I feel like I notice it more and more every year that Christmas merchandise creeps into shopping malls and window displays earlier and earlier - really, do we need to be looking at men's ties with cheery ornaments on them before we've even gone trick-or-treating? The answer is NO. The same thing is true with Christmas songs on the radio - if you play them before Thanksgiving, it makes us all really sick of them by the time December 25th rolls around. It could even breed resentment in people toward "Jingle Bells" and "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" - which is APPALLING.
The greatest thing for me about Christmas is anticipation. Christmas day in and of itself is a wonderful thing, but I what I appreciate more are how during all the days between now and the blessed 25th, humanity oozes goodwill and peace on earth in a geyser gush that is capped and seemingly locked away in a vault for the rest of the year. Charities get a boost. Families come together for just this one day out of the 365. Tight-fisted pocketbooks spring open. Miracles happen. Lifetime movies happen. Sickening Kay Jewlers commercials happen. While the stress of the season might get some people down, the extra tinsel, Christmas trees, gifts, ice skating, mistletoe, hot cocoa, gingerbread houses, cookies, card-giving, bright-eyed children, and crooning Frank Sinatra carols floating around in the holiday atmosphere of late November-December just warms my soul. I live for the buildup of wrapping presents, cleaning the house, making Dad's Christmas candy in the kitchen, rolling out sugar cookies dough with the siblings, watching "A Christmas Story" and rejoicing yet again when Ralphie gets his Red Ryder BB-gun... I love the anticipation.
Last year in Madison I didn't have the chance to go home until the late evening of the 23rd as an ominous snow storm was creeping over Wisconsin, and there was a very real danger that I would not be home in time for Christmas Eve. Envisioning spending the "most wonderful time of the year" stuck in Room 410 of Slichter hall with not even JH to silently keep me company... it was more than I could bear. I safely made it home, but it was somewhat depressing - I had absolutely no anticipation time.
All the joy of the season for me had been sucked out by incredibly stressful Bio 101 exams and 12 page American Lit papers. Little to no Christmas spirit warmed this girl's non-anticipatory heart. BAM - Christmas Eve and Day flew by in a blur, and while time spent with family and friends devoid of homework cares that so plagued me before was refreshing, I went through the whole season with very little spiritual development. I heard cheek-chapped 2nd graders toothlessly recite Luke 2, as all good little Lutherans do: "In THOSE days, CEASAR Augustus issued a decree, that a CENSUS should be taken of the enTIRE ROman WORLD. THIS was the FIRST census that TOOK PLACE while QUIRINIUS was GOVERNOR of SYRIA. And EVERYONE went to his OWN TOWN to REGISTER. So JOSEPH..." I sang my favorite Christmas hymn "Where Shepherds Lately Knelt" (CW 54, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X06XFOSq7eM&feature=related) at good ol' classic Grace Downtown. I went over to Grandma's, I set out milk and cookies and beer and cheese for a Santa that I knew didn't exist, (as well as a banana for Rudolph... can't forget about him, poor guy!) and I opened presents. I went through the motions, and while those motions were lovely, they didn't mean very much to me last year.
I'm happy to say that this year is different - vastly different. And in many ways. If you would have told me last year that I would be taking my next winter exams in Minnesota I would have laughed until I got a stitch in my side, for one thing. But spiritually, this Advent season already means a lot more to me. In fact, Christmas has been revolutionized. Why?
'Cause Jesus was a baby.
I don't know why I never understood this before. Because I heard the joyful Christmas story proclaimed over and over again, pounded into my skull since infancy, that this incredible detail just lost it's luster?
JESUS was a BABY.
Have you ever seen a baby? Like really really seen one? A fresh one, straight from the... ? They are so very ugly. I know when I have a baby someday I will instantly dehydrate after gazing upon my child because of the tears of joy I will shed at the little bundle of joy, but we all come out as wrinkly little aliens. We can't move or eat or do anything but be scarily fragile and cry a lot. How the human race has survived this long, I will never know...
Jesus. Was. A. BABY.
