Merry Christmas!
I have been pondering a question this season, amidst all the cookie baking, present wrapping, holiday music and vast decorations.
Why Christmas?
Yes, I know its origins herald possibly from Christians in the fourth century celebrating the birth of Jesus instead of the feast of the Winter Solstice.
But why?
To answer that I have to go back, always back, because like it or not, we all as humans have a back story, and sometimes we are influenced by it more than we know.
Early on in human history, what was unknown was to be feared. What they could not understand, they attributed to the deities they imagined that controlled everything. Sacrifice to keep them happy and woo their actions for your benefit. Call on them for your success, plead with them for your safety, and if things didn’t go well, you must have done something wrong.
Enter Abram. Early in the story of the Jewish people, the One whose hands crafted the Universe decided to reveal itself in the form of a call, with a promise of blessing and descendants, but not without a period of national suffering and oppression. Then, in a great act of deliverance, this same Presence delivered them with supernatural power and met with them on Sinai.
In a story we can hardly understand in our 21st century world, the divine force that created the cosmos revealed itself on top of a mountain and spoke, claiming these people who were now free to follow his ways (please don’t get caught up on pronoun usage here. God is Spirit, yet the ancients largely used a male pronoun, even when the Hebrew bible clearly reveals characteristics commonly attributed to women… so please hang with me here). He called them to be people of principle, to influence the nations for good. What we know as the Ten Commandments were given, along with other guidelines for living together in a just society, and instructions for a “tent of meeting”.
This God wanted to meet with the people it had just called, but the question was this:
How does the creative life force of every living thing, the timeless one whose nature is holy, merciful, compassionate, live with the people that are wholly NOT like this? How does this God dwell among those he called his own?
(I mean, after all, Exodus 19:16-23 does paint a picture of a pretty scary situation. God hadn’t revealed himself yet as all these things)
So a tent was built, and God’s presence was there. He spoke with very few people. Eventually he spoke to a few more in an effort to remind them who they were – beloved, called, and a people to live in ways of mercy and justice – because of course they forgot.
Hundreds of years later a tabernacle was built, and a thick curtain plus another room separated the place where God lived from where his people could be with him.
Everything was distant. God was present, but not touchable.
Now I realize this picture of God isn’t exactly one that makes you want to get to know him. Yet the Hebrew scriptures are full of beautiful stories and analogies of God as a father, a mother, a shepherd, a lover. The writers use the language of creation that everyone else was afraid of, confident their God was the God over it all and there was nothing to fear. It paints this picture of just how much God cares for humanity, and just how much he wanted them to flourish under his care.
But the nature of humanity is to decide it knows best, because why should some god tell us how to live? We want what we want and we will take it however we can.
At some point, I imagine the Creator decided enough was enough – not in a fed up way like parents get – “go to your room! that’s enough!” – but in a way that would meet things he had spoken all along to them… things will be different.
I will come for you.
I will change things.
You will live, you will have hope again
I am still your advocate
I still want to be chosen
You can still find me and walk with me, if you choose
This is why Christmas.
The knowable but untouchable God, whose very presence holds the creative life force within itself came…in a very touchable form.
Emmanuel
God with us
We still, today, have trouble conceiving of what this God is like in some ways. We assume the harsh stories we hear describe him accurately, and we want nothing to do with him. We let people who claim his name draw a picture for us, and when we find its one that is untenable, we walk away from the story.
But this baby, this entry of the divine presence into the very flesh of a young baby calls us to reconsider.
Today, as you sit with the flurry of presents, the bustle of family.. or perhaps the heartache of the season, my prayer is that you would reconsider the God that came in a way that is so vulnerable because he wanted to be with YOU.
May his humble beginnings on this earth remind you that your life is nothing small. It is not meaningless, it is not without purpose. You are loved more than you know.
He has come!
Finding the Life 