The streets are lit up with strings of colorful bright lights, wreaths, and red silk bows. The attitude seems merrier, and people fantasize about winter, family, friends, and gifts. Churches pack full of regulars and those who go will not see the temples again until Easter. Winter coats are zipped and cars are packed full and people are ready to eat dinners of hearty comfort food while making awkward small talk with their great aunt's husband (or some other estranged relative).
But what does Christmas mean? Sure, we have all heard of the story of Jesus, of the traditional manger scene that sits on windows, pianos, and parlors of people who are religious and not so religious. We have all heard of the manger story so many times that even a true blue atheist could recite it in his sleep.
Let's look at Christmas like it was an ornament. A beautiful, cherry red ornament with golden, dainty glitter framing the edges. The manger story, the Christmas story, seems to come out every year and sit on the tree, in our minds, in blind tradition just like that ornament does on our green prickly tree. Just like we look at that fragile, lovely ornament from a far away stance on our couch next to our great aunt's husband or something, we look at the Christmas story the same way. It is present, it is there, we all know it, but it has become so commonplace that along with the bells and the whistles and the wreaths and the silk bows, it all fades into this meshed together horizon of swirling lights. We see it, but we don't see it freshly. We don't feel what it is, what it means, in newness.
So the red ornament is the nativity story. Bear with me. Let's switch from looking at this story, this ornament, head on, hanging from the tree, like we always do. Lets take the ornament, hold it up high, and drop it on the hardwood floor so that it shatters into a million pieces. Then, let's look at it from angles, from areas that we have never attempted to see it from before. Let's look at it from over and underneath, from inside out. Let's look at it fractured and real and new and raw.
Instead of talking about the birth of Jesus, let's just talk about Jesus in the sense of who Jesus is. Let's take the star of the nativity story--Christ--and take him out of the nativity setting. Who was this man when he was not anymore a babe in a manger?
During Christmas time, and during mostly every other time of the year, we see Jesus painted as this beautiful, eloquent being. We see him with deep blue eyes and a delicate, refined face. Guess what, guys, Jesus was ugly. Let's look at Isaiah 53:2-5.
2) He (Jesus) grew up like a tender shoot, and like a root out of the dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. He had nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3) He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jesus was not royalty on earth. If anything, he was the exact opposite. Jesus was not beautiful in how he looked, he was not exceptionally handsome, god-like looking. He was not physically lovely. He was an outcast. He was rejected. He knew what it was like to have the world view him as an oddity and reject who he is--that is my God.
It is so incredible to me, to think of this wondrous idea that my God did not live spectacularly. My God lived in the grit. He lived as an outcast, as a loser, as someone who saw pain and felt pain and as someone who can see me hurting and can say, "I've felt that too."
Let's keep reading.
4) Surely he took up our infirmities (imperfections), and carried our sorrows....
5) But he was pierced for our transgressions (imperfections) he was crushed for our iniquities (wrong doings), and by his wounds we are healed.
This is a segment on Christ's death. And for me, I have always been able to learn more about who Jesus was, and the full extent of his holiness, in his death, than who he was in his birth.
Jesus was not someone who went to church polished and clean in his new car with a six figure paycheck. He wasn't a beautiful being that individuals swooned after. Jesus was a poor, ugly traveller, who sat with the lowly, who loved the lowly, who was hurt and rejected by humans, who knew the fullest extent of ugliness and hate in this world---
and dared to love anyways.
He dared to love every person, he dared to love every being. He loved the lowly, because he had made himself lowly. And every beating he endured when he died for me, every ounce of pain he felt for you, he would have done all over again if he had to, because he did it out of insane, true love for us, just as we were.
Today, society sees Christians as people who are out of touch with society and holier than thou, clinging to their religion and their rules in order to justify their superiority to another individual.
The real concept of Christianity is nothing near this. God knew me when I hated him, he loved me when I hated him. He died for me when I hated him, and he knew that I was never, ever, ever going to be perfect, so he gave me grace.
By His wounds we are healed.
We can take this idea of perfection, and we can toss it out the window. And now that we have gotten it out of the way, we can try to be good. Genuinely good. A messy, imperfect, "I messed up again, God, but I love you and I'm trying the best I can," kind of good. And he will give us grace.
And he will let us grow.
And he will allow us to love him, and he will love us with an everlasting love.
This is the most amazing, wonderful idea about the Christmas story. Not all of this high strung, religious jargon, but that Christ is the first God who came with an ugly face and a perfect heart, and loved us still, and wanted us to love him back. Jesus made it okay for us to love something, to be impossibly imperfect and struggling, and love something, because of how much he adores us.
Christmas is not just something that we experience on the twenty-fifth of December, because Christmas is about grace, and grace is everlasting. It is about getting and not deserving. It is about a God who came down, destroyed religion, and created a relationship, in the name of holy, perfect love.
