The holiday movie “Violent Night”brought in nearly five million dollars on its opening night and doubled that during its opening weekend. The film cost about 20 million dollars to make, which is cut-rate by today’s standards (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” cost ten times that much) and has already grossed more than its production costs.
According to Peter Sobczynski, writing for RogerEbert.com, the story’s premise is that a tremendously wealthy family is set upon by a mercenary gang of thieves, intent on stealing millions. The family is rescued by a cursing, killer Santa Claus, who beats the bad guys to a pulp—and worse. This R-rated film is clearly not meant for families hoping to get into the spirit of the holiday.
“Violent Night” is not the first holiday entertainment to feature Christmas violence. The 1988 Bill Murray film, “Scrooged,”presented a bogus movie trailer for a sham movie titled, “The Night the Reindeer Died.” In the trailer, Santa’s north pole workshop comes under attack. Mr. and Mrs. Claus rally the elves and supply them with combat weapons to fight off the attackers—with the help of the actor Lee Majors. More recently, a blasphemous movie short was made with the same title.
A future historian might speak of how violence entered the Christmas season in 1979, the year the song, “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” was introduced. In 2000, an animated Christmas television special of the same name aired. In 1988 came the facetious trailer, “The Night the Reindeer Died,” followed by the blasphemous movie short of the same name. And now we have “Violent Night,” whose producers are already planning a sequel.
Our future historian would present a compelling case that violence entered the holiday season in the latter part of the twentieth century, but he would be mistaken. Violence surrounding Christ’s birth dates back to the very first century – a violence that was more gruesome than anything the writers of Violent Night included.
After Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Magi from the East came to pay tribute to “the one born King of the Jews.” When Herod, who claimed the title “King of the Jews” for himself, learned about this, he panicked. A legitimate king was a threat to himself and to his royal line – a threat he was determined to remove.
Herod the Great was a genius, a brilliant military strategist and a remarkable architect. But he was an evil genius. When Herod suspected (wrongly) that two of his sons were planning a coup, he had them strangled. His patron, the Emperor Augustus, once quipped in Greek, “It is safer to be Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huios).
Herod also killed his wife, her mother, his brother-in-law (by drowning) and, during the week of his death, yet another son. Before he died, he had 70 of the leading members of Israeli society arrested and held so that they could be executed at the moment of his passing. He said that he knew people wouldn’t grieve for him and he wanted there to be tears. Fortunately, his orders were not carried out.
Of the all the atrocities Herod committed, the worst was the murder of every boy under the age of two living in or around Bethlehem. Herod thought that in this way he could eliminate the threat posed by the “one born King of the Jews.” He sent his soldiers into the community suddenly and without warning. When they left, Bethlehem wailed, and most did not even know why their sons and grandsons had been killed.
God did not send his Son into a peaceful world but into a violent one. He did not come to a society ball but to a bloodbath, as the “Massacre of the Innocents” demonstrates. Bethlehem was a beachhead, and Christmas was D-Day. No wonder an entire company of the heavenly army appeared in the skies over Bethlehem.
Evil Herod grasped what our schmaltzy Christmas cards miss: the birth of Jesus marked an invasion. Some, like Herod, regarded it as an attack; others welcomed it as a rescue mission, but no one then thought it schmaltzy. Neither should anyone now.
Hope is more than a feeling, more than a wish. It is more than “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” (Emily Dickinson). Hope is an objective reality outside the soul which protects the soul. It is an “anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19).
Be encouraged by this minute of Advent Hope. – Shayne
Our hope includes seeing our loved ones again when Christ returns. They will astound us with their glory. It includes being glorified ourselves in the Great Revealing (Colossians 3:3-4). But our greatest hope is in the glory of God (Romans 5:2), for “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-3). This is the beatific vision. Its glory causes us to catch our breath at the humility of God in Christ, who took human form (“the body of our lowliness,” Philippians 3:21 – literal) “for us and for our salvation.”
Peggy Noonan’s lede in her Wall Street Journal column from October 15, 2020 read: “Everyone’s insane now. I mean everyone in Washington.”
It is not uncommon for people, even columnists for respected newspapers, to speak of government officials in this way. They are usually referring to the people on the other side of the aisle, but Ms. Noonan advocates for inclusivity: “Everyone’s insane now.”
