Why is there Christmas?

 “Why is there Christmas at all?”

This question makes it clear that we are not speaking of a holiday or the layers of secular commercialism that lie atop it. It is to ask, Why was God born into flesh and blood and all that those things entail? It is what we call Jesus’ Incarnation – the deity of God being born as human.

We can say what this did rather easily: it brought the sacred and eternal being of God into the carnal and temporal sphere of human life. God had done this before, though not in flesh and blood. He did so in Sinai in the giving of his Law to the chosen of Israel and in bringing them to the Promised Land. The Jews understood that God was made personally present in every aspect of their lives by the giving of his commandments even when they did not understand all of them.

The Jews call the commandments specifically and the Scriptures generally the Torah, the Word of God. Torah is the main way that Jews understand God to be present with them. The great Jewish theologian Michael Wyschogrod explained the meaning of the Torah. Instead of becoming present in the Word, wrote Wyschogrod,

    God could have played a godly role, interested in certain features of human existence, the spiritual, but not in others, the material. He could even have assigned [to] man the task of wrenching himself out of the material so as to assume his spiritual identity, which is just what so many [religions] believe he did. Instead, the God of Israel confirms man as he created him to live in the material cosmos ... There is a requirement for the sanctification of human existence in all of its aspects. And that is why God's election is of a carnal people. By electing the seed of Abraham, God creates a people that is in his service in the totality of its human being and not just in its moral and spiritual existence.[1]

Of course, we Christians have a different understanding of what forms the greatest manifestation and revelation of God on earth. We agree with the Jews that God’s Word is the purest manifestation and revelation of God that we have on earth. However, we don’t say “what” is God’s actual presence with us, we say, “who.” John’s Gospel tells us:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all humankind. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

The Word of God, the Torah of God, the revelation of God, the Word become flesh – and so Christmas, of which Charles Wesley wrote:

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;

Hail th’incarnate Deity,

Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,

Jesus our Emmanuel.

The Jews are exactly right: “that God and the Torah are one.” Because Jesus is the Word made flesh, the actual, living embodiment of the Torah, when Jesus said, “I and my Father are One,” his Jewish hearers understood him more deeply than the typical Christian reading those words today.

 Jesus of Nazareth is God’s proof that we can become what we should most desire: to be holy in our own flesh, in this life. God sanctifies us in this life, for he took on this life in his own person. We cannot be gods. But we can be godly. The birth of the Son of God into humanity shows us that.

Our daily headlines show us a world not much different from the one Jesus was born into. It was and remains a world of death, of tragedy, of evil, of pain, and of suffering, though thankfully leavened with beauty and joy and goodness. God wages war against everything that resists or opposes God’s intentions for his creation. But God does not war against flesh and blood. Instead, God sanctifies flesh and blood. Paul knew this, so he wrote,

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens.[2]

Yet why does this godly battle require God’s presence in human form? John’s most famous passage explains it quite simply: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son ... .” And John later also quotes Jesus, “There is no greater love than to give up one’s life for one’s friends.”

We see on our nightly news the horrors visited by terrorists and other random violent acts of no apparent purpose. There are other sufferings we can hardly imagine. Evil is powerful in our world. Father Dwight Longenecker, a pastor in Greenville, South Carolina, wrote,[3]

   The true answer to the absurdity of evil is the supernatural rationality of love, for love is the outgoing goodness that counters evil. By "love," I do not mean merely sentimental or erotic love. I mean a power that is positive and creative and dynamic and pro-active in the world—the power which Dante said, "moved the Sun and the other stars." … Love is the light in the darkness ... .

All who are baptized into the body of Christ cease to be subject to the powers of this world and are transformed and transferred to a new and different kind of life, with different powers and possibilities for life, with new eyes to see the world, with a new family and a new Lord.

That is why to celebrate Advent and Christmas are not simply acts of worship. They are acts of defiance, for in singing carols and reading Scripture we announce that we do not submit to the principalities and powers of darkness or the spiritual forces of evil at loose in the world. To sing, “What child is this, who laid to rest, on Mary’s lap is sleeping?” is to speak more importantly than all the other voices in the world and to proclaim that we, God’s people,

... do not lose heart because we are being renewed every day. The promises of God far outweigh all the terrors of this world. We live not according to the fallen standards of this world because we are only here temporarily. We live in Christ’s Kingdom because it is eternal.[4]

The Reverend Nadia Bolz Weber put it this way, [5]

   Amongst the sounds of sirens and fear and isolation and uncertainty and loss we hear a sound that muffles all the rest: that still, small voice of Christ speaking our names.  … the very reason we can do these things is not because we happen to be the people with the best set of skills for this work.  Trust me, we are not. ...  – the reason we can stand and we can weep and we can listen is because finally we are bearers of resurrection. We do not need to be afraid. Because to sing to God amidst all of this is to defiantly proclaim ... that death is simply not the final word. To defiantly say that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot, will not, shall not overcome it.

