Jesus was born in a mess.
We also talk about Mary and Joseph and the good people that they were. And they were good people. But would we have thought so had we been their neighbors?
“She’s pregnant.”
“She’s what?!”
“That’s right, and I heard it isn’t even Joseph’s.”
“Well, I never…”
We forget that the stable is a barn, that the manger is a feeding trough, and that the young Virgin Mary carrying the Son of God in her womb looks a lot like a pregnant teenager. Frowned upon in our day, punishable by death in her’s.
Not only was Jesus born in a mess; he was born into a messy situation.
Let’s talk about the shepherds. The only people besides his mother and stepfather to greet Jesus on his actual birthday were field hands --shepherds who had been living in the fields with their sheep. Imagine the odors of sweat and field and livestock mingling during those prolonged times of caring for the flock. And besides that, shepherds were social outcasts, doing the job few others would accept. And yet they were summoned by angels to welcome the holy child. What do you think Mary said when they asked, “Can we hold him?”
Jesus was welcomed by the messy.
But the wise men—surely they are a bright spot in the Christmas story. Magi who had studied the ancient manuscripts saw the star and knew a King had been born. They brought him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. And they worshiped him. But was the worship about a sense of being in the presence of God, or just another “little-g” god to add to their list of deities that they venerated? And when they left him, did their gaze continue to be on the Son of God, or did they return to the stars and astrology for guidance?
Not only was Jesus welcomed by the messy, but he was worshiped by people with messy faith.
These players in the Christmas story—from the wisest traveling scholar to the lowliest shepherd boy—were imperfect, yes, but still deserving credit. You see, they came to the Christ child and gave what they had. And for that, we rightly remember them. Songs are sung and stories are told of their role in this drama.
But no one sings of the innkeeper. Unless it’s to chastise him for not having room for Mary and Joseph. But he didn’t turn them away. He gave them shelter from the night air and probably saw that they were fed. How was he to know that this young woman carried in her womb the Savior of the world?
And certainly we hear no sentimental songs sung of the jealous king who tried to connive the wise men into leading him to this would-be king. He would have no competition. He would have no rival. He alone was great—Herod the great. And to insure this, he ordered the execution of those guilty of being a boy under the age of two. He slaughtered his people’s sons to protect his throne. No. No carols are sung of him. This part of the story doesn’t make it into our songs or our annual recitation of the birth of Jesus. Because that would take away from the quiet and the sentiment that we like so much at Christmas.
And that’s what we want from our Baby Jesus. One that is cute; one that is sentimental. One that we can control, or at least forget about in our daily routine. Why do we want this image? Because we want a safe God. We want a God who isn’t riddled with paradox. We want a God that we can figure out. We want a God who is neat, clean, and safe.
But God is not safe. And He cannot be figured out by formulas or human reason. Nor can His visible image, Jesus Christ. Even at his conception, Jesus was surrounded by scandal. Before he was two years old his existence spark the massacre of those that he might’ve one day played with in the sandbox. No. Jesus is not safe. Not even as an infant. And certainly not as one who grew to be known as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Try as we might, we cannot trim his claws. Jesus cannot be tamed. The Christmas story, told in full disclosure, cannot be sanitized or made safe.
Jesus was born in a mess—in a place reserved for farm animals. He was born into a messy, scandalous family. He was welcomed by the messy—those smelly shepherds. And he was worshiped through the messy faith of the Magi.
But it doesn’t end there. The Jesus of the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John continued to encounter the messy and the messed up. Beggars, whores, and thieves—Jesus met them in the mess. Those with leprosy, the lame, the blind, and the bleeding—he touched their mess.
You see, the gospel—the good news—of the Christmas story, isn’t just that God became man. But that he entered our mess. He waded and swam in the pool of our sin and our filth in order to rescue us. In order to pull us out of the mess that we’re in.
And thirty some years after this messy entrance into a messy world, Jesus hung on a cross, and took upon him all that is wrong with us. He took our sin, our sickness, our mess, and paid the price that it required. He cleaned up our mess; he made it beautiful.
If we should tame this holiday, if we should sanitize the story of His birth, we will miss whole point of Christmas.
Most Christmas messages preach “it’s better to give than receive.” And that’s true. Those were the very words of Jesus according to Paul. But each Christmas, and especially this one, I think we’re asked to receive…
...receive the truth that God is wild and beyond anything we can imagine.
...receive the truth that he cannot be tamed, nor should His story be tamed.
...and receive the truth that he is good. He calls to himself hurting people; people bruised by world, marginalized by society. He has no time for those who think they’ve got it all together. But He has time for smelly shepherds, for beggars, for prostitutes, for bastard children, just like he was perceived to be. He has time for messy people who recognize their messiness. That’s what he came here for. That’s why the Perfect and the Holy entered into our filth and depravity.
Receive the truth that you are loved by a God who did not require you to pay for your mess. But he came Himself, in Jesus Christ, to wipe away the dirt and the tears from your face and lift you out of the mess and into His arms. Receive that truth...