Note the word, “now.” The implication is that there was a time when not everyone was crazy. Was there less insanity when Ms. Noonan’s boss, Ronald Reagan, was in the Oval Office? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Craziness in government is nothing new. Had Ms. Noonan been writing in the time of Christ, she might have used the same lede, with this clarification: “I mean everyone in Rome.” The Gospel of Luke lists the names of officeholders at the time Jesus burst onto the scene. This was a standard method for dating events, but it was also St. Luke’s way of reminding his readers that God is at work in the real world.
The people the Evangelist mentions were not mythical. It would be like me bringing up Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell in reference to something that was going on in our church and community. The men on Luke’s list were real people, exercising influence (for good or bad) in the real world.
God is not working in some ethereal spiritual world while life goes on in the “real” world. The “real” world is itself spiritual, shot through with divine activity. That is as true now as it was when Tiberius was the Roman emperor.
Tiberius was the poster child for insanity in government, though his heir Caligula made him look almost normal. As he grew older, the Emperor became paranoid and cruel. Seneca says that he was positively rude and insulting. Toward the end of his reign, he was executing people for saying things he didn’t like. He started spending less time in the capitol, and more time on the Isle of Capri, which was a hotbed of sexual deviancy. When he died, protestors in the streets wanted his body dumped in the Tiber River, which was how the corpses of criminals were disposed.
Luke also mentions Pontius Pilate. He was the Roman governor of Judea who ordered Jesus’s execution. The Jews hated him, and asked Tiberius to recall him. Pilate used treasury money as if it were his personal account, and when people protested, he sent his troops into the streets in plain clothes with orders to infiltrate the protestors and kill as many as possible. It was a massacre. Tiberius reprimanded Pilate but stopped short of removing him from office.
Herod Antipas also made Luke’s list. He was the regional administrator who had founded the gleaming city of Tiberius on the shores of Lake Galilee. It was he who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist and later attempted to have his own nephew imprisoned. He was sly, power-hungry, and unfaithful to multiple spouses.
If we had lived in Palestine in the year 28 AD, which would have been the 15th year of Tiberius’s reign, we probably would have been saying, “Everyone’s insane now.” Nevertheless, God was at work, accomplishing his purpose. The insanity of Rome – or, for that matter, Washington – cannot stop him.
As we approach Christmas, we must keep this in mind. The God who was at work in the world then is at work in the world now. The God who sent his only begotten Son will send him again.
“The meaning of Christmas,” a New York Times op-ed piece once claimed, “is that love will triumph and that we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” Those are nice words, but that is not what Christmas means. Christmas is not about something we might do but about something God has already done: he has entered the insanity of our world through the person of Jesus so that he might redeem it, restore it, and make it beautiful.
Jesus wanted his disciple to be free from the control of fear. Because greed is fueled by fear, he took the opportunity to address it as well (and, in so doing, shared one of his most famous stories). Get out your Bible, open it to Luke 12, and let’s learn from Jesus how to live free of fear and greed.
A class member shared the following Frederick Faber poem regarding the fear of the Lord, which is so good I want to pass it along.
The Fear of the Lord (F. W. Faber)
My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults Like life within my veins, A fear which tightly claims to be One of love’s sacred pains.
There is no joy the soul can meet Upon life’s various road Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks Under the eye of God.
Oh, Thou art greatly to be feared, Thou art so prompt to bless! The dread to miss such love as Thine Makes fear but love’s excess.
But fear is love, and love is fear, And in and out they move; But fear is an intenser joy Than mere unfrightened love.
They love Thee little, if at all, Who do not fear Thee much; If love is Thine attraction, Lord! Fear is Thy very touch.
Each week in Advent, I will post these minute-of-hope video or audio clips. During Advent, our hope is renewed and invigorated – and do we ever need that!
(Romans 13:8-14) Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (NIV)
If you received inside information that the world (as we know it) will end in exactly one year from today, what would you do? Would you stockpile weapons? Would you stockpile food, or move to the wilderness and take up fishing, hunting, and raising vegetables? According to the Apostle Paul, this period of earth’s history is nearing its close, so what should we do? Our text offers an unexpected answer to that question.
In verse 11, St. Paul rings the alarm for Roman Christians: it is time to wake up. “The hour has come” – not the hour for a cataclysmic meteor strike or an alien invasion, but for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to planet earth.