Consider this painting by Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556):

Manger scenes became a popular artistic motif during the Renaissance. In almost all such paintings, the artists included the cross somewhere in the scenery. Sometimes it was on the horizon outside the manger. One artist, Lorenzo Lotto (1480-1556), painted a cross on a shelf on the manger’s wall, such as many homes would have had. 

Let us take a cue from those theologically-trained artists. They knew the connection between the manger and Calvary. So did Jesus. As his last trip to Jerusalem loomed, knowing what it portended, Jesus told the disciples, “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour” (John 12:27). 

When we celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the birth of someone who was born to die, as this artist recognized. For at its most basic level, the meaning of Christmas is the cross. To consider the life and death of Jesus, what possible expectation could we mortals have that the God who created the universe could be required, much less expected, to put on flesh and blood, be born as we are and die as we do, to take upon himself the sin of the whole world? Faced with this fact, what do we do in return?

That is the central question for us who celebrate the birth of Jesus because he put his own body between us and eternal destruction. Jesus died to bring us into everlasting life. The mystery of the Incarnation is conjoined by the shock of crucifixion. Both are resolved by Resurrection. "God With Us" did not start in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, nor was it ended at Calvary. God With Us happens today among those who follow the One who had “no crib for a bed,” the One who died on a cross and then ascended to the right hand of God.

 To celebrate Christmas, therefore, is not simply to sing carols in December in a church garlanded in greens. It is to become holy in this life each day of the year, to emerge victorious over sin, evil and death, to do the work of Christ in the world, to live knowing that Jesus is God with Us, and so we can, and must, be with God.

Every Thanksgiving my family and used to join my parents at the home of my younger brother, Usually there were 17-20 there, but one year there were only nine gathered around the table. My older brother and his wife came a long distance to be there, but only one of their four grown children could come. Our eldest child was not able to come, nor our second or his wife. My brothers and I had a running joke one of us always announced whenever we gathered for such celebrations. Sometime during Thanksgiving one of us would say to Dad, “Of course, you know that everyone who truly loves you came home for Thanksgiving.” And Dad responds, “Oh, sure, I know that.” We all laugh because we know it's just a joke.

But if you had been there that year, you would have seen fleeting sorrow flicker across our faces and a wisp of wistfulness in our eyes. For the breath of a sentence, our hearts were in Delaware or Wisconsin or Ohio or Florida because while the table was crowded, it was not full. Not everyone was there who belongs there.

That moment came to my mind when I read something author Bob Benson wrote in Come Share the Being. He and his wife had three children and he told of how they grew up and went away to college and then got married and made their own homes. They were proud of their children, he wrote, but after their youngest son moved away, “our minds were filled with memories from tricycles to commencements [and] deep down inside we just ached with loneliness and pain.

“And I was thinking about God,” Benson wrote. “He sure has plenty of children – plenty of artists, plenty of singers, and carpenters and candlestick makers, and preachers, plenty of everybody . . . except he only has one of you, and all rest together can never take your place. And there will always be an empty spot in his heart and a vacant chair at his table when you’re not home.

“And if once in a while it seems he’s crowding you a bit, try to forgive him. It may be one of those nights when he misses you so much he can hardly stand it.”

Maybe that is why Christ was born, lived, died and was raised from the tomb – because that’s what God does when he just can’t stand it anymore, when he just can’t stand the gulf of separation between us.

In Jesus’ day there was no occasion more festive or joyous than weddings. The best parties were wedding parties and feasts. The New Testament says that when Christ returns he will be reunited with his church in a celebration so magnificent that the Scriptures describe it as the grandest wedding celebration ever held. 

Are we preparing ourselves spiritually for this banquet? Do we understand how the reward of eternal life with God places a burden on us today? Methodist professor David Watson wrote,

When even a cursory thought is given to the countless millions in the world who are hungry, who are suffering, who languish under injustice, or are ravaged by war, the prospect of anyone celebrating personal salvation . . . borders on the obscene. There are still too many of Christ’s little ones who are hungry, too many who lack clothes, too many who are sick or in prison. There are too many empty places [at God’s banquet table]. The appropriate attitude for guests who have already arrived is to nibble on the appetizers and anticipate the feast which is to come. To sit down and begin to [feast] would be unpardonable . . . especially since the host is out looking for the missing guests, and could certainly use some help.

When we deeply consider what Christmas really means and what it obligates us to be and to do, we can only admit that we have surrendered all our rights to everything except humility.

Why is there Christmas? Because there is a place for every person at God’s table, but not everyone has come. Because God cannot stand the separation between himself and his children.

This day of celebration should also evoke is us an equally unbearable sorrow that we are not doing all we are able to do to close the separation. The best way to celebrate Christmas is to carry out the commandments of Christ all the year long.

