Check out the article about this current hot-shot mega-church pastor in the New York Times.
Things I find intriguing:
a pastor who is clearly unafraid to reach out to an alternative group
OF COURSE a somewhat Calvinist group with Kuyperian-leanings about sphere sovereignty would attract the best tattoo artists in the city…what’s not to love about that?
whether you agree or disagree with the whole Jesus-has-been-sissified-by-American-Protestantism thing, this guy has some great one-liners about this (except for the homophobia in some of the statements) (the comment about hair product is hilarious, I think)
texting during the sermon? Hmmm…not sure I’m brave enough, but it could work pretty well
Things that really bug me, or even scare me:
that this guy is claiming the neo-Calvinist mantle…hey, I’m a neo-Calvinist of sorts, but clearly disagree with him on things like women’s ordination and monolithic church leadership!
leadership style based on advice from a martial arts guy? And, one whose first impulse is to break noses?
why can’t someone preach in a way that transforms crappy views of women, but also pushes for women to have an equal place?
once again, how is the solution to Jesus perhaps being feminized to take Jesus away from women in leadership roles? seems awfully contrary to what Jesus actually did
Further proof that mainstream media doesn’t get nuance in religious reporting:
OK, to start: you could mention that it’s JC’s 500th birthday this year
maybe the reporter could have actually looked up the term “neo-Calvinism” and checked if he’s really a neo-Calvinist, or if he’s just patching this together from what sound like Scholastic Protestant sources
once again, Calvin linked to the Puritans
once again, the whole Servetus thing
and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe significant evangelical leaders do actually spend signifigant time talking about hell
Ethical dilemma moment that I swear is real…I know this sounds too incredible to have happened.
Yesterday, Erik and Zora and I were on our way to Hope CRC, in Oak Forest, IL , for me to guest preach. (Hope is where I did my internship, where I was ordained, and was my home congregation for the 3 years of internship and teaching at PSM.)
So, with about 25 minutes before the service starts (yes, we were running a little late…are you surprised?), we are driving south on Cicero Avenue (I think we were in Midlothian, IL at this point). I’m reading my sermon and worrying about the time. Erik is driving. Zora is discussing the appearance of Tinkerbell on a billboard with her pink elephant.
About 1/3 in the road and 2/3 in the fast food driveway a couple blocks ahead of us, there appears to be a garbage bag. Wearing a shoe. And pants. Yes, it is, in fact, a person laying on the ground. (Context: Cicero Avenue is a big busy street. Major artery…)
We stop in our lane, about 12 feet behind the guy in the road. By this point, there are several people assembled. But no one else has stopped behind this man to block traffic. Erik puts the flashers on and gets out of the car. Someone else is calling the police. A few people are talking to the man.
And, the story gets more incredible: he was in a wheelchair, which is all smashed up, and someone clipped him with their car and drove away.
Erik comes back to car and says that they are being smart and not moving him, he seems pretty calm, and the police have been called. Erik’s first aid training is so out of date that he is a menace. The guy is lucid. There’s nothing we can do, he says, other than use our car to clock traffic.
I am suddenly an ethical mess. I don’t handle extra stuff well this soon before preaching, especially when I’m panicky about being late. But should I be getting out of the car to pray with this guy? No, says Erik. Read your sermon. Stay calm. Pray for him here…he has people taking care of him. That’s what you can do.
But I’m starting to think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. And at this point, I’m not looking like one of the more sympathetic characters. I’m probably the priest or the Levite. Great.
The police come. Erik talks briefly to the cop. (OK, now I’m just irrational, and I think, “What if the cop thinks WE hit the guy, since our car is right here?!”) He gets back in the car and says we’ve done what we can do and we need to go.
So we drive away. And I try to pray for the guy all morning, underneath everything else that’s going on.
