The theme of this year’s Christmas Eve service was “Extraordinary Savior.” “Extraordinary” is, of course, a term of comparison: If there were no ordinary people, there would be no extraordinary ones. That got me to thinking: in order to appreciate the extraordinary savior, I need to understand what an ordinary one is like.
Is there such a thing as an ordinary savior? There is, and (sadly) Jesus is often presented as one. If you spend any time at all on religious broadcasting, you’ll run into the ordinary savior. He saves people from their circumstances – poor health, insufficient income, and troubling emotions. That’s one way of identifying an ordinary savior: he only saves people from, whilethe extraordinary Savior – the real one – saves people for. Let me give you a few examples.
An ordinary savior saves people from a religionless, churchless existence. He pities those unfortunates who sleep in on Sunday mornings, go out to eat, and travel. He wants to save them from their laziness, gluttony, and wanderlust, though they aren’t looking to be saved. I suspect most people who don’t really know Jesus – they’ve heard about him, of course, but have never joined themselves to him – think of Jesus as this kind of savior: one who loves organ music, 18th century hymns, and those rousing 19th century gospel songs. He doesn’t want people missing out on these good things.
An ordinary savior also saves people from hell; that’s why he came. People were going to hell in a handbasket (or maybe a shopping cart) and he stepped in to save them. The extraordinary savior does that too, but he does more: He saves people for heaven; he saves people for service in his kingdom. It is the repeated promise of the New Testament that Christ is saving us for something important. He has a role in mind for us. He intends for us to reign with him. The ordinary savior just saves from. The extraordinary savior saves for.
The ordinary savior saves us from punishment. God got himself into a jam by making people and, now that they have gone wrong, he finds he has no choice but to punish them. The ordinary savior feels very bad about this and steps in to take the blow. There is some truth to this, but it is not the whole truth. The extraordinary savior not only saves people from their punishment; he saves them from their sins. He knows the worst punishment people can suffer is to be left in their sins.
The ordinary savior saves us from suffering, which he (along with the rest of the world) considers the ultimate evil. The extraordinary savior does not save people from suffering – doesn’t even save himself from it – but he makes sure that his people’s suffering means something; that it accomplishes something for their good and for the world. The extraordinary savior didn’t suffer so that we wouldn’t need to, but so that our sufferings might be like his: full of promise and used for good.
An ordinary savior arrives on the scene every December as a baby (one who never cries – “…little Lord Jesus no crying he makes”), then fades from sight sometime after Easter. (Although, in some cases, he doesn’t even make it to the first of the year.) Because he never gets the chance to grow up, he remains powerless. Born into a poor family, he needs our pity and perhaps even our help. (I’m not sure we don’t prefer it that way.)
The extraordinary savior does not remain a baby; he grows up. He is not powerless; he is the Lord of men and angels. He doesn’t need our pity, but he does pity us. If the baby savior doesn’t cry, the adult savior does: He weeps for us. The extraordinary savior is more than a beautiful baby; he is the Man of Sorrows, who has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities.
The ordinary savior launched a religion, and it has done quite well. It’s like the amazon.com of religions – right at the top of the heap – which makes Jesus the Jeff Bezos of the religious world. The extraordinary savior doesn’t launch a religion. He launches a revolution. He will conquer the kingdoms of the world and bring them into the kingdom of our God. He will preside over the nations of the earth. The ordinary savior may be satisfied to preside over the denominations of Christendom; the extraordinary savior will have so much more.
The ordinary savior is interested in people’s spiritual life and wants them to do spiritual things, like pray, read the Bible, and go to church. This contrasts with the extraordinary savior, who isn’t so much interested in a person’s spiritual life (as though a person were sectioned like a grapefruit, with a dozen or so lives – a work life, married life, social media life anda spiritual life). A person has real life, which is inescapably spiritual, and that’s what he cares about.
The goal of the ordinary savior is to get you to behave well: no gossip, no getting drunk, no racial bigotry, no selfishness. And while you’re at it, don’t slurp your broth and be sure to brush your teeth. He wants you to always be nice and to look out for the underdog.
The extraordinary savior cares about good behavior, too, but that is not his goal. He didn’t die so that people would be made nice but so they could be made new. He understands that behaving well is a consequence of being new. Another way of putting it is: the ordinary savior wants to reform people but the extraordinary savior wants to transform them.
All this poses a question. Do we have an ordinary savior or an extraordinary one? It’s an important question, because the ordinary savior only produces the ordinary saved. The extraordinary savior produces the extraordinary saved: children, women, and men who live purposely, endure hopefully, and love freely. The extraordinary savior is developing humanity into a race of glorious, free, wise, and loving beings. That’s what he is saving us for.
This Savior whose birth we celebrate—don’t leave him in a manger, which leaves you in control. Don’t even leave him on a cross, which leaves you loved but unchanged. Find him where he is: on a throne, which leaves him Lord and King and you his soldier, his servant, his person. This is the extraordinary savior. His name is Jesus.
A few months ago, I jumped out of an airplane. After three weeks of weather delays, our group (Jeanette Dembski, Traci Disbro, Brian Ellis, and I) had to wait another four hours for all the other people who, like us, had waited three weeks but, unlike us, didn’t attend church that morning and got to the airfield before we did. I appreciate all of you who came to watch and who waited through the afternoon. I don’t so much appreciate those of you who were taking odds on how likely I was to chicken out.