---

^[1]Quoted by David Goldman, “Banning circumcision is dangerous to your health,” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/NG03Dj02.html

^[2]Ephesians 6.12

^[3]http://www.patheos.com/Catholic/Aurora-Murders-Demonic-Possession-Dwight-Longenecker-07-24-2012

^[4]See 2 Cor 4.16-18

^[5]http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/07/sermon-about-mary-magdalen-the-masacre-in-our-town-and-defiant-alleluias/

A Christmas Benediction

 

The grace of God is not mysterious. It is just as we have been told in God's Word: A savior was born in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Like the shepherds, we live in a world where the memory of Christmas will be overcome by other events. The shepherds' sheep would still get sick or be attacked by wolves. Our cars will still break down and we'll still have bills to pay. On the outside, everything will seem the same.

But now we are different. God is with us! The glory of the Lord has shone around us, and there are heavenly words: Fear not, for behold, there are glad tidings of great joy. Unto you is born a Savior!

May the love of God, the redemption of his Son, our Savior Christ the Lord, and the strengthening company of the Holy Spirit fill you and fulfill you this day and in all days that follow. For unto us a child is born. Unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the King of Kings! Merry Christmas!

A Christmas Eve reflection - "Half the bucket"

I once read a short story from about a hundred years ago about two brothers, rivals as brothers often are, whose mother’s birthday was coming up. They saved their money to buy her each a special present.

Their family was poor. Mom was a cleaning woman. Her sons saw her every day leave home carrying her broom, her mop and bucket and cleaning rags. They knew she worked very hard for them.

The older brother determined to save enough money to buy his mother a small hair comb with a sterling-silver handle – an astonishing luxury for a woman whose husband had not been able even to afford to buy her a diamond for her ring. The older brother hauled coal, swept stables and ran errands for people until he had enough to buy the comb. He bought it, hid it under his bed, and counted the days until his mother would receive it. He imagined the thrill he would get as he thought of how she would react to such a splendid present. He could hardly sleep at night. 

Truth be told, though, one big reason he wanted to give her the silver comb was that he knew his younger brother could not possibly attain so grand a present. He relished a sense of superiority over little brother. (You know how big brothers can be.)

The big day finally came. After supper, their father, a stock clerk in a store, brought out a modest cake with a single candle. They sang, “Happy Birthday” and mom cut a piece for each of them, making the boys’ pieces the largest. Father left and returned with a small, wrapped package, presented it to his wife and wished her happy birthday. She unwrapped the package to reveal a lace shawl. She held it up in awe. She had never held anything like it before. 

 Big brother turned to little brother. ‘You go first,’ he said. Little brother disappeared out the back and returned carrying – a new mop and bucket. “Happy birthday, Mom!” he exclaimed happily. 

And mom . . . mom just sat back, and her eyes filled with tears. But they were not tears of happiness, as the older brother quickly noticed. Mom was silent for a moment and then broke down. “A bucket! It’s my birthday. I scrub on my knees and wring out a mop all day long, and for my birthday I get a mop and bucket!”

Little brother began to cry, too, at the hurtful words, cut deeply by his mother’s reaction. Then dad said, “Dear, I know what you must be thinking. But please look at this bucket. It has wheels, so you won’t have to carry a heavy bucket full of water from one room to another anymore.”

Mother looked up, suddenly interested. “Oh, my,” she said, “that’s good!”

Dad continued, “It has a lever-driven mop squeezer. You won’t have to take the mop to a sink and wring it with your hands anymore. It will wring the mop for you when you press this lever. No more pain in your hands.”

Mom clapped her hands and laughed aloud. “This is so wonderful! I’m sorry I didn’t understand at first!” She took her younger son into her arms and hugged him. “Thank you!” she said. “It’s a wonderful present!”

Father affixed a certain gaze on the older brother. Dad knew about the silver comb. “Son,” said that father, “what is your present for your mother?”

The older brother felt the comb in his pocket. What a treasure it was, and yet something stayed his hand. It was a grand present and fine, but what now would Mother think of the bucket when she held the silver comb? Would she remember again how hard she worked for so little, and push her younger son and his bucket aside to embrace a gift to make her feel like a queen, if only a little? How diminished would his little brother feel, again? 

“Well,” demanded his father, “What are you giving your mother?”

The older brother said softly, “Half the bucket.”

I would guess that the younger brother had a different relationship with his older brother from that day on. They were rivals no more, but companions and friends.

One of the most influential religious philosophers of the twentieth century, Alfred North Whitehead, wrote, “Religion is the transition from God the void to God the enemy, and from God the enemy to God the companion.” Some people don’t much think of God at all; to them God is a term without a real referent. God is a void. Others resist the work and will of God in their lives; they scoff at God, perhaps, and see God as someone opposing them.  

But God is really our companion and companion. In fact, I think one of the chief things Jesus did was prove that God is not our enemy and certainly not a void. After all, the first gift of Christmas Day was not a thing. It was a person, the Christ child. 