I still feel like the priest or the Levite, but I’m trying to think about it this way: everybody’s got their corner of the gospel to hold up, kind of like we are all holding different corners of the sheet. Right then, in that moment, maybe my corner wasn’t to be the comforter or healer, but to be the word-bearer. (I can already hear the ringing opposition from those frustrated with the institutional church…) I’m not sure what I could do in the moment other than sit back and pray, for the man in the street and for the people who were called and equipped to help him.
A little context: from August 2002-July 2003, I was the intern pastor at Hope Christian Reformed Church in Oak Forest, IL. Then, when I started working as the religion teacher at pastor at Providence-St. Mel Schools, Hope remained my home congregation and then was the congregation that ordained me in November of 2003. They invited me to preach on January 4. No worries, anyone, Presbyterians especially, I’m not going anywhere. it was just a nice little morning of reconnecting!)Â
I don’t like to talk about sermon structure or process as part of the sermon. It’s one of my unwritten rules. My guess is that it’s about the most boring way to start a sermon, a complete minister-nerd kind of thing to do, and a surefire way to put everyone to sleep from the get go. I figure ministers ought to leave those sorts of discussions to later in the week, with other minister-and-theology-nerd types who actually give two hoots about how the sermon got onto the page.
As you can already tell, I’m planning to break that rule completely this morning. (I hope you’ll forgive me, and I hope you’re still awake…)
There are two things happening in this sermon, you see…there’s the topic I wanted it to be about…and then there’s the topic it had to be about when I really settled in with the texts.
And it’s partly all of your fault that there are these two parts. Let me explain…
On a quick read-through of the lectionary texts a few weeks ago, I was hit between the eyes by the clear connection of Jeremiah and Ephesians. Both passages about how God is calling people back together, pulling them in from north and south and east and west, gathering in an adopted family of people who had strayed from the center or weren’t even in the center to begin with. Amidst Christmas music and candle-lit choirs singing, I was thinking of the two texts to the tune of “O Come, all Ye Faithful†and watching the masses gather in, joyful and triumphant, around the manger-bed of Jesus Christ, the word made flesh. And that is where this sermon sat and simmered for about a week.
And then when I came back, and read the texts again, I realized I had entirely missed something.
The Ephesians passage is THE go-to-place for the Biblical idea of predestination. How could this have slipped my attention?
And there was certainly no way that I could walk into the pulpit of a church with the word “Reformed†in its name and ignore that. Maybe, perhaps, with a group of Presbyterians, who often have to be reminded that they in fact are Reformed, I could get away with it. But not here.
So here it is, the sermon in two parts: part one: what I thought this sermon would be about: Adopotion. And part two, what the text made me do: Predestination.
A few weeks ago, my friend Alexandra posted a sermon about Christmas and adoption in an on-line ministry magazine. Alex is a Presbyterian pastor, and she has this family that looks like the new heaven the new earth. Alex and her husband are white, but their kids are Guatemalan and black. When Alex looks at the nativity scene, Joseph takes on a special role for her:
Sometimes people say to me, when they meet Thomas and his sister, Lily, for the first time, “Are these your natural children? Are they your real children? Are they really sister and brother?â€Â The implication, sometimes communicated more explicitly than others, is that because our kids did not come to us in the “natural†way, that we must not really, or fully, love them. But then I see the love of Joseph for his son, Jesus. Talk about not joining a family in the natural way – the unlikely union of Mary, Joseph and their son, Jesus is the very family on which all of Christianity places its foundation. Yes, they are my real children. Yes, Joseph really loved his son.
When Alex looks at the nativity scene, she sees it as a model for her own family, and then, as a model for the Christian family…we are truly gathered in, a picture of the new creation, a family formed, as Dorothy Day said, from the people who show up.
And that is exactly what these passages describe: God gathering in, bringing the remnant of Israel back from exile, from north and south and east and west, welcoming them not just as long-lost friends, but declaring them the firstborn child, embracing them as fully adopted heirs, as brothers and sisters of the Jesus child in the manger.