Finally, after waiting and waiting, Jeanette Dembski and I were aboard the plane. We ascended 14,000 feet in just seven minutes. The door opened. One skydiver after another, including Jeanette, hurled out and into the blue. Then it was my turn. I stuck my feet outside the plane, my heels resting on a four-inch ledge. As we rocked back and forth, my instructor said in my ear, “One…two…three,” and then we were out.
Ready, set, go…
I looked around me and could see for miles. The instructor tapped my shoulders, which meant I could release my grip on the halter and raise my arms. Below me I could see farm fields and roads. There were lakes, lots of lakes, which surprised me. (I hadn’t seen them from the road.) Some had dozens of boats on them, a few leaving white lines, like writing, on the surface of the water. I could see that one of the lakes was too shallow for boating and there were no houses around it. On the roads were Matchbox-like cars that hardly seemed to be moving.
My instructor signaled to me and I looked up – I had been looking down – and there was a photographer, fifteen feet away from me, as if perched in mid-air, taking video. Then he zoomed away, and I went back to surveying the landscape and trying to find the airfield, where we would land. Once again, the photographer flew up, signaled for me to smile, then zipped away. There was so much to take in that the passing of time didn’t really register. Whether a few seconds or a few minutes had passed, it was hard to tell.
As I was taking in the scenery, something suddenly happened – boom! – and I felt like I had been snapped back into the sky. I was shocked by the force of it and didn’t understand what was going on. In the midst of about a thousand visual, audio, and tactile stimuli, a sort of thought emerged: “What just happened?” I really didn’t know.
What Just Happened
What happened, of course, was that my chute opened. I realized it almost immediately, but for a split second all I knew was that something had changed – and I wasn’t sure it was good change. In our text, St. Luke describes a similar moment. Life was going on as usual when, seemingly out of nowhere, something happened and the force of it was shocking. In that moment, I suppose, a sort of thought emerged in the minds of the people involved – the same thought I had when my chute opened: “What just happened?”
Let’s read our text, Luke 2:8-18: And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.
The life of a shepherd didn’t vary much: up at dawn; graze the sheep; take them to water; graze them again; lead them to a sheepfold for the night; sleep; get up; and do it all again. And for a shepherd, this was not simply a daily routine, it was a lifetime routine. They had been doing this from the time they were old enough to go to the fields with their dads. In fact, it was not only a lifetime routine, it was a generational routine. Shepherds had been doing this around the hills of Bethlehem, from father to son, for fourteen generations.
On the night we’re considering, the shepherds were doing what they always did. As the evening deepened, they gathered their flocks. The sheep that were always first were probably first that night and the sheep that were always last were probably last. They sheltered them inside a three-foot high stone fence enclosure, as they had done a thousand times before. Then they made a fire in a fire pit over which many a dinner had been prepared – probably the same dinner they’d eaten every night that week. If someone could have recorded their conversation, it would have sounded like the same one they’d had countless evenings before – like the ones their grandfathers and great grandfathers had, stretching back into the dim past.
And then the parachute opened and snapped them out of their reveries with a shock. If, a few hours earlier, you had asked the shepherds if this night would be different from all the rest, they almost certainly would have said no. That is the way life is: everything stays the same—until it isn’t. We are lulled by the rhythms of routine (whether pleasant or painful) into a state of mind where we don’t anticipate anything new happening. That is the human condition. It is hard for us to believe that things will ever change. On that night, things changed – not just for the shepherds but for all of us.
In spite of the way things seem, we don’t live in a “steady state” universe. Things go along for a while – sometimes a long while – without change and then, suddenly, they are different. Sometimes the difference seems good and hopeful; sometimes it is scary and full of threat. What we need to learn is that the changes are not chaotic, not random, however much they seem to be to us. There is a God who ordains change and makes it serve his purpose.
In his second letter, the Apostle Peter mentions people who believe they live in a universe where things never really change. They clearly don’t believe in a sovereign God who interrupts the routine with intention. Peter wrote, “They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation”” (2 Peter 3:4)
Peter points out that the time frame within which these people live is so small, they have trouble recognizing the interruptions for what they are. Creation itself, he says, was an interruption – a “big bang” of an interruption – if ever there was one. He mentions the flood as another major interruption. If we had a bigger frame of reference – like the angels, who live for ages, not decades – we could see that these interruptions are not random. They are part of a pattern, the Great Pattern that has been unfolding for millennia; for ages, even. That pattern, St. Peter says, is leading to the end of the world and cosmos we know and to the beginning of a new world and cosmos – a new heaven and a new earth, as he puts it, where righteousness dwells.
Creation was part of that pattern, as was the flood, as was the call of an ordinary man living somewhere in the region of modern Iraq, whose name was Abram. It continues through other bold interruptions: the unexpected liberation of an enslaved people, the introduction of the law, the coming of a king, the going of a nation into exile. The pattern contains broad strokes and fine points, flourishes and arabesques. If you discern the pattern, you will realize that it is taking shape. You will begin to feel you know that shape, even though you can’t yet place it.