Do you remember the TV ad for Jared jewelry store in which a woman showed her friend the engagement ring her new fiancé gave her. “He got it a Jared,” she tells her proudly, the unspoken implication being that a ring from elsewhere is second class. So if any of you guys here bought your wives or girlfriends jewelry from some substandard place like, say, Tiffany’s, I am sorry to say that Jared is closed now. 

Like much advertising, this ad is mostly nonsense. But reflect on how much Christmas advertising tries to convince us that only certain products are worthy and everything else is second best at best. 

 Then reflect whether in Bethlehem long ago God gave us the best that he could give us. “For God so loved the world that he sent his only son,” is the way Jesus explained it. God didn’t send a UPS package or a greeting card to let us know he was thinking of us, now and then, and hoped we would all get by okay. God had already sent his customized, holy Word in the inspiration of the Scriptures and the announcements of the prophets – advance notice, so to speak, that he was coming in person. Because, after all, when you really do care enough to send the very best, you go yourself.

The Word became flesh and lived among us. We have seen God’s glory, the glory of the Father’s only Son. God’s glory is the presence of God with us. We see God’s presence in Jesus of Nazareth. The incarnation of God as human being was the decisive event in human history because the incarnation changed God’s relationship to us and our relationship to God. The incarnation means that human beings can see, hear, and know God in ways never before possible. “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus told his disciple Philip.

The Incarnation of God in Jesus means that in Christ, God placed himself at the mercy of all the things which we endure. Jesus became tired and hungry. He was dependent on the charity of others for food and shelter. He lost his patience with other people and became angry; the Gospels record both. There is nothing we experience that Jesus did not know. In every way that we are human beings, so was God in Christ. Jesus was Emmanuel, God with us.

By acknowledging this fact, we recognize the bond that God has established with us, and its revelation in Jesus. God did not stay distant from us, remote and isolated. In Jesus, God chose to live with humanity in the midst of human weakness, confusion, and pain. To become flesh is to know joy, pain, suffering, and loss. It is to love, to grieve, and someday to die. The incarnation binds Jesus to the “everydayness” of human experience. 

When someone receives Christ as Christ was sent – the unique embodiment of the eternal God – and when someone believes in the name of Jesus, God makes him a son or her a daughter of God. It takes a second birth to be made a child of God, a birth of the spirit, not of flesh. We are reborn from above. Jesus said, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:6 7).

This new identity God has given us matters in how we live our lives with one another. I have two brothers and three children, so I am under no illusions about the fights that brothers and sisters of the flesh have. That is the way of flesh. But I wonder sometimes whether we model our family of faith after our families of flesh. We should instead live as sons and daughters of God, born of the Spirit, living in love as ones Jesus calls his brothers and sisters. 

“In the beginning,” says John, hearkening us to recall the creation stories. In Genesis, God was here on the surface of the earth. With his hands, God stooped on the ground to fashion humanity. He gave us life with his own breath. He walked with Adam and Eve in the garden, talked to them, guided them. 

In the manger, God was here on the surface of the earth. In Christ, God stooped to the earth again. With his hands, Jesus healed the sick, brought sight to the blind and made the lame walk, right here in person, in the flesh. Jesus walked among the people, talking to them, guiding them. Jesus gave up the breath of his life on the cross to give to us eternal life.

“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory.” During Christmas, we see God’s glory as a newborn baby, some shepherds visited by angels, and wise men come from afar. God is here, and Christmas is a family reunion.

"Magnify" - A reflection on Mary, mother of Jesus

There seems a common theme in the Bible that whenever God really wants to break into human affairs with something really, truly new, God goes to women to do it.

Not every time, of course. Women do not figure prominently in Moses’ story, for example. True, his mother successfully protected Moses from Pharaoh’s soldiers, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him, and Moses’ sister arranged for their mother to be hired by Pharaoh’s daughter – all important roles, but narratively not front and center. 

Even so, the history of the Jews was replete with instances of God’s advent coming through women. Consider Sarah, long-suffering wife of the original patriarch, Abraham. She reached the end of her ninth decade childless. God had long before given Abraham the promise that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky, but Abraham, the old coot, gave up on Sarah when she was a mere seventy-five and sired a son by a slave girl, Hagar. 

God didn’t let Abraham get away with that. When Sarah was ninety, she gave birth to Isaac, the only son Abraham and Sarah would have. Isaac carried forth God’s covenant promise. Isaac married Rebekah, and they also were childless until their old age, when they conceived twins, Esau and Jacob, and Jacob would be renamed by God as Israel. The rest, as they say, is history.  

Luke's Gospel relates that Mary, betrothed to a man named Joseph, was visited by the angel Gabriel, who told her that she had been selected by God to bear the Son of God into human birth. Joseph was not consulted about this but later learned the truth, that as Gabriel had told Mary, she would be with child by the Holy Spirit. 

After Mary became pregnant, she went to her relative. Elizabeth, and upon greeting her, burst into a canticle of praise that has endured through time as Mary's Magnificat.  