Does that lift your spirits and excite your hope? It should. It is good news, both for us and for the planet. It heralds the fulfillment of our salvation and the overthrow of evil. It marks the beginning of what Jesus called the palingenesis – the second genesis – and both prophet and apostle refer to it as the new creation. This is not only good news; it is great news.
When Christ returns, the powers that produce evil in this world will be routed and destroyed. The change will be immediate. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah wrote: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).
Think of it. No more war. No three-quarters of a trillion dollar annual defense budgets. No more twenty-year-old’s dying on the other side of the world for a cause they don’t understand. That day is coming.
Not only will there be no more war; there will be no violence. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).
This is the future. No violence. No evil, No war. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and “the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more” (Isaiah 65:19). God himself “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Fear, our constant, insufferable companion in life, will be gone. Sin, the burden of it, its clamoring demands, the confusion it brings, and the clinging guilt that accompanies it, will be forgotten like an unpleasant dream. For we shall wake up. The nightmare will be over, the day of the feast for which we have waited will arrive.
As wonderful as all this is – the absence of death and mourning and crying and pain – the best part will not be what is missing but what is present. The new age will not start as a blank slate: “The kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it” (Revelation 21:24). Both prophet and apostle say that the new heaven and earth will be the home of righteousness. Everything will finally be right – including us: We will be strong, glad, capable, joyful brothers and sisters of the great King Jesus!
Our loved ones who have died in Christ will arrive with him on the day he returns: “We … will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
On that day, we will not only see our best-loved friends and family in Christ who have died, we will see them as we have never seen them before. I once sat with a mother who had just lost her daughter in a car accident. She kept saying, “If only I could see her again.” But when we see our loved ones, we will not feel that we are seeing them again but that we are seeing them for the first time. We will recognize them, I have no doubt, but we will think: “What has happened?” That person we loved but always thought a little silly – or dull, or embarrassing, or weak – will appear to us like a god, as if Apollo or Aphrodite had stepped into view. We will not be able to take our eyes off them. But this is no Apollo or Aphrodite; this is our beloved, a human as humans were always intended by the great God to be. The only thing greater than our amazement will be our joy!
But there is more. On that day, we will not just see our loved ones glorified, we also will be glorified. This is the promise of God! “…the Lord Jesus Christ,who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21). St. John said, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
When he is revealed, we will be revealed in a sort of debutante ball for the entire universe. St. Paul writes, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). No one will be more surprised at your revealing than you. The biblical descriptions are: “glorious,” “joyful,” “imperishable,” “honorable,” “powerful,” “pure” and “undefiled.” The only One who will not be surprised at the change in you will be God. He has been planning this all along.
You will think that you have seen it all when you see your friends and family, and especially when you see yourself. You will be stunned and overwhelmed. “After this,” you will think, “nothing will ever surprise me again.” And then you will see him – him who made the worlds – and in that moment, you will know why you were made, why everything and everyone was made, and you will know that the making was good, was “very good.” You were made for this. You were made for him. And you will know, in the words Lady Julian said the Lord spoke to her: “that all shall be well; that all manner of things shall be well; that all manner of things shall be very well indeed.”
And do you know what makes all this possible? God our Savior sent his only begotten Son; Christ our Lord was made flesh and dwelt among us; God the Spirit, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, entered our inmost being. God is our hope; he is our all in all.
The things about which I have been speaking for the last several minutes will happen, and the day on which they will happen is, as St. Paul said, “nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11). History is not, and has never been, pointless. All things in heaven and on earth have been moving toward a predetermined end. Neither the powers of hell nor the accidents of life can prevent it.
So, how ought we to live in the light of this future—that was Paul’s concern. He started off this section of Romans by telling us how to live in the light of the past – of God’s mercies expressed in the sacrifice of his Son – and now he tells us how to live in the light of the future –God’s mercies of expressed in our great salvation.
How should we live in the light of all this? What should we do? Should we go to church five times a week and pray for five hours a day? Should we tell everyone we see about Jesus, about God, and about judgment? Should we find everyone against whom we have ever done any wrong and ask for their forgiveness?
While I wouldn’t speak against any of these things, they are not what Paul tells people to do. Look again at verse 11: “And do this, understanding the present time.” And do what? The surprising answer lies in the preceding paragraph and can be summed up in two words: Love others.
That’s it? Love others? That a little overly spiritual, don’t you think? I listened to a podcast recently that was titled, “Why Christians Keep Losing: Overly Spiritual.” I get it. If the end is coming, we need to do something, like protest, or start a podcast, or go off the grid and become self-reliant—something!