What happened on that night in Bethlehem was a major interruption, an intrusion – an invasion even – that had a profound effect on the overall pattern. To the shepherd’s question, “What just happened?” the answer comes: what God has been working on since before the foundation of the world. What was so unexpected and shocking to the shepherds had long been planned by God, and the execution of that plan had been taking place for millennia. The seemingly redundant pattern was not so redundant: it had just exploded new directions and colors.
The background for the pattern, which is set even before a word is spoken, is also important (verse 8): “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” Notice that it is dark when an angel appeared – the Greek has a suddenness about it: an angel set upon them. Their routine was upended and they were snapped out of it into another reality.
The fact that there is light shining on them in darkness puts us on notice that we are looking at the pattern. Isaiah had written, “The LORD rises upon you and his glory appears over you” (Isaiah 60:2). Or the prophecy concerning the coming of the Child-King: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned” (Isaiah 9:1).
You may remember that recently we heard Jesus describe himself as “the light of the world.” I mentioned, at the time, that the light of the world was not a stationary light, but a moving one – exactly like the light of God’s glory that led Israel through the wilderness. In the birth of Jesus, the light of the glory of God has risen.
The angel tells the shepherds not to be afraid because he is bringing them “good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” He then tells them that in the Town of David – yet another indication that we are looking at the pattern – “a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” There are three titles here of great importance.
First, there is savior. In the Roman world, that title had been given to the Emperor. In the Jewish world, “Savior” was a title of God himself. The angel gives it to a newborn baby.
Second, there is “Christ,” which is also a title. Christ is the Greek word used to translate “Messiah,” which means “anointed one.” The “anointed one” was a king, the coming King, promised by the prophets and hoped for by the people.
Third, there is “Lord.” Around the Mediterranean, everyone knew who the Lord was: he was Caesar. And the empire required people to confess Caesar “Lord” at least once a year and offer a sacrifice to him as a god. But Luke knows that Caesar’s rival – Caesar’s superior – has come and is lying in a manger. The Jews did not acknowledge Caesar as “Lord.” Only the Great “I AM,” Yahweh God Almighty, merited that title and they would give it to no one else. Yet the angel calls this baby “Lord.”
The shepherds, who had been mindlessly following their routine a few moments earlier, suddenly had been caught up into the pattern. The angel tells them they will find a sign: “A baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” A manger – a feed trough. Interesting that the “Bread of God,” the one “who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33) was first presented to that world in a feed trough.
It occurs to them, as they look at the baby in the manger, that they are seeing the pattern, the eternal pattern, and they are now living in it. It is a wonder and a joy to them: they are part of the beautiful thing God is doing.
Notice how this affected them. Luke says in verse 9 that they were terrified – the Greek is, “they feared a great fear.” But the angel announces joy, not fear: “I bring you good news of great joy” – great joy to replace great fear. By verse 20, the shepherds are “glorifying and praising God.” As great as their fear was, their joy was greater. That is what happens when people’s lives get taken up into the pattern and they know they have become part of it.
Mary, who was better than most at discerning the outlines of the pattern, knew that she and her son were a part of it. She (verse 20) “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” She understood that the pattern did not suddenly terminate with the birth of her child. It continued, and Mary continued in it. When, thirty-three years later, Mary stood (or perhaps lay prostrate) on a dusty, derelict hill outside Jerusalem, looking up at her beloved son, affixed to a cross by iron spikes, even then (I think) she felt the sharp, sword-like strokes of the pattern.
It’s good and right to celebrate Christmas – shepherds watching, angels chanting, a mother swaddling, wise men seeking – but let’s celebrate it as part of the pattern. There are lines (some beautiful and bold, some dark and harsh) that precede and flow into Christmas – creation, the flood, the call of Abraham, the birth of Isaac, the coming of King David, the going of the people of God into exile. And there are other lines that flow out of Christmas – the golden shades of the ascent of the King, the pouring out of the Spirit and the birth of the church, the dark chaos of great tribulation, and then the illuminating rays of judgment. What happened on that night in Bethlehem only makes sense in the context of what happened earlier, what is happening now, and what will happen in the days to come. The pattern is still emerging, growing, still taking shape.
I mentioned St. Peter’s second letter earlier. In chapter 3, he speaks of the ultimate “What Just Happened Moment.” He writes: “…the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (2 Peter 3:10). This will snap people out of their routine, like a car accident. They will be overwhelmed by a thousand visual, audio, and tactile stimuli and the question will present itself: “What Just Happened?”
This will be one of the last strokes of the pattern during this age, though the pattern exists “before all ages, now and forevermore.” With this stroke, we will see the shape complete, the image formed, and we will recognize it. For we have seen this image – without seeing – all our lives. We have seen it in the splendor of the stars. We have seen it in parents’ faces as they bend over a sleeping child. We have seen it in the strength of a warrior, in the tenderness of a mother, in the grandeur of a king. We have seen it again and again in the sacrificial love of the church.
And seeing the pattern, our minds will soar, freed at last from the imposed bondage of sin. Our hearts will swell. Our tears will flow. For always and everywhere, the image formed by this pattern has been the image engraved on our hearts and minds. It is the image that lies behind everything and is its source. It is the image that lies before everything and is its goal. We will see and adore: not the image only, but the baby, swathed in strips of cloth and lying in a manger; the man, swathed in blood and nailed to a cross; the king, the conqueror of death, swathed in glory and seated on his throne. It is the image of the Beloved, the Joy of the Whole Earth, the Desire of Nations. We will see, our own eyes will behold: Jesus Christ our Lord.