For centuries Christians have remarked on how much Mary’s Magnificat resembles Hannah’s song of praise, related in First Samuel. Hannah was married to Elkanah, a Levite and a priest. For many years Hannah was childless. Hannah spent her years in tears and bitter disappointment. Finally Hannah reached the end of her rope. She prayed near the temple, in her day a rough building of wood, for Hannah lived a long time before King David, who built the first grand Temple. 

Hannah prayed, "O LORD Almighty, if you will only look upon your servant's misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the LORD for all the days of his life... ."

The prophet Eli happened to be sitting in a chair nearby and saw her utter the words but did not hear her voice. He thought she was drunk and told her, "How long will you keep on getting drunk? Get rid of your wine."

Like Zechariah (Elizabeth's husband), like Joseph, like Abraham, Eli just didn’t get it. Hannah explained what she was doing, and then Eli gave her his blessing. 

Hannah did give birth to a son, Samuel, whom she turned over to Eli so he would be brought up exclusively in the service of the Lord, as Hannah had promised. Samuel led the people against the Philistines, selected Saul as the first king of Israel and anointed David as Saul’s successor. Pretty important guy in the history of the Jews!

From the beginning, the Jews and Christians have understood that God’s will is worked out in history, and that means through the lives and deeds of men and women. Only rarely do acts of nature figure in the working of God’s will. It is what people do that counts, and when God wants to bring something new in human society, he brings forth a baby. And that means God turns to women.

The ancient Jews were just as aware as we how babies are made, but the Jews always credited new births as gifts from God. God’s promise to Abraham pervaded their understanding of what new birth meant. They understood that all new births were accomplished because of the providence of God. The repeating theme of remarkable births "suggests that the people of God come into existence and are sustained in their existence [only] by the grace of God,” not by their own efforts (Marcus Borg). 

There is another facet of the Bible’s remarkable births that is central. It was summed up in what Martin Luther said. The greatest miracle of Mary’s story was not that she conceived, but that she believed. It is her faith which is a model for us. First and foremost, Advent is about faith, to be open-hearted and open minded enough to be like Mary in accepting the gift of grace in God’s own son. 

Among other titles, Jesus is known as the Prince of Peace. I was out Christmas shopping the other day and it struck me that it seems odd that the time of celebration of the Advent of the Prince of Peace is perhaps the most frenzied, harried, un-peaceful times of the year. I started watching other shoppers and noticed that no one was smiling. They were shopping with all the grim determination of soldiers moving toward the battle line. 

Peace has multiple definitions. Jesus said, "Peace I give to you." In this day we certainly pray for the absence of war that is peace. But there can be, and should be, spiritual peace, a wellness of soul even during times of conflict or simple frenzy. One of the most important ways we can find that kind of peace is to do what Jesus taught, to live for a greater cause than ourselves. 

I have a thought experiment for you. Try to imagine next Christmas. Not this Christmas because it’s so close. Think about Christmas 2025. Now imagine that everything you love about Christmas will be just like you want it to be, except for one thing. You are not going to give any presents to anyone. You won’t be sick and so unable to do so. You just won’t give presents. You’ll still go to your family’s big Christmas gathering and everyone will give each other presents, including giving to you. But you will give nothing to others. All you will do is receive gifts from them.

Does the idea appeal? Would you want to spend a Christmas like that? Even a three-year-old wants to give presents at Christmas. It is not the getting that gives joy and satisfaction at Christmas, it is the giving. That’s why we so often have a hard time answering others’ question of what we want for Christmas, and so insistently ask it of others. In our hearts, we know that what we want to get is always much less important than what we need to give. 

At Christmastime, and no other, does our culture widespread focus on giving. That’s a good thing. The joy and peace of Christmas is found in giving. But Christ’s promise is that we may find peace in all times and all circumstances if we give not just our things to others, but our very selves to the One who is ultimate. 

So if Christmas is to be a time of wellness of soul, our giving must be of more than our stuff. The first gift was Emmanuel, "God With Us." And the first Christmas gifts were not the gold, frankincense or myrrh the three magi brought. It was the devotion of the shepherds who brought no presents neatly wrapped. They brought and gave only their hearts and praise. 

What shall you give for Christmas? Yes, give things to one another, but most of all give your love as well. To our Lord, give not only your love but also your life. And you shall have peace, and your soul shall magnify the Lord and your spirit shall rejoice in God your Savior.

God takes charge - the Second Sunday of Advent

Malachi is the last of the Jewish prophets in the Christian ordering of the Jewish scriptures. In the Hebrew Bible, Malachi’s book appears in a different place. The order of the books in the Hebrew Bible is a little different from that of our Old Testament, but the texts are word for word the same. 