But loving others – God and people – is not something; it is the only thing. As Paul says elsewhere, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). Love: it’s not just a warm feeling. It is sacrifice. It is truthfulness. It is thinking. It is action. There is nothing more demanding – or less practiced – than love. Love is not overly spiritual; it is the most practical thing in the world. Paul says, “And do this” – “love one another” – because the time is short, and this is the most important thing we can do.
Back in verse 8, Paul wrote that the person who loves his fellowman (literally, “the other, the one who is not like us, who has a different religion, speaks a different language, has different colored skin – the person who roots for Ohio State), the person who loves the other has fulfilled the law. He repeats the claim in verse 10: “love is the fulfillment of the law.”
There was an idea among Paul’s Jewish contemporaries that when God’s people finally fulfilled the law, the day of salvation would come. Paul, it seems, agreed. But he knew the way to fulfill the law was not by painstaking piety, but by genuine love. I may keep the law by not committing adultery or murder, but I will only fulfill the law by loving. Love is what God has been after from the very beginning.
It is urgent that we love because (verse 12) “The night is nearly over.” It has been a long night. The powers of darkness have held sway. But that is about to change. Morning is at hand. “Glory, honor, and immortality” await. It’s time to wake up. Do you know how to tell those who are awake from the vast majority of people who merely sleepwalk through life? They are the ones who love.
That’s all? Just love? That’s all. But if you think that is easy, you’ve never tried it. Love is not something you can pull off by personality or willpower. You cannot produce love – that is outside our human abilities – so you need to put yourself in a place where you can be supplied with it. Love has a supply chain, and you need to be in it. That doesn’t just happen.
How can we position ourselves in the supply chain of love so that we are ready to receive and extend it? Paul helps us understand this by a series of three contrasts in verses 12-14.
The first is between putting off the “deeds of darkness” and putting on “the armor of light” (verse 12). We take off the “deeds of darkness” those secret behaviors and thoughts that are a source of shame, and that we know will look ugly in the light of the day that is dawning. Instead, we put on “the armor of light,” the protection that genuine transparency affords, which fits the life of love very well. (As an aside: every Christian should have a secret life with God. No Christian should have a secret life from God – as if that were even possible.)
The second contrast is between behaving decently, which fits the life of love, and partying, getting drunk, and sleeping around (which is a pretty accurate translation of verse 13), which does not fit at all. It may seem odd to us that church people needed to be told this, but they did. They were new to following Jesus, and old habits die hard. Living in the party scene, Paul knew, removes a person from the supply chain of love.
The final contrast (verse 14) is between clothing oneself with Jesus and thinking about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature, which Paul thinks of as opposites.
What does it mean here (and in Galatians) to “clothe yourselves with” – or as many translations have it, “put on” – the Lord Jesus Christ”? It means to intentionally put on – as intentionally as one puts on a suit of clothes – Christ Jesus’s way of thinking, feeling, acting, and relating. These are the clothes of the new life, which God graciously provides us, but which must we put on. This is discipleship to Jesus.
Christianity has always been a “put-on” job. Many critics have said so, but they have missed the point. Human life is a put-on job; it’s only a question of what you are putting on. For many years, a debate raged among the intelligentsia regarding human development. Is it fueled by nature or by nurture? Do we become who we become because of genetics or because of training? After centuries of debate, most authorities have called it a draw. But they’ve missed the essential point: humans become. They develop; and they do so by “putting on” something – a way of thinking, perhaps, or of valuing, acting, feeling – that they hadn’t had before. All of life is a put-on job; that’s how people develop. Because of what God has done by giving us his Son and his Spirit, there is a way to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
To put on Christ is to arrange your life around him in such a way that you come to see reality as he sees it, to value what he values, and disdain what he disdains. This can only happen in people who believe in him – who are confident that he is the way, the truth, and the life. This does not happen because a person has learned a few theologically correct ideas about Jesus – as important as that is. It happens because they have faith in him. They trust him. They entrust themselves to him.
The phrase in verse 14 that the NIV translates, “Do not think” is more like, “Do not premeditate…” Once you begin meditating – for that is what it is – about doing something sinful, your foot is already in the trap. When that trap closes, as it surely will, you will be completely out of position to love.
