“What could be less scary than a newborn baby with jerky limbs and eyes that do not quite focus?  The King had  cast off his robes.

Think of the condescension involved: the incarnation, which sliced history into two parts had more animal than human witnesses.  Think, too, of the risk.  In the incarnation, God spanned the vast chasm of fear that had distanced him from his human creation.  But removing that barrier made Jesus vulnerable, terribly vulnerable.

“For those who believe in God, it means, this birth, that God hiself is never safe from us, and maybe that is the dark side of Christmas, the terror of the silence  He comes in such a way that we can always turn him down, as we could crack the baby’s skull like an eggshell or nail him up when he gets too big for that. (Frederick Buechner, The Hungering Dark)”

How did Christmas day feel to God? Imagine for a moment becoming a baby again.  God as a fetus!  Or imagine yourself becoming a sea slug- that analogy is probably closer.  On that day in Bethlehem, the Maker of All That Is took form as a helpless, dependent newborn.

Kenosis is the technical word theologians use to describe Christ empyting himself o the advantages of detiy.  Ironically, while the emptying inovlved much humiliation, it also involved a kind of freedom.  I have sometimes podnered the “distandvatages” of inifinity. A physical body freed Christ to act on a human scale, withouth those “disadvantages”.  He could say what he wanted without his voice blasting the treetops.  He could express anger by calling King Herod a fox or by reaching for a bullwhip in the temple, rather than shaking the earth whith his stormy presence.  And he could talk to anyone- a prostitute, a blind man, a widow, a leper- without first having to announce, “Fear not!”"

But let’s start out by being honest- was Mary’s reaction really quite so serene as is generally pictured?  Yancey does a good job of pointing out that to understand the incredible nature of the Christmas story there are some phrases we need to pay attention to.  Gabriel is excited.  He’s telling Mary she has an invitation to be a key player in the greatest celebration in history.  But the Bible also says Mary is “greatly troubled” and “afraid”.  Her reaction to the news of a baby, “But I’m a virgin”. 

No, Mary was not the picture of serenity immediately.  Now she does respond appropriately, “let it be as you say, I’m a servant of the Lord”.  That doesn’t mean she understood it all or even liked it all.  I’m sure she was still afraid- afraid of the consequences of being pregnant before marriage, afraid of having a baby already, afraid of Joseph’s reaction, and more.  Maybe it’s hard for us to get in touch with these fears in today’s society, but in a tightly knit and profoundly religious rural community, Mary had much to fear.

And perhaps that’s what makes the story all the better.  It’s not that Mary was nearly so serence as the side picture would suggest.  It’s not that a halo actually appeared over her head.  It’s the fact that even though she was troubled, she trusted.  It’s the fact that a young teenager who literally was now bearing the future of the world was able to keep putting one foot in front of the next and to somehow trust enough that she even sang God’s praise when she was speaking to her cousin Elizabeth.  What an incredible reaction!

I was speaking to our youth last Sunday about all the different reactions people can have to parties and the corresponding reactions of the characters of the nativity (our youth director’s idea).  Think about it.  Joseph who tried to avoid the invitation but once he accepted put himself completely into it.  Elizabeth and Zechariah who were probably confused at first, but overjoyed to be part of the story.  Shepherds who weren’t even expecting an invitation, but attended enthusiastically and told everyone about this, inviting them to participate in the story as well.  There’s even Herod who was upset that the party wasn’t about him, and he tried to destroy it.

The beautiful thing is that God is still sending out invitations to this party and even though our reactions won’t be the stuff of saintly pictures, that’s fine with God.  In fact, that’s what makes our stories great.  God keeps inviting us and working his way into our lives, joining the story of Christmas, of Emmanuel (God with us), to our story.

Some people see this as a modern problem, perhaps because modern people have a little extra time to ponder such things.  In reality, this is not a modern problem.  We can read stories of people struggling with meaninglessness across the ages, and even in the Bible.  I don’t know if you’ve spent much time in Ecclesiastes but that’s where Yancey goes in his latest devotion.  He said for a time he was bothered by Ecclesiastes and how it could sit there with a book like Proverbs.  In Proverbs, you read all about how if you do what is right, if you follow wisdom, things will go right.  In Ecclesiastes all is meaningless.  Righteous men get what the wicked deserve and sometimes wicked men get what the righteous deserve. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, “see, it’s all meaningless”.