It’s not just a picture of homecoming: when the early church heard the word adoption, it was not just a way to increase the size of a family. Full adoption changed one’s status…not just by confessing that this child was beloved of the adoptive family. It often meant that the new parents took on legal obligation, outstanding debts, even going so far as to change the status of a child from slave to free.
There are songs about Christmas that picture Jesus as our brother, often songs that are gentle and lilting and geared toward children.
I like reading the high theology of the Ephesians text at Christmastime, because it reminds us of that contrast…really, the concept is simple…Jesus is your brother.
That means you have been adopted as God’s own child,
a full daughter, a full son,
tucked into the manger next to Jesus,
with the angels singing overhead
and the protective wing of God keeping you warm and safe.
And yet, simple as that idea is, it is breathtakingly beautiful, incredibly intricate, and intellectually mind-blowing.
You, and you, and you, and you,
all children of God.
By God’s own eternal choice and intent, you have been gathered in from north and south and east and west.
Somewhere, in the mystery of time, God knew and chose and called you out.
Maybe this is where the metaphor starts to fall apart. In North American adoption circles, the hot topic of the last decade has been openness…open adoptions, digging through the records, trying, even in the case of international adoptions to preserve or to unearth as much information as possible. And, again, this may be where the metaphor falls apart, because this change of talking openly about the fact of adoption and access to information has been an incredible thing for many people in the adoption community.
But not every person has been interested or able to in uncover these mysteries. And, we have to remember that there are many people for whom uncovering the mysteries about their origins won’t be possible: whether because of missed opportunities to meet, intricate international adoptions, bad records, or unwilling parties, not everyone can find all of these answers. This week, one adopted person wrote in a New York Times column about the mystery of adoption:
I AM not adopted; I have mysterious origins.
The trend [in adoption and gestational technologies], certainly, is toward openness, a growing “right†to know. I am not against this trend. I simply want to give not-knowing its due. I like mysteries.
The word Ephesians uses even before it gets to the image of adoption is “mysteryâ€. As God’s children, we all have mysterious origins.
Because in the end, the workings of this are mysterious. How is it that we can be called children of God, that we can be placed on the same level as the Son of God? And, even more, how is it that we could be known and called out before the world began?
And that brings us to the other sermon we are stuck with this morning. Because swirling in the midst of this mystery is that sticky wicket of a word, predestination.
I will admit to an affection for the idea of predestination as it connects to the idea of adoption: That through no willing or doing or being of our own, God grabs on and holds onto us, from the very beginning to the very end. I like that. It’s comforting, and it works.
But when I read Jeremiah, I’m reminded that there is another side to the idea of choice—the side that I don’t like as much. Because Jeremiah is about the ingathering of the remnant. It is not, like some similar passages in the prophets, about ingathering of the nations, all people’s coming from north and south and east and west. Not all peoples, but God’s people.
And I honestly don’t know how to resolve that piece of it. It is part of theology that I have to take off the shelf every once and awhile to turn over and examine, and try to reason out. But it never feels comfortable in my hands, it never feels resolved.
Since 2009 is John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I figured I’d give him his due and re-read what he has to say about predestination, see if I could find some morsel there.
I found the same contrast of comfort and questions, and nothing that sits well with me as an answer.
But what I did notice this time was this: there is a narrow path, according to Calvin, that we have to walk when we dig deep into the mysteries of God, and especially predestination. On one side of the path is the danger of simply not thinking and talking about the mysteries, throwing our hands up and giving up.
But on the other side is the danger of digging and poking around that we leave no beauty in mystery, we leave no room for God’s thoughts to be larger than our thoughts.
Some where in the middle, one foot in front of the other, we have to find a way between our need to know and God’s need to be God.
We will always want to keep probing a bit more, poking around for an answer, digging through the records, unearthing the information. That curiosity is part of how God made us, and it is what leads us to catch a glimpse of how wonderful and incomprehensible God is.