Like pretty much all the prophets of old, Malachi calls the people of Israel to return to faithful living within their covenant with God. Malachi sees the religious devotions and practices of the people as being entirely too lackadaisical, especially the priests. As a result, the way that the people live together day to day lacks holiness of character. Even their social occasions and ordinary interactions have become corrupted because they are so slack in their religious commitments. 

God, says Malachi, is greatly grieved and upset by all this and is determined to do something about it. So, God sends through Malachi something of a good-news, bad-news message. 

Malachi 3:1 4:

    See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you  seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight—indeed, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 

     2But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; 3he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 4Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

The good news is that God basically says, "I am taking matters into my own hands. I am sending my messenger ahead of me to prepare the way and then I myself, whom you seek, will suddenly come.”

The bad news is, “But you won’t like it when I do. Do you think you will be able to endure it? You cannot. Do you think you will stand blameless before me when I appear? Don’t count on it."

The passages for the second Sunday of Advent focus on the prophecies foretelling the coming of God’s redemption, of whom John the Baptist is the greatest, according to Jesus. Christians have understood Malachi’s messenger to be John, whose ministry immediately preceded Jesus. Malachi’s prophecy is a tough one with a hard message. It does not put us in the “Christmas spirit” or inspire us to make merry.

Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was killed by the Nazis in Dachau for plotting against Hitler, took on that very challenge in an Advent sermon he preached in 1928:

     It is very remarkable [he said] that we face the thought that God is coming so calmly, whereas previously peoples trembled at the day of God... We have become so accustomed to the idea of divine love and of God's coming at Christmas that we no longer feel the shiver of fear that God's coming should arouse in us. We are indifferent to the message, [affirming] only the pleasant and agreeable of it and forgetting the serious aspect, that the God of the world draws near to the people of our little earth and lays claim to us. The coming of God is truly not only glad tidings, but first of all frightening news for everyone who has a conscience.

    Only when we have felt the terror of the matter can we recognize the incomparable kindness. God comes into the very midst of evil and of death and judges the evil in us and in the world. And by judging us, God cleanses and sanctifies us, comes to us with grace and love.

Can we welcome the judgment? I knew a detective who told me that the real value of polygraph exams was to gain confessions. Polygraph exams cannot be used in a trial, but a confession during the exam is admissible if it is followed up by a written, signed statement. The detective told me that wrongdoers often are eager to confess. Unless one is a career criminal, the burden of guilt is often great, and the polygraph provides an excellent excuse to unload. 

“What would really surprise you,” he told me, “is how many suspects are completely changed by their confession. At the beginning they are afraid to take the test, even though they can end it at any time. Then, if they confess, they can become giddy with relief and happy that they don’t have to carry that burden of guilt anymore.”

 If we comprehend the character of God and the nature of God’s righteous judgment, we can understand how we should both dread it and welcome it. Malachi tells us we must go through the fires of refining, like gold or silver. Why? Because refining forces out the impurities, the dross that has to be shed to be fine gold or silver. God refines us in order to redefine us. We have to face facts about ourselves that we’d rather leave buried deep inside. There are occasions of the church seasons that may work for us as the polygraphs do for the shamefully guilty – bring us to confession before God and be relieved of our guilt.

The trick is to be willing to be refined. A man I knew, a good, decent fellow, told me once of a violent storm one night that toppled a giant tree in a park. The splintered stump showed that the tree fell because it was rotten at the core from insects that had eaten away at its heart for years.

“I am that tree,” my friend said. “From outward appearance all is well with me, but I know of the rot inside. I ask myself why I am not a better man, and that tree showed me the answer. I am not a better man because I don’t want to be. But I wish that I did.” 

The fear of the refining overwhelms the desire for moving on to perfection. A few years ago, Robert Wuthnow published a detailed study of two thousand Americans that discovered that we are, as a culture, spiritually adrift in making decisions in economics, career choice, workplace commitment, consumerism, charity. Even those who described themselves as committed churchgoers often have their materialistic and workaholic tendencies reinforced by their beliefs or faith training. They admitted they live “pretty much the same as those who have no faith at all.”

It is natural to shrink from being refined. We are a fallen people who like our fallen state. We know that if we really embrace the teachings, person, and the divinity of Jesus Christ, we’ll have to change. We’ll have to cease putting our own desires first. We’ll have to start managing our time and money and resources differently. We’ll have to stop swearing or telling off-color jokes. We’ll have to stop gossiping. We’ll have to help other people succeed instead of exploiting their failures.

 We live in the center of our own self idolatry. We are afraid to admit that all we treasure could be a house of cards, and we know that Christ will blow the cards down into a heap. And then where will we be? 

If we are lucky, truly blessed, we will find ourselves filled with a creative and Spirit-filled discontent with the status quo. 

To be refined by God is to come to a spiritually barren place where we know that before a righteous and holy God, we have nothing to commend us except the willingness to confess and be redeemed. Martin Luther said it is the nature of God that he makes something out of nothing. Thus, God heals only they who know they are sick, gives no one sight but those who admit they are blind. God brings no one to life except the dead, makes no one pious but sinners, makes no one wise but the foolish. 