Can we talk about babies for a second? BABIES. Dear Lord. Those are crazy enough in and of themselves. Those who know me know I say this all the time, but people, do you realize you hold within you the power to make a PERSON? Through your God-guided actions you play a starring role in creating a soul. A SOUL. Something that was not there before. Something out of seemingly nothing. I've always loved the image portrayed in Psalm 139:13-14 -
"For YOU created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well."
Let's take the image of a dresser. A dresser is a lot less complex than a person, no? If I wanted to make a dresser all I would have to do is stroll over to Home Depot, buy some tools, nails, lacquer, lumber, go home, set up shop in my garage, and have at her. After some concentrated effort, boom - I have a dresser. The dresser may even last me for many years. How lovely. But I had to do a lot of work to have this dresser. Even If I had gone to Home Depot, made the same purchases, and then mixed them all together in my garage and let it sit for 9 months, when I open the door and take a peek it will all be exactly how I left it.
NOT SO WITH BABY-MAKING, folks! Not so at all. If a person wants to make a baby, they already have half the materials necessary - no need for a trip to Home Depot. And if they have a spouse, they have all the materials. Hooray. The list of items needed for a baby is far less than the items needed for a dresser - and inherently cheaper, too. (Although, now that I think about it, to get the spouse you might have to spend a little money on dates... but roll with this analogy, will you?) After a little concentrated effort, boom - you have a baby! You didn't have to sand it. You didn't have to lacquer it. You just mixed it up and let it sit for 9 months, and you have something that will last many years - like around 80 years. A mom has mysteriously cooked a creature with fingernails, eyes, a heart! A brain! Hormones and lymph nodes and a bone structure, oh my! Even as glorious and weirdly awestruck this may make you, creating a baby has made far more than incomprehensibly complex bodily systems - the man and woman two-become-one-flesh thing has crafted a soul. Something eternal, something infinite. A simple act of ultimate earthly love knit together the stuff of Heaven (or hell, I suppose) in a lowly, sin-ridden self.
Where babies come from blows my mind enough as it is. NOW, let's even amp this wonder up a notch.
JESUS WAS A BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A human baby. A wrinkly smelly alien baby. And not probably a cute one at that, since the Bible says Jesus "had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him"(Isaiah 53:2). He was not a tubby golden winged cherub, and He most certainly did not grow into the hottie that we see pictured in European art and in most of our churches. When Christ came down to earth, He came like a regular Joe instead of a Brad Pitt. Too often humans paint and mosaic Him up to be this incredible stud with rippling abs laying oh-so-handsomely on the cross, but, correct me if I'm wrong, He wasn't. He is the One who created beauty. From Him comes all attraction and even sight - He invented hormones and the sexual attraction we all have. He could have come as something far sexier than an alien baby! He could have blown our minds! I know we glorify Him in art because we want to do His glory majesty, but He was an average guy.
He walked a lot so I don't want to go so far as to surmise He was fat, but He was probably pretty unkempt - "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not"(Isaiah 53:3). He didn't have a regular shower to frequent due to His nomadic ministry - "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head"(Luke 9:58). He probably had pimples in His teenage years. And scars from popping them. He probably got roughed up in carpentry and playing with the other guys growing up, so He already had scars and the like. He was dusty. Dirty. If we passed Him in the street back then we wouldn't have cat-called or whistled at Him. He was nothing special outwardly.
By choice.
For YOU!
For me.
I just cannot wrap my head around how God - something so divine, so majestic, so far beyond any semblance of human comprehension - squashed His terrifyingly eternal majesty into a wrinkled little baby. A baby!!! How did His glory fit? Isn't the juxtaposition of the penultimate source of all manner of goodness and light in the cosmos and the lowest form of human life imaginable revoltingly mind-blowing? Doesn't it go against every physical, moral, mental law the human race has?
And not only was He born as a maggot-bound human, but He was born in a manger. A cowshed. A stable. A stall. A barn. A barn?! Not even you or I was born in a barn, despite what our mothers might yell at us when we exhibit poor table manners. We had the luxury of being born happy and healthy in a sterile hospital with trained experts standing by, blinking in the brightness of earth at around 8 pounds, 20 inches. We were instantly clean, warm, and wrapped. We had plenty to eat. We had instant vaccines. We had it good. What did He have at His birth?