And in that “What Just Happened” moment (a moment that may last a million years) it will dawn on us – sinners, saved by grace – to our absolute amazement and everlasting joy, that we too bear the image. And that will be glory, “before all ages, now and forevermore.”
So this is Christmas. This is why we celebrate. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.
You better watch out, you better not cry; Better not pout, I’m telling you why: Santa Claus is comin’ to town. He’s making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who’s naughty and nice. Santa Claus is comin’ to town. He sees you when you’re sleepin’. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.[1]
If that isn’t the most blatant example of propaganda ever, I don’t know what is. It is mind-control – plain and simple. St. Nicholas could sue for libel. St. Paul would decry it as a theology of works. Yet it plays on a thousand radio stations every December, and parents have it on their iTunes and Apple Music playlists. And when their kids start to act up, they just remind them that Santa is watching. Mind control. You ask me how I know this? I know this because that’s what my mother did. If my brother and I were getting a little rambunctious, it was: “Are you on the naughty or nice list right now?” When we were supposed to be sleeping but were instead goofing around, we were reminded that “Santa is watching.”
And my dad made things worse by putting candy canes on our window sills – it never occurred to us that they were the same candy canes he gave away in the barbershop at Christmastime – and made us think that Santa had been spying on us, peeking us through the windows. That’s creepy, isn’t it? A peeping Santa. I mean, how was a five-year-old supposed to think about that? I can remember going outside when I was little, and tracking Santa’s big boots – which were, suspiciously, size 10 and ½, just like my dad’s – with my pop gun at the ready. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I caught up with him, but I was hot on his trail. And then I lost him when his boot prints looped back around the house and became confused in the myriad of other prints around our back porch. He was clever!
“He knows if you’ve been bad or good.” Bad or good, that was the question at Christmas time. Get in a fight with your brother, even when you didn’t start it, and your mother was saying: “He knows if you’ve been bad or good.” It was paralyzing. For the month before Christmas, we couldn’t get away with a thing.
But listen: Bad or good is not the issue, and Christmas is not a tool to make children grow up into responsible citizens and reliable tax payers. Christmas is more than you or I realize.
I’m sure many of you have gone to see Star Wars: The Last Jedi in the past week or so. (And before you ask me what I thought of it, I haven’t seen it yet. You know, I’m more of a Star Trek guy, but that’s probably because the resident adviser in my dorm almost ordered me to go and see the first Star Wars movie. He kept telling me (and everybody else), “There is a guy in the movie that looks exactly like Looper. Exactly. You’ll know him when you see him. His name is Chewy.” (My hair and beard were a little longer back then.)
If you’re a Star Wars fan, you know the story now in theaters is part of a much grander narrative. Even that first movie I went to see in the ’70s was part of a much bigger story, though most of us didn’t realize it at the time. It had a backstory – a prequel – and would have a fore-story – a sequel.
That’s the way it is with Christmas. It is a satisfying story in itself – this tale of an unwed mother and an ostracized family, of an angel messenger and noble shepherds. We can enjoy it without knowing the rest of the story – or even knowing there is a rest of the story. We can enjoy it, but we can’t really understand it, not until we know how Christmas fits into the larger narrative. Christmas has a prequel and a sequel, and we’ll only understand it within the context of the larger story of what God is doing in the world. What makes this story different from all others is that we are not merely viewers; we are participants. This story is interactive: we have a role.
What is the prequel to the Christmas story? It would take more time than we have available to give much detail – you can get a lot of it from the Old Testament – but I’ll summarize. The backstory is that a superior intelligence created carbon-based, physical-spiritual hybrid beings and placed them on a planet – as it turns out, our planet. The creator designed these beings to be a race of godlike and loving protectors and rulers of creation.
Unlike the other creatures he designed, the Creator engineered the humans with a high degree of autonomy: they can make choices, formulate plans, and carry them out, as they see fit. This autonomy was a key part of the design. Humans were the glory of the creation.
But as the story progresses, the nascent humans are coopted by a dark power and drawn away from their creator and the result is disastrous. The spiritual part of humans, who were designed as physical-spiritual hybrids, underwent catastrophic failure. Without the spiritual component, humans became like other animals, only more intelligent. Chaos ensued: injustice, greed, hatred, and foolishness invaded human society.
The creator, though, does not give up on his human creatures. He rather communicates with the humans that are capable of interacting with him. There is no undoing the damage done by human rebellion, no going back, but the Creator plans to take humanity forward. He immediately sets in motion a plan to right what has gone wrong and restore humanity’s spiritual life. He begins shaping a millennia-long lineage chain among his human creatures. Within that lineage, he promotes a particular culture, and superintends a specific genetic line. He does this over a period of thousands of years. His plan is to enter humanity himself through the line he has prepared, in order to save humanity from the rebellion and restore its damaged spiritual function. That’s the metanarrative into which Christmas fits.
Once we are aware of the prequel, we realize that Christmas is not a stand-alone story about the birth of a beautiful child under trying circumstances. It is the story of a rescue, the story of an invasion. It is a bittersweet story, because when the creator entered his creation through the line he had spent thousands of years preparing, his creatures did not know him. So St. John writes, “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10). Not only did they not recognize him, they did not accept him: “He came to His own,” the line and the people he had been preparing for millennia, “and His own did not receive Him” (John 1:11).