God has no mercy on anyone but the wretched and gives no one grace except those who have not grace. Consequently, proud persons cannot become holy, wise or righteous, or become the material with which God works, or have God's work in them. They remain in their own works and make fabricated, false and simulated saints out of themselves. 

“Who can endure the day of his coming?” We cannot endure even the day of Christmas if we really understand that the infant Jesus in the manger is the incarnation of God’s righteous judgment upon us. We should flee in terror from Bethlehem and all that it portends. How can we possibly celebrate Christmas when it means that from now on, we have no excuse?  

Only this way: the judgment God brings is to purify us and refine us like gold and silver, until we can present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. 

Here is the judgment of the holy and righteous God of power: that he so loved the world that he gave his only Son, and that anyone who accepts and follows him as the guarantor of life now and for eternity, will never perish. This is his judgment, says John, that Christ’s Light has come into this world of darkness, but we love the darkness rather than the Light. 

Even so, God will never stop loving you, never stop reaching to you, never stop being who he is. God is our Creator, our Sustainer, our Redeemer, our Savior. And all of these things are God's judgment upon us, for God adjudges us in love to be in his image, he adjudges us in love to be adopted as his sons and daughters, God adjudges us to be able to spend eternity in his company, to be able to love him and one another both in this life and the next. God adjudges that you can do all things good and holy through his strength, that you are both loved and love-worthy, and that you can live with a peace that you will always enjoy even if never fully understand. 

God will never redact this, never revoke it, never turn his back on you, never change his mind. And remember, God has a fuller knowledge of what "never" means than we do. 

God has told us mortals what is good and what he requires of us: Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And love your neighbor as yourself.

Second Corinthians 5 says,

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them (2 Cor 5:17-19).

Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given. And the judgment of God is that, “On him God has laid the iniquity of us all. … And the Government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.”

Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? All of us can who love the Lord, who lift up our hearts to God, and know to rejoice, for our redemption is drawing near. 

"A Christmas Carol" movies you can watch right now, free

I have 18 movie versions of Charles Dickens' novel, A Christmas Carol, in my personal collection. And I watch all of them each Christmas season. Here is where you may find as many versions of the movie as I can find online for free viewing. They are listed in the order I found them, not according to my personal rating of their worth. 

First up, from 1984, starring George C. Scott as Scrooge, free on YouTube and hence embedded here:

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Nest is Scrooged, starring Alistair Sim. This movie has received high marks for Sims' performance as Ebenezer Scrooge.

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Next is is Patrick Stewart playing Scrooge from 1999. This one has become an almost instant classic. 

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This version stars Guy Pearce as a younger Scrooge than we usually imagine. And it is more based on the novel's theme than its narrative, although the character's names are the same. Hence it is a reboot of sorts, rather long (almost three hours) with many added scenes, and Marley's ghost has a much larger part. But I give it good marks for staying faithful to Dickens' themes. 

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Here is the first movie of the novel with sound, 1935's Scrooge, starring Seymour Hicks.

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1938's version, starring Reginald Owen:

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A Christmas Carol (1954), starring Frederic March and Basil Rathbone: 

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Here is An American Christmas Carol from 1979, starring Henry Winkler:

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From 2015, starring Anthony D.P. Mann, one of the shortest versions at 59 minutes:

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From the BBC in 2000, one of my favorite versions, set in modern London with Scrooge being a young hoodlum loan shark, starring Ross Kemp. 

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And last, a musical version starring Albert Finney and Alec Guinness, Scrooge, from 1970.

Have fun, and remember the lesson the story tells so well!

Judgment and Advent

 A reflection for the first Sunday of the season of Advent

    Advent is the season of the church calendar that begins four Sundays before Christmas day. That Sunday, which is today this year, is also New Year's Day on the church calendar. The purpose of Advent is not to get ready for Christmas. It is to prepare for the coming of the Son of God into the world. The Christmas season on the church calendar begins, reasonably enough, on December 25 and the season of Christmas lasts a short time after then.

    Traditionally, the passages for first Sunday of Advent are not about Bethlehem or the manger or the wise men or shepherds or any of the things we usually think about when December gets here. This Sunday is about the judgment of God upon the world through Christ. Often the passages make us look well beyond the manger to the return of Christ into the world in power. Jesus taught a lot about the final judgment. Today’s passage from Luke is one example, which seems to start the season rather depressingly:

Luke 21:25-28

   25 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory.

   28 “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near."

We should stop to ponder just what the Good News really is as we head into Advent. I would advise not to think too much ahead to either Santa Claus or Bethlehem; the gospels show it is not an easy trip. Let Advent be a time to look inward at our souls to discern whether we are preparing ourselves for the coming of Christ. The Scripture passages for Advent emphasize the prophecy of Christ’s coming, the fact of Christ’s coming, and the promise of Christ’s coming again. Passages of the return of Christ are full of images and metaphors from another time and place. I don’t understand them all. Their origin is a people whose fundamental way of understanding reality was very different from ours.

