I made an observation the other day and it is probably not original and probably not entirely true, which may make you wonder why I am going to share it, but hey I needed an introduction. Anyway that observation is that the amount of Christmas decorating someone does is inversely proportional to their church attendance and general ascent to the basic tenets of the Christian faith. Incidentally, this idea came to me when I was speaking to a Unitarian who was unboxing a giant inflatable lawn Santa and so at least anecdotally I think I am on pretty solid ground. Anyway, I am not sure of the reason for this inversely proportional relationship, but I hold out hope that it has something to do with our reading from Isaiah today describing the coming of the Messiah. Just listen to its opening:
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,
so that the mountains would quake at your presence--
as when fire kindles brushwood
and the fire causes water to boil--
to make your name known to your adversaries,
so that the nations might tremble at your presence!
Not a mention of red nosed reindeers or dancing snowmen, but instead a sense of power and justice. God coming down to earth is not seen as sentimental or kitschy, but is actually looks a bit dangerous. So maybe the more you know about God coming to earth the more you are unsure about decorating for it. The image of fire kindling brushwood and nations trembling at God’s presence is not something that would show up in a Hallmark Christmas special and does not make for wonderful inflatable lawn decoration. And I know that this is not how everything played out, that when God became man a dwelt among us it was not the burning fire and trembling nations type of appearance but I don’t think we can totally discount such predictions as those found in Isaiah. The reason I say this is because it helps us think of Christmas a little differently.
In many ways what we think of as “Christmas” is much more of a secular celebration than it is a religious one. And please don’t think I am here to say it is all terrible – I like Christmas trees and decorations as much as the next guy, but the specialness of the season seems to be ascribed to something besides God. Yes Jesus get’s an occasional nod, but he is really just a piece in the overall celebration. Christmas is less about the incarnation and more about something vaguely called Christmas magic. In fact if you don’t believe me put Christmas and magic together in a Google search and you get 36 million hits. Whereas if you put Christmas and “tremble at your presence” you get a mere100,000 hits. But anyway the point is I think we might need to up our game a little bit on how we deal with Christmas. The word magic does not seem to be the right word on which to focus in this season partly because it sounds a bit too much like a Disney World commercial. Magic is a cheap version of the true wonder that we are to have. Instead of magic I think we need to instead focus on the word mystery – not in the Scooby Doo sense but rather in the sense of how does this God as described by Isaiah show up as a baby in Bethlehem? How does the all powerful God of the universe become so meek and mild? And, of course, we will get into more of that as we get closer to Christmas, but I want to take a few moments and focus on what that act tells us about God. What the God as described by Isaiah must be like.
Now I know it is very out of favor to conceive of God as fearful and perhaps even a little wrathful. In our day and age we have a very comfortable forgiving God. A God who, like Santa Clause, may know who is naughty and nice but does not really do anything about it. This God understands when you skip church because you stayed up late watching the directors cut of “Dude where’s my Car?” This God would prefer that you have certain moral standards, but really just wants you to be happy. Now I am not calling for us to conceive of God in a completely Jonathon Edwards, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” sort of a way but I do think there needs to be a balance. Christmas, as currently conceived by our culture, offers a glimpse of a god who is a rather saccharine god, who is really just there to make us feel good about ourselves. And I think because of this most people do not have much of a relationship with God because what they are presented with is not much with which to have a relationship. Just as a Hallmark Card is a rather thin distillation of a relationship, the Hallmark Christmas is a rather thin distillation of Christmas. What I mean by this is we do not get to see any of the power of God and why God became man and dwelt among us.
And so what I think I am asking for in this season of Advent is not a return to seeing God in purely fearful and wrathful terms but rather to view God as who he truly is –seeing the mystery of God as being both all-powerful and all loving. If we say that God is the creator and sustainer of the universe – this is a pretty big deal. It implies an amount of power that we cannot understand. And if we further believe that God is pure good it should at least make us pause and ponder what such a God might do with the things that are not pure good. On Christmas Day, we know that he did not wipe us from the earth or blow up the earth like the Death Star did to Alderaan. But we need to keep this in mind because it will make the Christmas all that much more meaningful. If we realize just who this God is it will make a big difference in how we look at Christmas. I think too often the wonder and magic of Christmas become clichéd sayings that give us a vague warm feeling but should rather be seen in the context of this God who has come to begin a mission of setting the world right. A God who is capable of behavior that would strike fear in us, but instead came in the most vulnerable of ways. God has granted us a reprieve not out of an inability to act, but out of love. That may be the take home from Advent I, for us to act with love and mercy.
The other day I was on what purported to be a Christian website and all of the articles were about what other Christians were doing wrong and how these Christians were on the fast track to perdition, if they did not come around to this website’s way of thinking. I got the feeling that if it were in this websites power to destroy all of those with whom they disagreed and get away with it, there would be no hesitation. But is that what we are building towards in this season of Advent? Is the power and wonder of God with which we open going to end in apocalyptic ways on Christmas Day or are we building to the first act of the greatest act of mercy in the history of the world? As partisan bickering, anger and mistrust are so prominent in our world maybe we should not be worried about Christmas magic, but rather Christmas mercy. Maybe when we have the power to inflict judgment we should instead hold back and through our mercy invite others into the mercy of God. As we begin this journey of Advent it is a time to contemplate God and our relationship to him so that we might show forth his power and grandeur not in works of vengeance but in works of mercy, so that we may be his both now and forevermore.