Of course, in the tale we know as the Christmas story, there is all kinds of excitement: there is a tyrannical ruler who serves an Empire which is under the sway of the original dark power. As soon as the tyrant becomes aware that the Empire has been infiltrated, he makes an attempt on the creator’s life. There are bad guys aplenty in this story, but there are also friends and unexpected allies. There are covert messages. There is a dramatic escape.
But here is the thing we need to understand about Christmas: It is the middle of the story, not the beginning nor the end. And it is full of surprises. Instead of the creator going to war against the rebels, as we might expect, he goes to war for them. He could have impressed them with his vast power, or intimidated them with threats of punishment, or appealed to them on the basis of their greed or selfishness – the same old story of the ways of power in the world. But he did none of those things. His sights were set something on more radical than conformity to a set of rules: He was out to change humanity from the inside; to change us from the inside.
To that end, the creator lived among humans as a human, modeling for them the life he makes possible and instructing them in how to live it. But they needed more than instruction. They needed the kind of life they had lost and didn’t even know was missing. To make that possible, the creator had to give his life on their behalf. He did this by dying and rising again. That is the climax of the story, and you can read about in the New Testament Gospels.
It is the climax of the story, but it is not the end of the story. The story continued on, as chronicled in the book known as The Acts of the Apostles. And the same story is going on still, and still being chronicled. (Remember what St. John wrote: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.” And what’s recorded there will no doubt include the heroics and bravery and extraordinary faith of God’s people in this generation. We are a part of the story now and have a role to play in it.
Think of it! We’re in the same story as Mary, only at a different point in the plot. What happened to Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the magi – that’s the prequel to our part of the story. But while ours is a sequel, it is not the final installment. That is still to come, when the king who came comes again; this time, not a baby, but a hero; not in weakness, but in strength; not in poverty, but in glory.
And that final installment of that story is the beginning of the great story that goes on forever, in which each chapter is better than the last (Lewis). We join the heroes of the faith – Abraham and Moses, David and Jeremiah, Mary and Joseph, Paul and Timothy, and many others we don’t yet know. And we join them because of God’s grace delivered through the baby, the man, the king.
So, let us worship the babe, laid in the straw. And the man, nailed to a cross. And the king, crowned with glory. The king who came and is coming. Our Lord Jesus Christ.
A shepherd’s perspective is, you know, close to the earth. We’re earthy guys. We don’t put on airs, even though we smell like sheep. We have tough hands and quick eyes. We have strong bodies and, by the time night falls, weary bones.
Most people consider us irreligious. Though Moses was a shepherd and David was a shepherd and even God called himself a shepherd, people nevertheless think of shepherds as unspiritual. That’s because our work makes it impossible for us to go to the temple or even to synagogue. It’s not our fault. We were born into shepherding. Our dads and grandads and their grandad’s grandads were shepherds, but nowadays the posh people say that shepherding is one of the seven disgusting trades and consider us untouchables.
But shepherds are like everybody else. Some of us are deeply spiritual, some aren’t. Some of us trust God and hope in his salvation. Others don’t.
The hypocrites off in Jerusalem think they know shepherds but they don’t know us at all, but shepherds know each other. Most of us are related – fathers and sons, brothers and cousins. Outsiders may consider us untouchable, but we consider each other family.
What did that first Christmas Eve look like from our perspective? Well, for one thing we saw that God did not consider us untouchable. God is better than the people who think they’re better than us. On that night, God was our shepherd, and he was leading us in paths of righteousness.
And where did He lead us? Right to the Lamb of God. You know, those of us who shepherd around Bethlehem aren’t like other shepherds in Israel. All of are sheep are raised for the temple –born and raised for sacrifice. We all know that one of the lambs in our pen might be the Pascal lamb chosen for the coming Passover. Ours is an important job. The lambs we raise will be sacrifices for sin and offerings for fellowship with God.
The angel said that a savior had been born to us! Not to other people, not to religious people, but to us! So we hurried off to see this savior and what did we find but a Lamb, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. And we got to see him first1 Not the priests or synagogue rulers or teachers of the law, but us. I guess that proves that the Lord who is a shepherd loves shepherds. No one is untouchable to him.
“The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.” (Luke 2:20)
The Church has historically celebrated twelve days of Christmas, beginning with the Feast of the Nativity on December 25, and lasting until January 5. The very next day is the Feast of the Epiphany. In the Roman Church, the feast days include the Feast of St. Stephen, of St. John the Apostle, of the Holy Innocents and more.
But consider what has happened in modern times. The celebration of Christmas has been turned upside down and backwards. In the past, Christmas Day began a twelve-day period of feasting, celebration, and worship. Now, Christmas day is the final and, perhaps, only day of celebration. By December 26th, the wrapping paper is discarded, the unwanted presents returned, and people are back to haunting online and brick and mortar stores for bargains. In other words, they’re back to life as usual.
The Christmas celebration ends too soon, but it also begins to soon – just after Halloween. Christmas’s center of gravity has moved from worship to spending, with the result that people worry more and celebrate less. The big questions revolving around Christmas no longer have to do with God but with economic forecasts for the shopping season. Analysts do not know whether the Savior’s birth will save us from sin – they may not even care – but they are hopeful it will save us from an economic downturn.