But God is incomprehensible. And sometimes we need to be willing to live with mystery. To give up some control. Information is power. But we really can’t have all the facts.
Both Jeremiah and Ephesians remind us that we are not in control….Jeremiah 31 is written at Israel’s darkest hour, when the kingdom is shattering and exile is looming. And the very idea of hope is so very impossible that Jeremiah’s words probably sounded more like lunacy than prophecy. And Ephesians reminds us that there is nothing we could do, nothing we could ever do, to ensure God’s choice of us. God spoke, and we were his children.
Somewhere deep in the mystery of time, God called and chose us. We understand this in part, and use the stories and words and pictures that help us see a bit of what God has done for us. And so we say we are adopted, we are sisters and brothers of Jesus, we are the remnant returning.
But we have mysterious origins.
And somewhere deep in the mystery of the future, we will come to the God who calls. And so we say we are looking forward to an inheritance, we will come from north and south and east and west.
But we don’t know exactly what that looks like, or exactly who will be. We have mysterious origins, and even the future is wrapped in the mystery of God’s thoughts.
And in between, we are called to celebrate, to pray, to sing, and weep with joy as we try to understand the mystery, as we try to live into it.
So, on the last Sunday of Christmastide, take a step back to the manger to contemplate the mystery for what it is in this moment…not to pick apart the past, or probe the future, but to appreciate this moment…
With Mary, who treasured it in her heart,
With Joseph, who loved Jesus without always knowing what it meant to call him son.
With the angels, who sang out of excitement and astonishment at the daring of God’s plan
And with Jesus, word made flesh, king of heaven and earth,
I have a some unofficial rules of the sermon. Here are a few:
Never talk about the process of writing the sermon explicitly in the sermon.
If you’re going to explain something about the Greek or Hebrew word, do it in such a way that people don’t notice you’re talking about the Greek or Hebrew word.
Same as #2 regarding theological terms. (In other words, talk theology, but define unclear terms not by saying, “The definition is…” but by writing beautiful sentences that describe it.)
Don’t use the sermon as a platform to validate your sense of calling.
There are more rules, some that I’m not sure I can articulate yet, but 10 years after taking my first preaching class, these are some of the ones I know I try to abide by.
On Sunday, I think I’m going to completely and totally smash #1 to pieces. I’m guest preaching at the congregation that might well be most important in teaching me how to preach (Hope CRC where I did my internship in 2002-03). And the only way I can figure out how to structure this one is by talking about the process of writing it and the actual structure.
I’m not sure this is a good portent for the sermon. I think this might work. I’d rather not second guess myself because I don’t want to write the thing twice. Then again, Thursday and Fridays and Saturdays before I preach are always low points for me. We’ll see.
Last week, Erik and Zora were looking at some picture cards together, and on had a whale on it.
“What’s this?” asked Zora.
“It’s a whale, ” said Erik.
Zora looked back with a look that says, “Oh, now it ALL makes sense…” and said, “Oh! A whale in a manger.”
So, we’re pretty sure she doesn’t get all of the theological implications behind the song, but here, in her singing debut, is Zora with, “Away (or, A Whale) in a Manger”.
(Not really defining things for 2009, nothing too profound, but it seems like a good time to post 9 random things.)
I’m a little sore today: I rang in the new year with a 5k at 7:00pm, dinner at a great restaurant, late conversation about theology (really truly, and yes I know it’s nerdy, and most of it was over my head), and a few fireworks-sitings from the roof of my parents’ place. This combined with yesterday morning’s yoga class has left my body a little wonky.
Illinois continues to be a…fascinating?….corrupt?…side-show-ish?…place for politics. I probably shouldn’t care so much, but it’s like a car accident I just can’t take my eyes off of.
I’ve been knitting mittens lately. Someday, I’ll get the picture posting on this site working again and I’ll post pictures of mittens.