So what do we do with this disparity?  As Yancey says, there is actually some comfort in the jarring differences in Scripture.  The writers of the Bible know every place a person can be in life, from a sense that things are working out, but also the place where it all seems stacked against you.  The important piece is to read it all together.  The Bible never leaves us at despair, unlike some modern novels.  The Bible takes a character like Job or David, and it brings them to the depths, where truly all seems to be lost, but it shows that even at that low point, God is with us.  It speaks to us the truth that no suffering, no prosperity, nothing in our experience is meaningless, because it all is ultimately being worked towards God’s purpose. 

And it’s ok to have those feelings of frustration.  Wouldn’t we all like to know why things are happening from time to time?  Good or bad. . . But God isn’t calling us to always know the purpose of these individual events, because he’s calling us to focus on what always gives us a greater purpose, living as his beloved children.  And if that’s true, then nothing can ever really be meaningless.  It’s all from God.  It’s all part of the story he’s writing.

So even when we feel a little adrift, we can always look back to Scripture and that ultimate purpose to help us find direction in our world.  And if we’re seeking after those bigger things, meaning can be imparted to all- from the daily grind, to our biggest dreams and goals.

You know what I’m talking about- the thought that sometimes creeps in along this line, “I’m really working hard God, trying to do something good for you and your people, so how could you let ________ happen to me?”

Yancey notes this can actually be more of a temptation for those deeply involved in ministry than those who aren’t. After all, you go to church regularly, you’re involved in ministries of the church, and you are trying to lead a godly life.  And that’s generally supposed to result in good things right?  Shouldn’t God be trying to protect you, or at least your ability to continue his ministry?

But sometimes that’s not the way it works out.  You think of Paul’s ministry.  No man gave more to God and yet think of all he dealt with- hunger, poverty, prison, shipwreck, physical illness (probably), assaults on his person and ministry, and yes even martrydom.  Why didn’t God step in and do something?  Shouldn’t he have tried to protect Paul and his ministry?

Well, that’s where the famous words of Paul help us so much- “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?. . . For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Chrsit Jesus our Lord.”

Paul dealt with all these things and yet he was convinced that in spite of them and even through them, God was accomplishing something.  It’s not that he was never tempted by contract faith, but he knew that on a deeper level, God was working something greater out, and so he was willing to endure, trusting in this promise.

Tomorrow, in my Thanksgiving post, I’ll be following up on this with some thoughts about contentment and Thanksgiving.

We understand family as a place where we all come together, regardless of differences, because something deeper draws us together.  Blood is thicker than water. 

So what does that mean for church?  As thick as blood ties might be, the draw in church is even stronger.  In church we are united by the figure of Christ, the one who has died for our sins, and who says we need to place relationship with him in the center of all others, to place his goals in the center of all other facets of our lives.

This is a powerful draw, but also a powerful and challenging call. And the call is to gather with folks who will be quite different from us, people who we then say we’re going to voluntarily join.

So the challenge this week is to look out at your community of Christ this week.  Look to those who are different from you, and think about how you can love them in an even deeper way.  After all, if we can love family because of our ties through some common blood and genes, how much more can we love our brothers and sisters with whom we share the blood of Christ.

That’s where he brings up the metaphor of mirror or window.  So often the Church and the churches that are part of it, seem to be more reflection of society than they are windows into a different reality.  Now obviously we need to be able to communicate with society, but there has to be something different going on in our churches.  We have to operate with grace as that’s the one thing the world can’t offer, can’t find outside the Church.

He closes by talking about how we sometimes forget this call to be windows to something different.  He even pushes us with this thought and I like his words, so I’ll simply close with them and let you think and react.  Remember, when he’s talking to keep the focus on grace, not merely a reaction against some of the politics of the day.

“Jesus was not crucified for being a good citizen, for being just a little nicer than everyone else. The powers of his day correctly saw him and his followers as subversives because they took orders form a highter power than Rome or Jerusalem.  What would a subversive church look like in the modern United States?”

But then something surprising happened.  He actually prayed one night.  And what’s interesting is that his prayer wasn’t immediately one of repentance, but it was one of owning up to who he was, what he thought about God, and those other students that he was supposed to be witnessing to, and it wasn’t pretty.

But that wasn’t the end.  As he was praying he had a. . . well, almost a vision, but he describes it as more of a daydreamed parable.  Whatever it was, he saw the Good Samaritan appraoching the bloodied Jewish man on the side of the road. And as the Samaritan got closer, he saw that it was in fact Jesus. And as Jesus knelt to care for the man, he realized that the man was in fact him. And as Jesus got close, that’s when it happened.  He, the man in the vision at least, spit in Jesus’ face.