The Advent season traditionally was a time for reading the biblical prophets and waiting for Christ’s return and the fulfillment of God’s promises. It has become a time of reading economic indicators and waiting for the release of seasonal spending numbers. Christmas has been co-opted.
Christmas means one thing to the Commerce Department and something else to God. It has an important place in the plans of both, but for very different reasons. For the Commerce Department, Christmas is a major component in a strategy to achieve economic growth, create jobs, increase federal revenues, and protect the nation from recession. For God, Christmas is a major component in righting wrongs, restoring the creational order, fulfilling human potential, and establishing the kingdom of God.
Neither God nor the Commerce Department considers Christmas an end in itself. Rather, it is a means to an end. That is why the Church celebrates Christmas as one in a series of feast days that extends throughout the year. It is not a stand-alone event. Isolated from its place in God’s larger plan, Christmas shrinks to half its size. It remains a commemoration of something that has happened (which is vitally important), but it ceases to be an anticipation of something yet to come. The loss is catastrophic.
When Christmas is detached from its place in God’s ongoing program to rescue humanity and restore creation and is instead thought of as an isolated historical event, its celebration will inevitably be less exuberant. As an illustration, consider Bastille Day – the French equivalent of our Independence Day – as it was celebrated in the summer of 1944. It was muted, to say the least. To celebrate the birth of the Republic was right and good but, in 1944, the French feared they might be witnessing its death.
Compare the commemoration of Bastille Day to the celebration that occurred one month later when the Allies liberated Paris from the Nazis. Bastille Day reminded the French of who they were. The liberation of Paris gave them hope for who they were going to be. One looked to the past, the other to the future.
The celebration of Christmas, when done rightly, possesses both dimensions: the memory of a glorious past and the hope of a joyful future. It is this second dimension that is largely missing from contemporary celebrations of Christmas. The theologically sensitive among us rightly insist that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but this has not been enough to move the needle from the past to the future.
We have largely (and unwisely) abandoned the Church’s historic practice of linking the advents – Christ’s first and second coming. We need to learn to do this again, in fresh and stimulating ways, never forgetting that we celebrate the past in the midst of the present struggle and in the hope of final victory.
Most Americans who make New Year’s resolutions don’t keep them, according to polls taken over the years. When they made the resolution, they hoped (if not intended) to keep it. Nevertheless, the failure rate for New Year’s resolutions hovers around 70 percent.
Some common resolutions are: Exercise more; lose weight; get organized; save more money; quit smoking; spend more time with family. No one makes a resolution in the secret hope of failing, yet most people will fail. Why?
In a word: Most people fail because of habit. Our habits can carve such a deep rut that we can’t get out of it in a single leap; it will take a long climb. We resolve to eat a healthier diet, for example, but our resolve wavers in the grocery store when we see the potato chips display and realize chips and dip would be the perfect thing for our little get-together on Friday night.
Of course, when there is dip left over after the party, rather than throwing it away (a clear misuse of our money, which would break resolution number two), we decide to buy a small bag of chips – just to finish off the dip. But of course there will not be enough dip, and so it’s back to the store. Before long, the rut is deeper than ever and we are further from getting out of it than we were when we started.
A few months ago, my four-year-old grandson discovered a small cedar box I keep in my bedroom and decided it looked like a pirate’s treasure chest. I kept several pocketknives in that box, along with tie pins and tie bars, a few old coins, and more. I moved the contents of that box to a small Tupperware container, which I put in my top drawer, and replaced them with gold “coins” –pirate’s treasure.
Since that time, I have mistakenly gone to the small cedar box for a tie pin almost weekly. Of course, if I were to stop and think about it, I would remember that the tie pin is not there. But I don’t stop and think about it. Before I realize what has happened, I’ve opened the box with the gold coins yet again. I groan and intend to get it right next time.
It is a habit that was built over a period of years and such habits do not break easily. As William James once put it, “All our life … is but a mass of habits.” That is why we have so much trouble keeping our New Year’s resolutions: our habits get in the way.
So what can we do? We can start making new habits. It only takes a moment to break a resolution, but it takes time to build – and to break – a habit. I will eventually make a new habit of going to the upper drawer for my tie pin. I haven’t made it yet and would fail to make it, were I to give up and move my tie pin back to the little cedar box. But if I keep the tie pin where it is and keep trying, I will succeed in making a new habit eventually.
Samuel Johnson was right: “Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.” However, it is not just great works: almost everything we do involves habit. Forming a major new habit will require building numerous supporting habits. For example: I may decide to develop a habit of daily Bible reading, a practice that is important in spiritual formation.
Well and good. But to develop this habit, I must develop supporting habits: getting up a half-an-hour earlier, for example. But to make that a habit and not give up, I must go to bed a half-an-hour earlier – another habit. To do that, I must change my evening routine, how late I work, how much TV I watch, and more.
This year, instead of making three or four unrelated resolutions, resolve to create a habit. Think through what supporting habits will be required and set about building them. Then keep at it. Such a resolution won’t be broken by failure, no matter how often you fail, but only by surrender. Don’t surrender.
You cannot understand our perspective. You do not even understand how the lower animals perceive reality – how could you understand the perceptions of spiritual beings higher than you?