After 6 months of living there, we finally hung pictures in our apartment. And my Dad came out to hang the organ-pipe shelves in our living room. It feels like a place where people live.
Inspired by #4, I am contemplating painting my bathroom. Because the paint in there now is not for bathrooms, and it’s starting to crackle. I’m thinking a nice nutty-brown color, and in the weird cave-like alcove that contains the shower and the soaker tub, a darker shade of the nutty brown. I figure if you’ve got the cave thing going on, you might as well really do it up like a dark little cave.
However, the only way I can see the bathroom happening is if we stop using it for about a week. I think I could squeeze in the painting of one wall a night, but what with the strange floor plan in there, it actually has 8 wall surfaces.
And if we did the bathroom, we might as well do the bedroom, right? How about a creamy orange?
We’ve had a second visit from the cleaning service. Incredible. Life-changing. I feel like I can have people in my house. Want to come over?
If I do one thing in the new year (OK, there’s a million things I should do in the new year, but…)…Erik bought me a very nice camera for my birthday. I always wanted to take photography, but it never worked out. Due to some weirdness about transferring schools half way through high school, I had a senior year with a ridiculously open schedule…13 study halls per week one semester! I asked the photography teacher to put me in his class, but I was also doing an independent study in creative writing with him, and he refused to let me in because he wanted me to “Concentrate on my writing.” I should probably stop griping about it and take a class.
Sometimes, you sing something year and after year and never know there was more to it. I know 5 verses of “Of the Father’s Love Begotten.” Turns out there are more. It was verse 2 that really got me on the new reading. Who would have thought of pairing the idea of creation with Jesus’ birth this way, and then having the whole thing remind us of the Trinity?
Classical authors usually wrote all those long verses for a reason, to make a point, and we get all worked up about how long it takes to read or sing, so we start lopping off a verse here and there. This one has been around for awhile (written in the 5th century by Aurelius Prudentius). Imagine how long it’s been around, how long it’s informed and inspired Christians, how wonderful it is that it eventually got paired with a piece of music from the 16th century…now that’s the communion of the saints: a 5th century Spanish author writing in Latin, his poem paired with 16th century music by someone from somewhere else in Europe, translated into English by a 19th century psator, and now sung by a bunch of suburban North Americans on Christmas.
While it’s still Christmas (7 days left!) take a few minutes to read and perhaps pray along with the church in many times and many places, to love what’s familiar to you in this, and savor what is new…
Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!
At His Word the worlds were framèd;
He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean
In their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun,
Evermore and evermore!
He is found in human fashion,
Death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children
Doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below,
Evermore and evermore!
O that birth forever blessèd,
When the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bare the Savior of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face,
evermore and evermore!
O ye heights of heaven adore Him;
Angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him,
and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing,
Evermore and evermore!
This is He Whom seers in old time
Chanted of with one accord;
Whom the voices of the prophets
Promised in their faithful word;
Now He shines, the long expected,
Let creation praise its Lord,
Evermore and evermore!
Righteous judge of souls departed,
Righteous King of them that live,
On the Father’s throne exalted
None in might with Thee may strive;
Who at last in vengeance coming
Sinners from Thy face shalt drive,
Evermore and evermore!
Thee let old men, thee let young men,
Thee let boys in chorus sing;
Matrons, virgins, little maidens,
With glad voices answering:
Let their guileless songs re-echo,
And the heart its music bring,
Evermore and evermore!
Christ, to Thee with God the Father, And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee, Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving, And unwearied praises be: Honor, glory, and dominion, And eternal victory, Evermore and evermore!
Revelation 12
Fox Valley Presbyterian Church
December 21, 2008, 8:30am
Pray for us, because at the next service, we’re handing the preaching of the word over to the children. They’re doing a Christmas pageant.