But I think that this passage and the others like it in the Bible to compel us to ponder a critical question: What do we expect from the future?

Jesus paints a picture of creation coming loose. The order and regularity of the natural world so painstakingly explained in the first two chapters of Genesis is cast to the winds. God is shaking things up now, which Jesus and his hearers already knew would happen. The prophet Haggai wrote, “This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. I will shake all nations, and the desired of all nations will come, and I will fill this house with glory,’ says the LORD Almighty” (Hag 2:6‑7). (You may recognize this passage as the text of the fifth piece of Handel’s Messiah.)

Luke’s signs and portents point to fear and foreboding, and people faint. Yet even in such times, God remains steadfast. God comes with power and glory. We are not to faint when God shakes things up but are to stand and raise our heads because our redemption is drawing near. Even in chaos, redemption.

What do we expect from the future? Luke says that one day the end will come but that the end is one of hope for everyone who follows Christ. To hope for the future requires a point to the present. Advent should make us face how we understand the fundamental condition of humankind: that there is something about human existence that makes salvation, however defined, necessary. That is to say:

·      what are we saved from?

·      what are we saved to?

·      and what are we saved for?

Here is what I think.

We are saved from a life of unconscious relationship with God to a life of conscious relationship with God. All of creation exists in relation to God. Human beings are always in relationship to God. The question is how whole and healthy that relationship is. We are saved from broken, sickly relationship to restored, repaired relationship through the initiative of God’s grace and our response to grace.

We are saved from meagerness of life to abundance of life. Jesus said he had come so that we may have life more abundantly. Being the materialists that we are, we tend to misunderstand what abundance means, no time more so than at Christmas: you know, the stuff. At Christmas it’s easy to ignore Jesus’ caution that, “a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Abundant life is more than that. The abundant life is one in which unholiness is being swept away and holiness of life is being nurtured. Abundant life means to turn from ways of death to ways of life.

Isaiah wrote that human beings have a "covenant with death" and an "agreement with the grave" (Isa 28:16‑18). This condition goes beyond the simple fact of individual mortality. It is not merely persons who are being saved by God, it is societies, politics, the human community itself.

 Individual persons are often quite admirable. But collectively, communally, nationally, as a species, we are inbred to strife, warfare, criminality, domination and oppression at every level. No individual can escape it no matter how pure in heart. Every person participates no matter how devoted to right. Yet the promise of salvation is that the destructive and self-destructive side of human nature can be quelled, and that the better angels of our nature can flower in God’s grace. “Jesus Christ [is] liberator of every dimension of life” (ABD).

So we are saved from destruction and violence to creation and peace.

We are saved from the temporary to the eternal. The idea of salvation in Christian faith has always included the promise that the grave is not the end for Christian people. We will be raised to live again in a new creation, just as Christ was raised, and we shall be like him. “For those who have no faith and no knowledge of God, death stands as a final denial of life. All that we may attempt or do is eventually swept away by time.

   On the other hand, the [Good News of Advent is] that beyond the end of time stands the Lord, who has come among us in the person of Jesus. Those whose lives are lived under Jesus’ Lordship can live expectantly, filling each day with activity that is meaningful because of its divine mandate and its contribution to the fulfillment of God’s purposes for human life. Similarly, neither the end of life nor the end of time itself holds terror “for those who know God’s love because they know the one who determines the reality that lies beyond” the here and now. “Thus those who know Christ as the Son of God can approach the end with heads raised high, knowing that their redemption is near” (21:28) (NIB).

Those are only some of the things we are saved from and saved to. But just as importantly, what are we saved for? This question is an urgent one if we are to avoid being so heavenly minded that we are of no earthly good.

Paul wrote in First Corinthians, “. . . we are God’s fellow workers. . . ” (1 Cor 3:9a), and in Philippians, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Phil 2:13). We are saved for a reason, for a purpose. The way I best understand it is what you have heard me say before: We are saved to be the body of Christ in this time and this place, to do what Christ would do if he were here. Just as Christ in his incarnation represents us to God, so do we in our adoption by God as Christ’s brothers and sisters represent Christ to humankind and the rest of creation. The redemption of creation is the ongoing work of God.

We are called to be fellow-laborers with heavenly forces in the renewal of the world, we are to be living letters of God to the world, individually and collectively through the church. Through worship, prayer and devotion, through acts of charity and in struggling for divine justice in human affairs, we envision and work for a world free from anguish, suffering, and despair, a new order in which there will be justice and peace for all creation.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again. The return of Christ is the “God‑provided goal . . . toward which all life should be directed.”

“The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” That day has come in the person of Christ. Prophecies have already found their fulfillment already in the life and work of Jesus Christ, in whose grace we await the culmination of God’s history with the world.