We comprehend things you cannot see or hear or touch or smell. We embody a reality you cannot perceive. Where you see one reason, we distinguish ten thousand, stretched across time and space.
Were you to experience reality as we do for even a moment, your brains would overload. They could not handle the cascade of information that flows through us, a million times more than you can currently process. We observe what is happening on multiple layers of reality all at once: physical, moral, and spiritual – and for us each of those layers of reality is layered into others, which in turn are layered into others.
You are like the lamp that uses 110 volts of electricity. We are like the generator that produces a million times that much. You live in a cramped world of four dimensions – three of space and one of time. How can I make you understand? For us, that is a prison cell, a coffin, even. You are like an abacus with beads, we are like a supercomputer. We know millions of times more than you, and understand what you cannot even dream.
And yet … we do not understand this. We have seen and analyzed trillions of variables, but this took us by surprise. This is further beyond us than we are beyond you. What happened in Bethlehem has left us, like you, awe-struck and in wonder, and all we can do is cry: “Glory to God in the Highest.”
“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow … even angels long to look into these things.” (1 Peter 1:12-14)
By the end of the Old Testament era, many people were impatient for the Creator to fulfill his promise and make right what had gone wrong. When would the serpent’s head be crushed? Where was God’s promised king (things could never be right without the king!), and why did he delay so long?
People thought they knew what God’s promised king, the Restorer, would be like. He would be mighty – mighty to save. He would be a warrior. He would be a great leader, with the power to subdue nations under him. He would appear from out of nowhere – that’s what some people said (John 7) – and come suddenly to his temple. He would destroy God’s enemies.
If you want to know what people were expecting, just think of your favorite superhero movie, replace the hero’s cape with a white robe and his mask with a beard, give him a sword and a crown, and you’ve got it. The restorer, the king, the savior would be a war hero extraordinaire who would rule the nations with an iron rod. He would put things aright.
Of course that made sense, and of course that’s not at all what God did. Who has ever figured God out? Not even his prophets, the people to whom he sent advanced word of his plans, ever really understood, though they “searched intently,” as St. Peter says, “and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing…”(1 Peter 1:10-11).
Prospero Fontana
People were expecting a mighty warrior. God gave them a little boy. They were waiting for God to send Zion a king. He sent an unmarried girl a baby. They were crying out for a deliverer who would bring judgment on their enemies. God gave them a savior who took judgment on himself. “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?” (Romans 11:34). If Christmas teaches us anything it is this: Though God may put himself in a manger, you cannot put him in a box. You can’t figure him out. He’s not one step ahead of you; he’s light years ahead of you. He will not do things the way you would – you might as well get used to that – but by the grace of Christ you can learn to do things the way he would, if he were you.
His plan was never to shatter his enemies with his sword – at least that is not Plan A. He wants to conquer them with his love. His plan was never just to subdue a wayward world, but to transform it. He wants so much more than to rule from a throne. He wants to rule from our hearts. God was never interested in acquiring real estate – he doesn’t want to take this ridge or that hill – he wants to take a people and make them his own.
That is the story of Christmas, and it is our story. We were (and perhaps some of us still are) the rebels God refused to crush but chose to win. We are the people who usurped God’s place and brought chaos down on our own heads. We are the people who demand that God change our circumstances, when our only hope is to change our hearts and minds. That’s who we are. But this is who God is: he is smarter than we can imagine (he knows everything), stronger than we dare believe (we can’t stand against him, nor can anything else in all creation), and better than we ever dreamed.
So what do we do with a God like this? We bow in worship. We repent of our willfulness – where has it ever gotten us? – and we bring our lives under the rule of his king. He is the Savior of Men, the Root of Jesse and the Son of David. The Unspeakable Gift, the Wonderful Counselor, and the Light of the World. The Desire of Nations, the Lord of Armies and the King of kings. And, beyond the furthest reaches of our imaginations, he is the Baby wrapped in swaddling and lying in a manger. And should we go further yet, beyond not only our imaginations but the imaginations of angels, we will find that he is the Man nailed to a cross. He is Jesus Christ our Lord.
When humanity’s progenitors ate the fruit, they were not acting like naughty children but like rebellious conspirators and, at least to some degree, they knew it. What happened in the garden was not a slip but a jump that turned into a fall.
The Fall
I’m not sure what Adam and Eve thought would happen next. Perhaps they thought that one bite was all it would take and they would be like God, just as the tempter said. He’d told them that their eyes would be opened and they would be like God. And, in one sense, their eyes were opened; but they were not like God. In fact, they were less like God than they had ever been. Their eyes were turned in on themselves, in a way that had never happened before. They knew good and evil, but not at all as the Creator knows it; they knew it as the devil knows it.
God intended the humans to rule his world but now they were at its mercy. Under God’s rule, they could rule, but the moment they stopped being subject to God, they became subject to fear (Gen. 3:10) and were ruled by desire (Gen. 3:16). The earth that once cooperated with them no longer yielded to their touch. On the very day of their revolt, there began a struggle between man and God, man and earth, and man and man. They were expelled from the garden, and the world began to fall apart. And so did the humans. And, to all appearances, so did God’s plan.
