Joyeaux Noel

A Merry Christmas to you all. My gift to all you in internet land is my first post in, oh, six months, and a pledge to make several more before I head back to school (when most likely my time will evaporate).

I have somewhat of a reputation for being a Christmas humbug- a reputation that is self made as much as anything. It's pretty common knowledge among my friends that I hate Christmas lights and despise secular Christmas songs (and a number of religious ones as well). I don't want to spend this post ranting about that again, but it does lend a good starting point for talking about Christmas. I love Christmas- I flatter myself to think that I love it more truly than most- but in my mind Christmas is not a cheery time in the midst of winter, a haven from the blustering winds. It is indelibly wrapped up in winter, in the despair of ice and snow. Yes, I realize that in all likelihood Jesus was not born in December, it was a pagan holiday, yada yada yada. The symbolism is still significant.

What is your favorite passage of the Bible to think about at Christmas? Would it surprise you if I said mine was Philippians 2:5-7? If you are somewhat Biblically literate it might not, since these verses read:

"Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness."

Here is the incarnation in all of its wonder. Christ the God-Man, incarnate because of his humility, humiliated to the point of resembling man. In the incarnation we see the very incomprehensibility of God made coherent in human form- the Word made flesh. We often think on the grace of Easter, of our Lord Christ dying for the sins of his people, but do we stop to consider that first grace in time, the grace to come and resemble us? It isn't something I like to consider, especially when I see myself caught perpetually in sin. I can well imagine humans crucifying the one who came to save them- that seems perfectly in harmony with our nature. But Christ did not grasp at equality with God but came down and resembled me? We make a big deal about Christ being born in a manger, the lowliest of places, but if we stop to consider the sinfulness of man, we realize that the manger is like the Ritz Carlton in comparison to God taking the form of man. Can you picture those movies where the prim, proper royalty inevitably end up covered in horse feces? It's like that, but worse. Christ the spotless lamb landed right in the middle of the biggest pile of shit imaginable, human nature.

Of course the story does not end there. He must be further humiliated, but ultimately raised up to glory once again. But it does us good, I think, to meditate on that intial plunge into the humiliation of humanity. The big thing these past few years has been "The Christmas wars", where we as Christians, in the guise of preserving something or other, try to force Christmas down the throats of an unbelieving world. Maybe it would do us good to humble ourselves like the Christ and, instead of shouting about values and traditions, quietly celebrate the fact that he became like us, the vilest sinners. Christmas, after all, is for the church. We cannot expect the world to understand; we cannot even fully comprehend, and what we do know comes only from the grace of God. Let us humbly come before the babe in the manger, the ruler of all. I would like to leave you all with a Christmas hymn that my sister introduced me to this year, "Thou Who Wast Rich Beyond All Splendor":

Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love's sake becamest poor;
Thrones for a manger didst surrender,
Sapphire-paved courts for stable floor.
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor,
All for love's sake becamest poor.

Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man;
Stooping so low, but sinners raising,
Heav'nward by thine eternal plan.
Thou who art God beyond all praising,
All for love's sake becamest man.

Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship thee.
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us what thou wouldst have us be.
Thou who art love beyond all telling,
Savior and King, we worship thee.

Merry Christmas and God bless.