Christmas pageants are not safe. Let’s be honest: when Mary is 8 and Joseph is 5 and the innkeeper is 3, you just don’t know what’s going to happen. Even if the roles are given to slightly older children, the whole thing is really a little subversive. One year the high school where I taught religion had a Christmas pageant as part of our Christmas program. I’ll never forget the nervous energy radiating out like static from our principal as she watched the whole thing unfold. To begin with, it was a story about a pregnant teenager, exactly the sort of thing inner city teachers are trying to avoid. The high school dean of students had organized the pageant, and had the brilliant idea of setting the Christmas story on the near west side of Chicago, exactly where our school was. By the time the shepherds, dressed as homeless guys , hit the stage, the principal’s knuckles were turning white. And when the wise men showed up, in full baggy pants and bearing armfuls of bling for the baby Jesus, we all knew that the dean was about to get called into the office for a little talking to.
Is the nativity story even supposed to be safe? There’s an episode of the Simpsons, (my favorite yellow-cartoon-theologians) that suggests the danger of the nativity. As a winter storm is blowing into Springfield, the whole town hustles to get everything ready for the stormy winds. Ned Flanders, the Simpson’s super-churchy neighbor looks at his font lawn life-size nativity scene, turns to his sons and says: “Make sure the Baby Jesus is tied down…if he gets loose he could really do some damage.â€
It would truly be easier to leave Jesus in the manger, snuggled in his swaddling and hay, than to think about what this really means. And, I worry that we Christians, the “insiders†who show up the Sunday before Christmas even though we’re going to be here anyway for Christmas Eve services, I worry that we buy a little too much into cute-ness of the season.
Luke is by far the most adorable of the Gospel accounts, probably why it gets used in Christmas pageants, with a little side trip to Matthew for the appearance of the wise men.
Maybe this is why John’s Gospel ditches the baby-scene altogether and lets us have the theology right up front:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
John is not cute, but certainly is beautiful. If it only sounds repetitive in English, let me assure you the original Greek is just stunning to hear, spine-shivering stuff.
If Advent is about getting ready for what the manger scene really means, then this 4th Sunday is sort of our last chance. If you’re here this early on a Sunday morning, I can only assume that you wanted to set aside the presents and pine needles, the traffic and the travel, the baking and bundling for an hour, to sit still and take a last chance to get ready for what comes on Wednesday night.
And so I’m throwing us a Christmas curve-ball…the text for the day is not from the gospels or the prophecy about Jesus’ birth.
Be strong and take heart, because we are headed right into the middle of Revelation, John’s hallucinogenic take on all of history, from the perspective of the spiritual world.
As I read Revelation 12, I encourage you to sit back and close your eyes–and you can begin by picturing the classic Luke 2 nativity scene, but from there, let your imagination run wild.
What if this were the picture we illustrated in life-size inflatable plastic scenes in our front yards? A bit different, isn’t it?
This vivid picture comes smack dab in the middle of Revelation. Revelation is a cosmic fantasy story retelling of the struggle for creation. And so, instead of the stories of faithful men and women, of journeying nomads in the wilderness, of simple Palestinian peasants, we get dragons and stars falling and giant, birthing women.
If you’ve gotten a bit too used to the idea of Christmas, this ought to open your eyes a bit.
Behind the fully human struggle of Mary, a mother giving birth that night in Bethlehem, behind that scene, there was something even larger…God’s powerful yet delicate plan to lay hold of the world he loved so much.
Luke gets at this in reverse: in his account of the birth, we start with the big, powerful picture: the Roman Empire, with the entire known world at its beck and call. And from that vantage point, Luke zooms in on one miniscule moment: a peasant child born in a stable in a little no-importance town.
But in Revelation, we pull back from that scene and see it for the important moment that it is: the moment when all history collapses on itself, when God’s great plan comes to be born, when everything is at stake.
Most of you probably had that moment in school or in church when someone explained that the “AD†after a year did not stand for “after death†but for “Anno Domini†“The year of our Lord,†and that the time between BC and AD was divided not by an estimated date of Jesus’ death, but by the estimated date of his birth.