In that moment his cockiness and self-assurance were gone.  He was not the same man anymore.  I don’t imagine you could be after something like that.

I think this is an interesting story for a couple of reasons.  First it shatters some assumptions.  How often do we assume things about other people and their faith.  We don’t always know what we think we know.  Second, it speaks to the extents of how far God will go for his children.

So maybe take a moment and think about yourself, or those around you.  Pray that God would continue to reach inside you and bring renewal and strengthening to your faith.  Pray in thanks for all those times God has reached out to you, even when your actions amounted to those of this “daydreamed parable”, spitting in the face of the Lord.  How amazing is that grace. . .

Yancey speaks of going to a prison in Chile where he meets a prison evangelist.  This man engages a large group of prisoners, men with tattered clothes, men with scars that said something about their pasts.  But when the evangelist starts sharing his message the men listen.  They hear about a fellow prisoner, a man who was an atheist when he went to prison, but who could only find one book to read, the Bible.  Within three months he was transformed, so much so that he was leading Bible studies.  He was released from prison early, but he didn’t forget the men. He continued to go back, to bring food, and to bring the Gospel.  This was no simple jailhouse conversion.

Yancey then speaks of a prison in Africa.  The worst cesspool you could ever imagine he says.  The space was meant for the worst offenders, many of the men were waiting to be executed.  They were cramped together, too many in the small space to lie down.  No freedom to even move.  No activity allowed.  No sanitation in that horrible place.  And yet as he approached and as the evangelist told these prisoners who was coming, the men got up, got together in rows, and began to sing hymns in four part harmony.  He looked and what did he see on the walls in that horrible place? Nothing else but a beautiful chalk drawing of Jesus on the cross.

These men understood something, even with the horror of where they were (and yes, why they were there), Jesus was with them too.  Jesus had gone to the cross to forgive them and to know their suffering as well.

This is pretty challenging stuff. To think of Jesus in a place like this, both because of how horrible it is, and becuase of what many of these men probably had done to get them there.  But it’s the truth.  That’s how big God’s grace is.

There is nothing we can do that Christ’s death didn’t already pay for.  There is no place in our lives so horrible, so low, that Jesus Christ is not there with us.

And so on the normal days, the days most of us have, the ones where we’re annoyed because it’s still raining, or we’re still waiting for something, or still struggling with money or a nagging sickness,  or a sin that we haven’t quite put away, isn’t Jesus there too.  Even in the mundane.  Even in those places, we can find Christ.

Yancey’s devotion that hit me this week revolved around this theme.  He shares a story from graduate school.  One of the requirements for completion was to take some basic German and pass a test.  This was not something that excited him.  But he did it. Why?  Becuase there was a test.  If he didn’t do it, the test would knock him out of school and the degree he’d been working so hard towards.  So he did what he felt he had to do, he studied.  He didn’t do so with much enthusiasm, but he did enough to pass.

What’s the point?  Sometimes it seems like people treat faith in this way.  They want to live life however they please and they’ll do some “good deeds” to kind of balance things out.  They’re good enough.  They go to church some.  They treat these pieces of their life like they’re trying to prove to God they’ve done just enough.  And they hope God overlooks their sins and they can get away with a few things.

Why do we want to get away with anything?  Why don’t they want to spend time with God in church, in prayer, or serving?  There’s a really fundamental problem here.  They’re basing their relationship with God more on law then on grace.  Don’t get me wrong, law has it’s place, but as Paul says, grace abounds.  Think of your most intimate relationships.  Would you be excited about spending time with someone who feels like they have to hang out with you every once in a while?  Would you want them to be figuring out the bare minimum they could do to keep up the relationship?

Obviously not.  God wants his love for us to result in a love flowing back to him, in a desire to spend time with him, and in a desire to do not “just enough”, but to live a life echoing his desires and plan.

I think these thoughts from Yancey could help us all refocus our attitudes and our actions.

So often race is a factor that divides, even within churches.  Yancey here wants us to think for a moment of how grace can help overcome barriers that seem insurmountable, thinks like racial hatred or political injustice.  Think for a second of the obstacles in your life that seem too daunting. . . . Remember how grace has already overcome the greatest barriers in your life, the ones that separated you from God.  How might you be able to apply grace to the challenges you face today?  After all, grace is a real, alive thing, that impacts every day.