But the Creator is not easily stopped. In fact, he is not stopped at all. Ever. It was his plan that the world fall apart, should the humans turn away from him. It was a safeguard and a mercy. The recalcitrant earth, the relational conflict, the pain and fear and, above all, death were God-designed consequences of man’s rebellion. Why? Because God wanted revenge? No. Because God wants us. Sorrow and failure and struggle are a mercy. His judgments are a kindness. The Creator knows we will not come to him without them. And if we don’t come to him, we cannot come to ourselves, to our rightful place, and to our joy. Only when we have fully come to God, can we fully be ourselves.
The man and woman were expelled from the safety of the garden into the world they had defaced. Immanuel – the God with them of the Garden – was now God away from them. And the distance they had introduced into that relationship had also come between them. They were no longer with each other in the same way they had been. Their disobedience had introduced a new reality into their world: distance. They were far from God, increasingly far from each other, and even far from themselves – the selves they were made to be.
That’s the world into which we were born. Physicists tells us that the universe is constantly expanding, which means the distances between constellations and solar systems is growing. Theologians tell us that what is happening on the physical level is also happening on a spiritual one. Adam’s and Eve’s sin – not eating a fruit but rejecting the Creator, going one’s own way and setting up as one’s own god – has been repeated many billions of times and has created great distance between humans and between humans and God.
The result of the choice they made (and that we’ve all made too), the choice to take God’s place, is chaos. There is injustice, hatred, misunderstanding, malice and bitterness. And these things not only bubble over in society, they bubble over in us. Chaos without and chaos within. This is what happens to the world and to individual humans when God-with-us is God-away-from-us, and even God-against-us. Nothing can be right while we are our own gods. The world will be wrong as long as the king’s regents insist on taking his throne.
The humans rejected the Creator, and that is our shame. But the Creator did not reject the humans, and that is our hope. He went looking for them. Genesis 3:8 says, “They hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” Rather than crushing the rebellion, God chose to reverse it. The damage had been done and it was horrendous. The relationship between the Creator and his creatures was no longer the same. They were no longer regents, they were rebels. The damage had been done, but God knew that it could be undone, and he set about the task of undoing it. That’s what Christmas is all about.
(Over the next eight days, I’ll be posting devotional thoughts to help us gain a renewed vision of the wonder and glory of Christmas. My hope is that my – and your – celebration this year may be full of awe and admiration of our God and of his Christ.)
Where does Christmas Begin?
Where does the story of Christmas begin? It is not in the little town of Bethlehem, as we might suppose. Nor is it in the village of Nazareth, where Joseph lived and Mary received an angel messenger. No, the story of Christmas begins long before Joseph and Mary came on the scene.
If we are going to tell this story from the beginning, we are going to have to go east and we are going to have to go back: east from Bethlehem and back in time. We need to go to Eden, and even there we will not find the beginning of the story of Christmas, which lies in the heart of God, but we will get about as close as human observation can attain.
It was in the Garden, not the stable, that the Creator first became Immanuel (God with us). (“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” Genesis 3:8). The Creator, a being of unimaginable power, who brought into existence the visible universe and, along with it, realities that are not visible (at least to creatures like us) was with humans: with them in ways they could readily perceive and in ways that caused them to flourish. He was Immanuel.
The Creator made the earth to be a place that would beautifully and remarkably sustain biological life. It was perfect. And on the earth, he made a place (Eden) that was supremely suited to a particular kind of biological life: the human. He placed two humans, a man and a woman, in that ideal environment.
The powerful and wise Creator had a plan. Biologically, he made the humans so that they could mate and multiply and fill the earth. Spiritually, he designed them so that they and all their descendants would resemble the Creator himself.
The powerful and wise Creator had a plan. Biologically, he made the humans so that they could mate and multiply and fill the earth. Spiritually, he designed them so that they and all their descendants would resemble the Creator himself. He gave them characteristics that mirrored his own (appropriate to their biological form, of course) and bestowed on them the responsibility of serving as his regents to rule the earth. The Creator said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over … all the earth…” He gave them dominion over everything on earth. The Creator’s plan was to set up images of himself (humans) all over the planet – and who knows, perhaps someday all over the galaxy – to represent him. They were to care for the planet and for all its creatures as his representatives. Think of the earth and the universe as a kingdom, the Creator as king, and the humans as the king’s chosen regents.
The man and woman in the garden were being prepared for that high, holy calling. We don’t know how long their preparation in in the garden was intended to last – for all we know they may have been there for a hundred years – but their preparation included one restriction. They were given free range of the entire garden and access to all its bounty, except for the fruit of one particular tree, known as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Of that tree they were not permitted to eat – at least, not at that point in their preparation. Perhaps later in their training that would have changed.
But as time went on the man and the woman – Adam and Eve – chose to go their own way, and their way was a long and disastrous detour. Instead of serving as the Creator’s representatives, as regents of the King of the Universe, they chose their own path. They did not want to rule under God, they wanted to rule beside him. They didn’t want to wait to be prepared. They decided to take a shortcut. They chose to believe that they would be better off – happier, more fulfilled, more who they were meant to be – if they were autonomous. They decided that they knew better than God, which is the same mindset that is behind all our sins. When humanity’s progenitors ate the fruit, they were not acting like naughty children but like rebellious conspirators and, at least to some degree, they knew it. What happened in the garden was not a slip but a jump that turned into a fall.
The Way Home 