“There’s got to be a logical way to explain this Christmas thing.”
– Jack Skellington, from The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Why did God even come? Why expose God’s very self to the wild elements of humanity: the discomfort, the sickness, the hurt, the sadness, and all that goes along with our soft and vulnerable flesh?
At Christmas time, we take for granted that a baby was born, and that the baby was GOD!1 The story and the characters are so familiar to us, we nod along to the narrative without feeling any wonder. But more and more, I find myself like Jack from The Nightmare Before Christmas who asks, puzzled: “But what does it all mean?”
In the movie, he is trying to understand Christmas by engaging in a series of experiments. He crushes an ornament to powder and adds it to a beaker of liquid. He uses a microscope to examine mistletoe. He dissolves a candy cane. He contemplates a chalkboard with a complicated equation.
We do much the same thing when we come to our sacred texts year after year. We imagine the story from Mary’s perspective, we try to see through the eyes of the shepherds or the wise men. We are trying to solve the mystery of a God who shrinks to the size of a zygote, and chooses utter dependence on a pair of poor, young, and fallible parents. That the God of the universe should show this kind of humility is baffling. It is an extreme measure, but for what?
I think there are many ways we can fill-in-the-blank here, digging through the Bible for answers:
- Jesus came to reveal God to us.
- Jesus came to usher in a new kingdom.
- Jesus came to bring peace, hope, and joy.
- Jesus came to rescue us from our broken ways.
- Jesus came to show us the way of love.
- Jesus came that we might have life to the fullest.
- Jesus came to restore our relationship, that God might always be WITH us.
When I get out my own beaker and microscope and chalkboard, I conclude that God’s love for us seems to be the underlying reason why Jesus came to us. And yet, the WHY of God’s love still remains a mystery. God is both knowable and unknowable.
But maybe “Why” is the wrong question, and chasing the meaning of God-made-flesh is beside the point. Maybe the better question is “What now?”
To ask “What now” is to acknowledge that the story continues, and that we play a part in it.
Because the truth is that it doesn’t always feel like God’s new kingdom is here. We are still starving for peace, hope, and joy. We are still longing to be rescued from our broken ways, and struggling to live life to the fullest. And although God is with us even right this minute because the Holy Spirit lives in us, it’s still difficult to maintain our awareness of God’s constant, loving, presence with us. The season of Advent highlights this tension of living in the now and not-yet as we celebrate Jesus’ arrival among us and anticipate his return.
Asking “What now?” makes me acknowledge all the ways we continue living in darkness, and it can be tempting to list all the injustice, oppression, violence, and greed that surrounds us (and is within us) and throw our hands up in the air in defeat. But that cannot be the answer.
Author Daniel Nayeri writes:
“What you believe about the future will change how you live in the present.”2
If Advent is an invitation to face the darkness head-on, Christmas Day points to our bright and glorious future with Christ. And—crucially—it is a future that has already begun. Here, on this Earth, under your roof, at your job, in the aisles of your supermarket, amidst whatever your present reality looks like.
Believing that God’s kingdom is only a place, and a place that is inaccessible and far away, only to be arrived at after death, is a slippery slope to sitting pretty and biding our time, to ignoring the suffering of our planet and our people.
But if, in our mind’s eye, we can see Jesus’ tiny fingers clutching at Mary’s hair and marvel at the mystery of God-with-us, if we can hear the angels’ voices declaring God’s new kingdom has arrived, then suddenly our part in the story becomes a little bit clearer.
After all:
“People who believe in the resurrection, in God making a whole new world in which everything will be set right at last, are unstoppably motivated to work for that new world in the present.”3
So the answer to “What now?” is going to be as varied as you and me. It’s going to depend on what we are each called to do and involve the tasks, both grand and mundane, needed to live out that calling on a daily basis. And everything we set our hands and minds to—whether it’s sweeping, or grocery shopping, or managing schedules, or making spreadsheets, or texting a friend, or wiping babies, or writing emails, or leading teams, or making art—is a way to partner with God in bringing about God’s will on earth as it is in heaven.
Nothing done in love is ever wasted, because Love came down to be with us. Merry Christmas!
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- This wording borrowed from the poem “Sharon’s Prayer” by John Shea found here. ↩︎
- From Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri (a memoir you should absolutely read if you haven’t already!) ↩︎
- From Surprised by Hope, by N.T Wright ↩︎
*Featured image from Pixistock
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Sarah K. Butterfield 