It always bewilders me, but every year, it
happens. Around these holidays, the honk
frequency goes up. I’m at a stoplight,
and the car ahead hesitates a moment too long – honk! I’m in heavy traffic, and here a honk, there
a honk, everywhere a honk honk. Sometimes,
horns blare seemingly for no reason at all.
The traffic is moving smoothly.
Everything is fine, but there it comes, an irritated honk.
Here you are, in a time meant to be joyous and life-giving,
in one of the most wonderful winter climates in the entire world, and people
are still that grouchy? Really? Now I get it. The traffic does get more hectic. This season does brings new pressures and
stress. But does that really get at the
heart of the problem? No, I think. Our church sign guy, Bart’s witty new message points to that. It goes like this: Jesus is the reason for the season. Don’t xmas it out.
Clever, isn’t it? Now if you do see someone use Xmas, don’t get
too concerned. Christians are the ones
who came up with that abbreviation hundreds of years ago. The X stands for a Greek letter, Chi which in
English become the first two letters in the name Christ.
But having said that, Bart’s sign makes an important
point. Many folks, including Christians are
missing the reason for this season. And I’m
not talking about saying Merry Christmas in the stores, though I have nothing
against that. But honestly, I’m ok with
Happy Holidays. After all, Happy Holiday
comes from Holy Days, which used to be the only holidays that existed. And what are these days but that, holy
days.
But you can miss the holiness of them. You can miss the utterly wonderful
strangeness of them. You can lose touch with the life-transforming
news they proclaim. So, in the tumult
of the season, in the middle of all the honks, how do you stay in touch with
that? In these words, the very first
Christmas song ever, God points the way.
Let’s hear what God has to say.
How do you keep in touch with the reason for the season? How do you experience its wonder, its holiness,
the utterly stunning reality of what God did in these holy days? You look to these words of Mary’s. In her song, she shows you the wonder of
Christmas, how in Christmas God shows you not only the immensity of who God is,
but the breathtaking things God did, and is still doing in the world.
But before we get to Mary’s word, let’s get a bit more
of the backstory. One day, this teenage
girl, probably 15 years old, is hanging out at her home. Then, this angel just appears. Now, in case, you think, because it’s in the
Bible, amazing things like that happened a lot so this couldn’t have been too
much of a shock, let me clarify; it had been 500 years since Israel had even
seen a prophet, much less an angel, 500 years.
And now, God picks the home of this teenager of all places
to be one of the place where God starts to show up again. And this angel, this messenger from God
delivers news that had to be both exciting and terrifying. This angel tells her
that God will place a human life in her womb, a life that will be both her
child, and at the same time, God.
And Mary asks what anybody would ask? She asks.
How can this be? And the angel
tells her basically. It can be because God can make anything happen. With God, nothing is impossible. And then the angel delivers a little proof. The
angel says. If you doubt that, just go
see your cousin, Elizabeth. Now, Elizabeth
had not only not ever been pregnant, she had aged way beyond her child-bearing
years. Yet this Angel tells Mary, this
same Elizabeth is now six months gone with child.
So, Mary goes.
She checks it out. And she sees
this old lady Elizabeth heavy in pregnancy.
And Elizabeth sees her and proclaims.
“I know what God has done for you.
I know, Mary, you are the mother of the Lord.”
And that’s when Mary launches into this song. But Mary doesn’t simply sing. “Oh, I’m so happy. God made
me a baby.” No, she sings this. My soul magnifies the Lord. My Spirit rejoices. Mary doesn’t just have warm fuzzies in her
heart. No, what God has done in her goes
far deeper than that. God has changed
her at the very heart of who she is, her soul, her spirit. And if you let this God
who comes at Christmas do his work, this God will do the same in you.
How does that happen?
It happens as you grasp what Mary is telling you about God in this song,
the first of which is the immensity of who God is. Mary sings
about God’s might and God’s mercy. And she’s right to do so. Nowhere do you see that might and mercy more
clearly than at Christmas.
Think about it.
It’s crazy. Maybe no one
portrayed how crazy it is, then G.K. Chesterton did
in his poem, The
Wise Men. There he wrote.
The Child that was ere worlds begun
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
(…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.
Christians celebrate at Christmas something seemingly laughably
impossible, that the infinite being that created an infinite universe became a
human infant. Yet, God did exactly that.
A few years ago, I began to get into the TV series, Dr. Who. The series tells the adventures of this mysterious
figure called a Timelord, who can zip through vast reaches of time and space in
the time it takes you to drive to Publix.
One of the show’s running gags is the amazing ship that Dr. Who does it
in, which looks like this on the outside.
and let me tell you, that’s only one
little room in a ship that has hundreds, thousands even. And every time someone first enters and
looks around bewildered, Dr. Who, just says, “Oh yeah, it’s bigger on this
inside.”
Yet in the birth of Jesus, God did that and more. The infinite immeasurable power of the
creator of reality itself became this:
Talk about bigger on the inside.
And if that doesn’t show you God’s might, I don’t know what does. In what God did at Christmas, God shows you
a God who can do wonders that can’t even begin to be understood. The
great physicist, Richard
Feynman, said this about quantum mechanics.
If you think you understand quantum mechanics, then you don’t understand
quantum mechanics. And Feynman words
apply even more here. If you think you
understand Christmas, then you don’t understand Christmas. It’s far too amazing for that.
But Mary doesn’t
simply tell you, the power of who God is, but also the wonder of what God
does. At the heart of all her words on
God overturning the powerful and feeding the hungry, what Mary says God has
done comes down to simply this. God has
kept his promise to Israel.
What promise is Mary talking about? Mary is talking about a promise, God made 3,000
years before. Mary is talking about a
promise that the last 500 years of history had seemed to show as nothing but a
bunch of religious hokum. For 500 years
God had done nothing amazing at all. That’s almost 300 years longer than this
country has existed. And then, in the
middle of the most unlikely place, at the most unexpected time, God shows up as
never before.
This tells you two crucial things. First, God always keeps God’s promises, but don’t
think you will have any clue how, when or where God will do so. But
bank on this, God will. Now, why does
God wait so long?
Well, for God, it doesn’t seem that long at all. You and I live in time. God doesn’t.
God lives completely outside of time.
God sees time the way you look down from a bridge and see boats on a
river. God
sees every moment in time at the same time all the time. And in the midst of that vast expanse of time,
God is working out a massive rescue mission to save this world, to save
you. And so at times, if you wonder, how or when
or where God is working in your life, just realize. That’s normal. Just know, this, God is working, and God
will keep God’s promises. At a moment, often
when you least expect it, God will show up, and do something amazing. That’s just how God is. And if that bewilders you, then you’re beginning
to get it. To paraphrase Feynman again,
if you think you understand God, then you don’t understand God.
But
you can understand this. You can
understand why. God does what God does because
God loves you more than you could ever imagine. And out of his love, God is working out, in
the midst of all the mess, a wonderful plan for you, for everyone, a plan that
goes on into forever. And the more you
grasp that reality, the more you are grasping the wonder of these holy days, of
what God did at Christmas, of what God is doing still, even at this very table.
The Alaskan writer, Leslie Leyland Fields,
said it well:
Straw – dirt
floor, dull eyes, Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen; Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry
that pain, And then, the child, Rag-wrapped, laid to cry in a trough
Who would have
chosen this? Who would have said: “Yes, Let
the God of all the heavens and earth Be born here, in this place?” Who but the same God Who stands in the darker,
fouler rooms of our hearts and says, “Yes, let the God of heaven and earth be
born here –in this place.
Let
that God be born in you, right here, right now, even in this place, even in this very moment.
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