The Lord works in mysterious ways, but I've never had so direct an answer to prayer as I did this weekend.
On Saturday night, I prayed to God about my youth group, asking for His guidance in making this Advent season relevant to the youth of my church. In the midst of my prayer, I had a sudden thought. "Why do we celebrate Christmas?"
Beyond the usual notions of Christmas and its commercial driven reasons, the murkiness of the nativity and its relevance to the Christian religion is probably lost on most Christians. It is not readily accessible as a powerful religious allegory that is somehow directly related to our everyday lives. None of us are likely to experience virgin birth, nor wisemen at our door, nor stars to follow, nor angels appearing to announce a birth, nor choirs of angels, etc... So what is the relevance to us? Why do we celebrate Christ's birth every year in a way that we do not celebrate anyone else's birth? Is is just because He was God? Shouldn't we just sing Him Happy Birthday and pass out some birthday cake then?
All of these ideas flashed through my head in a blur and a moment and it got me to ponder the whole advent season. I knew immediately, of course, that I had to use this idea to explore the notion of the nativity with the youth group this season. Not as a straight forward explanation - this is what the Bible says - but as a question of why the nativity is relevant to you and to the world.
Then, lest I forget the prayer of the night before, on Sunday I was sitting in my church library and I found a very dated book about The Gospel According to Thomas. This gnostic publication found in Egypt in the 40's had been translated as a loggia of Jesus's sayings purportedly quoted by the apostle Thomas. I skipped the intro and went straight to the words themselves and found a quote that really struck me... (and I'm paraphrasing here).
"Why do you ask me about the end, but not about the beginning? Truly I say to you, if you want to understand the end, you must first understand the beginning."
This quote has not left my mind since because whether spoken by Jesus or not, it is deeply profound. It also reminded me of my idea and my obligation to the youth.
So I've already decided to fill in my youth with the background of the nativity next week, but what I'd really like from you all is an answer to the question, "Why is the nativity relevant to you and to the world?" I don't have a definitive answer yet, myself. I must contemplate the question for a while before I hope to even venture a profound guess. But, perhaps, this is something you have pondered already or have read from the likes of C.S. Lewis or others. So, let me hear it.
I look forward to your posts or responses.
4 comments:
Ask them: "If you were God and you decided to come into the world as a human, how would you do it?"
Rick McKinley, in Jesus in the Margins, says that if he were to do it, he'd jump out of the sky on Super Bowl Sunday into a packed stadium while the PA announcer says, "Now...the Savior of the World, the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of God...JEEEEE....SUS!"
Cameras would flash, people would be screaming, millions of people around the world watching.
But as McKinley says, God decided to do it very differently, coming as a baby, in the humblest of ways, and born in a smelly barn.
Why?
To experience life, from beginning to end, as a human being. How could Jesus be fully God and fully Man if he did not experience infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, and adolescence?
And that's why He was able to set an example for us as "The Everlasting Man" to quote Chesterton, as the only human to never sin. Because He lived as one of us, He knew what it meant to be human.
And one more thing - Mary was likely 12 - 15 years old at the time. Think about how Joseph must have felt knowing his betrothed was pregnant with a child not his own, and how scandalous it must have been to the local community.
Jesus was likely known by those in Nazareth as Joseph's illegitimate son from the day he was born - so He had that stigma within his hometown, too.
The power of the Nativity comes from understanding the circumstances into which Jesus was born - cultural, emotional, and spiritual. He was born into a societal margin, and He came to save us all, who have issues in our lives that keep us in the margins of our lives.
While I appreciate the idea of sky diving into the Super Bowl, perhaps I wasn't clear about what I was asking. I understand the divine implications of Jesus' birth. He was God's gift. He was the Messiah. His beginning and His ending seem to coalesce in everything we discuss about Him. God gave us His only son (birth) so that He might free us from our sins (death). But while I know what Jesus's death on a cross means to me - I understand the personal implication of Easter - what does Christmas mean to me? What does His birth have to do with me other than it is the beginning of the story of Jesus?
Think of it this way... when Jesus died, there wasn't any star or choirs of angels or anything else even though Jesus's birth and rebirth are profoundly impactful to our everyday life. So, why did all those wonderful things occur at the birth? What was God celebrating? What was the implication of this birth?
For myself, I'm leaning towards the idea that Jesus' birth is as profoundly impactful to human understanding as the day God gave his covenant to Abraham, or showed Moses the Promised Land, or filled the Temple of Jerusalem with His glory - Only Much More So! In that respect, then, Jesus' birth has an impact and an importance aside from His eventual death on the cross. In that respect, it is God's ultimate fulfillment of his covenant with us. It is His gift to us - the beginning of our understanding.
It's a big deal when the Deity takes the form of man. Period. And why is it a big deal?
God had been watching human life all these years, from Adam to Abraham to Moses to David and everyone else down the line. He watched us fail.
Now, He was coming to experience human life for Himself, be an active participant, knowing that He would sacrifice Himself 30 something years later.
John Piper wrote in Desiring God that the chief aim of God is to glorify Himself (for how can we be happy in a God who wasn't a happy God?). God was happy that His Son was born, and we praise God, we thank God, for the gift of the birth of this child who would one day sacrifice Himself for us.
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