What a strange story I'm
celebrating today! There were shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch
over their flocks at night. An angel appeared to them, telling them not to be
afraid. A baby had been born, and they could find him wrapped in cloths and
lying in a manger. To a peasant mother outside of Bethlehem, the Son of God was
born.
Taking a step back from the
familiar hum (remembering to hum) of all those previous days of Advent I am
considering, this morning, this story, Christians all around the world have really
been waiting for, and I recognize I'm thrown off my usual Christmas kilter.
This is not really the innocuous historical narrative I've commonly imagined.
This is not a tame story. The bright lights and colors of all the final scene
at Radio City Music all seems to have painted over the stark scenery of a story
that startles all of history. Do I really understand this God who comes as a child,
who steps into my world through a dirty stable and the unlikely arms of an
unwed mother?
Yet even long before these
strange additions to the story of God among his people, my pastor in his Advent
sermons these past weeks, reminded me that the prophets were asking similar
questions: “Who has
understood the mind of the LORD?” This God who moves among people,
touching all of life and history is certainly not the quiet and tame being I so
often imagine. God’s ways are not my ways. God’s stories are not the kind of stories I would write if
the telling were up to me. God’s thoughts are the kind of thoughts that expose
deception and shine in darkness, that shatter hearts and rewrite stories.
It is the same with the Child born in a stable two
thousand years ago. The infant the world remembers lying peacefully in a manger
with cattle lowing nearby did not take long to fulfill the words spoken to his
young parents: “This
child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be
a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be
revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too,” says St. Luke in his second chapter. Definitely not
the sort of thing a stranger typically says to a young mother holding a baby.
Is this the child I have been anticipating!
British author Dorothy Sayers once lamented the manner in which Jesus is often
remembered: he is the quiet sage full of wisdom, the safe and peaceful one of
history. He is, for all practical purposes, somewhat dull, someone we might be
interested in at a later time. Yet Sayers writes in The Whimsical Christian, The Greatest Drama Ever Staged : “The people who hanged Christ never, to do
them justice, accused him of being a bore—on the contrary, they thought him too
dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that
shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have
very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah, certified him ‘meek and
mild,’ and recommended him as a fitting household pet for pale curates and
pious old ladies.”
I'm coming to recognize with
greater understanding this Christmas morning that this season of Advent should
have been even more than I ever gave as a time of anticipation not for the
harmless baby surrounded by lights and presents, but for the dynamic savior who
is born into my midst in a way that must forever change me. “Do you want to be delivered?” asked Dietrich Bonhoeffer
in an Advent sermon more than 70 years ago. “That
is the only really important and decisive question which Advent poses for us.
Does there burn within us some lingering longing to know what deliverance
really means? If not, what would Advent then mean to us? A bit of
sentimentality. A little lifting of the spirit within us? A little kinder mood?
But if there is something in this word Advent which we have not yet known, that
strangely warms our heart; if we suspect that it could, once more, once more,
mean a turning point in our life, a turning to God, to Christ—why then are we
not simply obedient, listening and hearing in our ears the clear call: Your
deliverance draws nigh!”
Father, God, I thank You that
I've had the opportunity this Advent season to hear a strange and drastic
story. On this day of Christmas I receive nothing less than the Lion of Judah wrapped in swaddling
cloths; the coming of a human Rescuer unhindered. Mystery Himself,
mercifully, draws nigh. Amen