Let’s wrap this up. Salvation with its glory, honor, and immortality is already on its way! Jesus Christ, who came once, is coming again—this time to bring salvation. When he does, the great thing is for him to find you loving others. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink (or protest or podcast), do it as a way to love—or don’t do it. The way to be ready when Christ returns is to love. The way to change the world before he gets here is to love. There is no substitute. Love is God’s plan.
Have you taken your place in the supply chain of love? To do so, you need to be rightly positioned toward God – “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,” was how Paul put it – and rightly positioned toward people. That can’t happen when you are hiding sins or living a self-centered life.
So many people who are looking for love will never find it. But if they would stop looking for love and start looking to love, love would find them.
The point is that when Jesus – who is the point of it all – comes, we want to be awake – that is, we want to be loving. It’s time to wake up. The day is near, there is work – challenging work of love – to do, and we need to take our places in God’s supply chain of love.
For the past five years or so, I have been on a quest to sleep better. I have been sleeping poorly since my thirties, and it has only gotten worse as the years have passed. My three sons all followed suit. When they got into their thirties, they also began to sleep poorly.
The internet is full of advice for us poor sleepers. Exercise, but not too late in the day. Avoid caffeine. Don’t eat within three hours of bedtime. Practice mindfulness. Use breathing techniques like “box breathing.” Increase intake of certain vitamins and minerals. Turn off the TV or computer at least an hour before bedtime. The suggestions go on and on.
I saw my doctor recently for an annual wellness checkup. I reminded him of my quest, and he raised the issue of sleep apnea. That is not what I wanted to hear. Everyone I know who has been diagnosed with sleep apnea has ended up with a CPAP machine. I can’t imagine sleeping with a mask over my face and air being forced into my lungs.
The American Sleep Apnea Association estimates that 22 million people in the U.S. suffer from some form of sleep apnea. That is not good news. Sleep apnea is a potentially serious disorder. Its long-term effects include high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. It is now considered a risk factor for dementia.
The most common form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. This occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat relax and the soft tissue they support – the tongue, soft palate, and uvula – close, momentarily sealing the airway. This can happen repeatedly during the night, waking the sleeper enough to reopen his or her airway.
The most widely used device for treating obstructive sleep apnea is a CPAP machine. It pumps a continuous stream of oxygenated air through a plastic tube and face mask into the sleeper’s nose and mouth. The increased pressure of the forced air keeps the soft tissue from closing and allows airways to remain open.
Every adult I’ve known or heard about who was diagnosed with sleep apnea has been supplied with a CPAP machine. Many have benefitted greatly, but some hated it. They experienced claustrophobia and felt as if the pressure of the forced air would suffocate them. They were told that they would get used to it in time, but they did not, and gave up. They reasoned that apnea interfered less with their sleep than that suffocating mask.
There is an interesting parallel to this in the spiritual life. The biblical words most commonly translated as “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek are also translated, when context demands, as “air” or “breath.” Just as the long-term health of the body requires the regular reception of air, and lack of air causes long-term negative effects, so the long-term health of the soul requires the regular reception of spirit.
Writing to first century disciples in what is now Western Turkey, the Apostle Paul instructed Christians to “be filled with the Spirit.” He had in mind the Spirit that is from God and is God. The regular reception of this Spirit is required for the kind of spiritual stamina that manifests itself, as Paul goes on to say, in healthy relationships with God, each other, and with one’s family.
The unusual choice of a present passive imperative verb for “be filled” makes clear the need of Christians to be continuously filled with God’s Spirit. If this regular, normative reception of the Spirit is interrupted, spiritual disability may ensue and relationships with God and others will be negatively affected.
It is possible that some of us suffer a kind of spiritual apnea. Our reception of the life-giving Spirit is repeatedly interrupted, which impacts our lives and relationships negatively. We may benefit from a spiritual version of the CPAP machine – the daily practice of spiritual disciplines like prayer, Bible reading, meditation, and worship – through which God’s Spirit can refresh our souls.
The practice is but a means, as the CPAP machine is a means. More important is what it facilitates: a regular reception of the Spirit that, as St. Paul wrote, “gives life.”
Jesus was relaxed. He was able to speak truth in very difficult situations. He went through danger with poise and aplomb. How? He never let fear control him. Is it possible for us to be more like him in this? It is! Today’s class begins our exploration of Jesus’s way of dealing with fear and worry.
The Way Home 