At the moment when Jesus was born in that stable, the entire perspective of history changed. The powerful, the Ceasar Augustses and the Quiriniuses of the world, were outdone by a tiny baby. The Herods of the world were threatened enough to strike out like fearful animals, and both the outcast shepherds and power-broker wisemen were called to visit an insignificant child, barely understanding who he was or what he was about to do.
In Revelation, we get the full perspective of the picture. Because, in fact, it is not just the powers of kings and emperors that are threatened by the birth of a baby. It is the entire order of the world, a world become so twisted and mangled that it looks like a dragon. Herod, in all his jealous cruelty, is just one scale on that terrible creature. Herod is the least of this baby’s worries.
If we have a few more days to prepare for Jesus’ coming, then we need to spend time looking at things with the perspective that Revelation gives us. Now, we Presbyterians are not the type to spend too much time with our noses buried in Revelation, but think of it this way: your task for the next few days is to take the movie camera and pan out into the big picture, and to peek behind the scenes, in order to get ready for what Christmas really means.
To begin with, what is the actual state of this world? It is the place that God created and there is so much good in it, but yet there are forces that mess things up. Stars are thrown down from the sky: in other words, Beautiful things that should be permanent are damaged and ruined. The woman in childbirth is threatened: in other words humanity at its most vulnerable, but also most productive collective moment is in peril. The world is laboring away while wars rage and people scatter in fear.
No amount of wrapping paper or lights can make the bad things go away. We are a world at war, we are people who cannot embrace peace, we are unable to love and share and give as we ought. And if that seems over-dramatic, a few minutes scanning the news should remind you that things are surely not the way they were created to be. We love the world we live in, because God made it, but we know that something has gone very wrong. And part of the reason we wait expectantly in Advent is that we are waiting for the moment when God will make things right, when all of history will collapse on itself and God’s great work of salvation will be made known.
But if we continue to look at that broad perspective, if we are honest about the state of the world, then we also have to look at who God truly is. And one of the great things about the raw-fisted power of the book of Revelation is that God is not hidden behind the scenes, but active and powerful, and altogether present. There is no screen in the way, and we can see exactly who is in control, and exactly how much God would lay out for this world, the world that God made and loves. God is more powerful than any strange, nightmarish evil the book of Revelation throws at us. It is always God who triumphs, and there is no question about God’s power.
And with that perspective, then how would we come to that moment on Christmas, that moment that God’s people waited for then, the fulfillment of that moment that we wait for now?
It is not just about the comfort and coziness of a family in a stable. It is not just about the promise of new life in a baby’s round cheek, it is not just about the people gathered in by that moment.
It is something cosmic. Because behind that moment God is snatching victory away from every that threatens to undo us. That moment is the moment when things begin to turn, and God regains ground against sin and death and evil.
But it is even more amazing than the raw-fisted power of a God breaking into human history.
And it is amazing because it is contained in such a small place, and in such a small person.
What should send shivers up your spine is this thought: in Jesus, tiny peasant baby, all of heaven and earth are cradled and contained.
In the tiny, quick heartbeat of one so small is the mighty power and love of God. And God’s power is so strong that Jesus was preserved. Think of it: not just Herod, but one stray step of a stable animal, one cruel act of a soldier, one small virus, could have stopped the whole thing. But the baby grew into the man, and even when the powers that be hung him to die, God overcame sin and evil, and even death.
And so maybe the danger of the Christmas pageant is right on target. Could there be anything more appropriate than handing over our most precious story, our most incomprehensible moment, to children? Because the truth of the incarnation is that something so powerful was contained in something small. That the great God of the universe came to us as a child, and lived among us so that we might see God’s power and glory.
We just canceled a session meeting due to the weather. From the sudden level of activity as the phones ring and e-mail lists are compiled, you would think we were in an airport.