Straw?
Nativity scenes are always displayed so serenely, but was the original nativity scene so pristine? BY NO MEANS. Mary, likely a 14-16 year old virgin, had to give birth IN A BARN with no epidurals, no ice chips, no local Jerusalem-area Lamaze class, and no sterile anything. Childbirth connoted a much grander fatal danger in those days, so as Mary was thrown in waves of labor pain, the thought of bleeding out on the straw in front of a man she barely knew and whom had probably never even seen her naked before constitutes a bunch of stress. And I know Mary serenely pondered all of the First Christmas events up in her heart, but if you picture it from her point of view in the heat of the moment as she's pushing out Jesus to this cold, hard world... it ain't pretty. She's experiencing childbirth for the first time, and Bethlehem was too crowded to even give Mary and Joseph a hotel room. In the words of Stephanie Tanner, "HOW RUDE!" I'm sure she was stressed about it being her first time. She's not married, so how do you think that looks to people, eh? Socially, she's in quite the unfair pickle. She's probably freaked out of her mind still at the fact that she's pregnant and her and Joseph never even did it - that doesn't seem normal - and she's little! She's a freshman in high school! And she's not even at home for all of this!
But Mary doesn't die. She succeeds in giving birth to Jesus, Savior of all. In a barn. With only Joseph to hold her hand and the oxen to oogle the orgy of blood and gross who-knows-what associated with childbirth. She's a simple woman giving birth to a simple baby boy in a simple barn. This scene could have taken place anywhere in the early Mesopotamian world. I bet 20 other babies were born that night in the area. Girls and boys, little Nicodemouses and Annas and Emmas and Madisons and Manuels. (Well, maybe not Manuels... they were Jewish after all, not Mexican. Once again, for the sake of a witty post title, roll with me here). It's simple, right?
It's simply Immanuel.
Immanuel, or "God with us". God WITH US, here! On earth! God left the popular cool kid lunch table of heaven, pulled on our weird clothes, and settled in for 30 years at the nerd table. He took Himself out of paradise - for us. With us. One of us.
This makes Jesus unlike any other idol, any other prophet, any other god. How many of those were willing to give up their glory for their subjects? Jesus' love was great enough to bring Him through a womb to our world - our world that murdered Him upon arrival. It's terrible and we all should obviously carry huge amounts of guilt for being human, being one of the same kind who killed the Lord of all, but God did this for our benefit. He did this for our good! Because Jesus, Immanuel, lived here with us,
"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin" (Hebrews 4:15)
His incredible humbling is an incredible blessing for us and gives such incredible comfort. He knows how you feel when you feel like you don't belong. He understands stress, He understands betrayal and loneliness. He understands it fully, better than anyone, and the great thing is that even though Immanuel died here, He also rose 3 days later and ascended into heaven so that someday we can go spend time in His world. For forever.
And the best part? He is still our Immanuel. He is still here on earth, in every particle of everything and all around you, all the time. He promises. We can trust Him.
So start getting excited people. Start getting excited that He's coming! Start preparing your hearts to try and comprehend His indescribable love this Christmas season. Enjoy the carols and the earthly, acquaintence-y love, but please, look past that. Look past the cliche' well wishes for "joy" and "light" and "happiness" that the over-marketed world jams down your throats. Look past Santa and misteltoe, eggnog, bad sweaters, and Christmas bonuses. Dig past tradition, dig past complacency, and dig into His word to find the runty little baby in a bloody little barn that came to save your bloody rotten runty soul.
Start getting excited to comprehend His salvation and what faith in Him is all about.
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you notice Immanuel in this world and share His love with others.
And start anticipating Easter where we'll nail Him to a cross yet again, and marvel at His plans, His love, His undying truth. Marvel at Him, the humble alien baby who created all things.
Marvel at Immanuel.
Happy Advent!
