Helpless Grace

Sometimes you hear people say that the exchange of presents has nothing to do with the “Christmas spirit.”  I disagree.  This Christmas especially, as we finish the last of many gift exchanges with friends and family, I’m more acutely sensitive to God’s grace than usual.

Everyone unwittingly teamed up to give me the most awesome Christmas ever.  A library of books that I like and a garage full of woodworking tools are just some of the things I was given.  Presents I just mentioned in passing and never dreamed I would actually get were standard fare this Christmas.

I’m so humbled by the generosity of my friends and family.  I’m all the more humbled because, frankly, I didn’t give a very spectacular selection of gifts this year.

In light of my own paltry offerings and the awesomeness of what I’ve been given, on Christmas and on the Cross, the only way to respond to generosity of that magnitude is with sincere thanks and by enjoying and putting it to use.

Experiencing helpless grace is an awkward feeling.  But it’s something I could use a lot of practice doing.  Thanks guys, and thank God for Christmas presents.

O Little Town

We think of the village where Jesus was born as a cute little town with a romantic name.  Even the word “Bethlehem” trips mellifluously off the tongue.

Some Christmas carols depict a quiet, moonlit scene where everything went perfectly– the ox and lamb join in the worship of the newborn Jesus, shepherds keep watch over him, and no crying does he make as a blissful Mary wraps him in swaddling clothes.

I somehow doubt it went off so easily.  After all, Christ was born into the world, not onto a Christmas card.

Not Quite

I suspect the first Noel was more like this:

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A fourteen-year-old Mariam, far from home, scared and lonely, began her contractions in a squalid barn full of animals that had just borne their smelly masters for days.  Yosef, 20, beard still spotty in places, tried to find her a comfortable spot amid the piles of mule feces.  Nobody in the inn even heard her cries of labor over the drunken carousing.

Once she delivered him, they wrapped the Lord of Lords in a discarded horse blanket with their filthy, travel-worn hands.  They laid him on a pile of half-eaten hay and Yosef spent the night pushing away the dumb beasts who wanted to get to their supper.

Shepherd boys, even younger than Mariam, eventually wandered to the inn, stunned by what they had seen out on the fields, and helped the best they could.  But before long, as young boys are wont to do, they started playing games, singing or sleeping, oblivious to the baby or his new mother.  And then they left.

No kings or wise men stopped by for egg nog and cider. They wouldn’t complete their journey for some time.  Mariam and Yosef spent the night huddled around the baby, praying for him and for each other.

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It’s precisely because of the utter poverty of the first Christmas that we are able to praise God for his love in sending Jesus.  That wasn’t even the humblest time in his life.  At the other end, he was publicly executed like a thief and jeered by the most important people in the city.  Jesus became humble so we might become rich to God.

That’s why he was born in the little town of Breadhouse.

And yet, despite the dinky name, there’s something prophetic in the meaning of Bethlehem.  Bread sustains us.  We need bread to survive.  And yet life-giving bread itself comes from crushed grain usually infused with a fungus.

Perfect Submission

The Christmas music on the radio got me thinking, appropriately enough, about the Incarnation.  I suppose I usually take it for granted that Jesus knew what his purpose in life was from a young age– he certainly had a special knowledge of his father early on (cf. Luke 2: 49)– and was always resolved to complete his mission with only that slight and momentary lapse of courage in Gethsemane.  But there’s no reason to think that was the case according to the Bible.  Jesus may well have been apprehensive (though obviously determined) about the Cross many years before the event.  His prayer in Gethsemane to let that cup pass may be just one recorded instance of an ongoing conversation with his Father.

As I dwelt on that possibility, and on the reality that the divine Jesus was also fully human, with a free will just like ours, not some automaton who did God’s will out of habit, I felt an interesting Christmas emotion.  I got angry.  Angry that God would send Jesus to earth, utterly alone, and force him to take on the sins of all the hateful, obnoxious people of the world and die for us, especially when Jesus wasn’t even 100% gung-ho about the whole crucifixion thing.  Angry that the Father would reject and abandon his own flesh and blood.  Why would he pick us over his own Son?

It would be so much more palatable if Jesus didn’t mind being executed.  Or if he’d been given an epidural first.

But Jesus had to give us new birth the old-fashioned way.  He had to feel the full weight of our burden on his shoulders to know how hard to throw it away.  And I believe he had to feel real human emotion about doing it in order for it to be effectual.  All the more praise be to God that Jesus was perfectly obedient to his Father’s will even when it wasn’t his preferred course of action.  “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

I have a feeling I’ll be working on that kind of submission to God’s will for a while.

What wondrous love is this? O my soul, O my soul!

What wondrous love is this, O my soul?

What wondrous love is this

Which caused the Lord of bliss

To bear the dreadful curse.

For my soul?

What wondrous love is this?
Which caused the Lord of bliss
To bear the dreadful curse,
For my soul.