GospelDrivenLife

The Politics of Christmas

I find it annoying that the primaries for the presidential elections have been moved up so close to the holidays.  It is a distraction from the season to have to read headlines about the various candidates.  I know this is important, but it takes away from the message of Christmas . . . . or does it?

Wasn't the announcement of Gabriel to Mary a political one?  Did he not say that the child would reign on the throne of David?  Did not Mary speak of the work of God to bring kings down from their place of power?

The coming of the Messiah is all about the coming of God's kingdom.  And that is politics. 

The Bible is filled with politics -- the assertion that God would appoint his king upon Zion -- and though the nations revolt, their rebellion will be in vain.

At Grace Church we looked at Jesus, the Son of David, and saw the politics of Christmas. But it is a different sort of politics -- the politics of humility and the power of self-sacrifice as a substitutionary offering to God.  he is King -- but not that kind of king!

The Exclusive Message of Christmas, 2

What makes Christianity the least exclusive of all religions?

All other religions of the world require people to do something – either to exercise some sort of discipline or to have some sort of experience or to perform some set of rules or to increase in some set of virtues. Most people think that religion is about being good.  God will weigh the good of our lives against the bad, and those who have done more good will be in heaven.

Those are all requirements which are exclusive. They have limited value to a vast majority of people on planet earth. People who cannot rule their passions or have lived such a bad life that no amount of repentance will ever make up for their bad deeds are not given help or hope by these demands. People with limited education or skill may be unable to measure up to these requirements. If that is not elitist and exclusive, what is?

But Christianity is anything but elitist. It offers salvation that is entirely through the work of another – Jesus, the son of Abraham. There are no moral or intellectual requirements. Past record of wrongs have no bearing upon future possibilities. Gender is not an issue – nor age – nor race. Christianity is the only religion that is universally accessible to people, regardless of their qualities of life.

This means that far from being narrow and proud -- the message of the Gospel is not most welcoming and inclusive of all -- anyone may be received by God in the forgiveness of sin regardless of race, gender, moral history, ability or disability.

Christmas is the celebration of grace – God doing all that must be done to forgive us of sin and bless us. It is good news to all peoples – for all may receive this gift. For more reflection, check out our sermons at Grace Church.

The Exclusive Message of Christmas, 1

Most Americans and Europeans have an intuitive reaction to Christianity. They say it cannot be right because there is no way any one religion can be ultimately true.  Christmas confronts us once again with that claim and that response. Jesus is the Son of Abraham. That is a claim to universal truth.

(Let me say I am aware that Muslims and Jews also revere Abraham -- but I think the Christian view of him is the right one -- and the one supported by the rest of the Bible.)

The promise of God to Abraham was that though his son, he would bring blessing to the nations of the earth. That assumes that all nations were and are in need of blessing – and that Jesus is unique in his qualification to make this happen. All nations need to be blessed because all nations are under a curse. The curse is the righteous judgment of God against sin.

The promise identifies Jesus as the means of God blessing all peoples. This reveals the wonderful heart of God for all – a desire to save, an unwillingness that any should perish. But it is also claiming that Jesus in unique and he is God’s appointed source of blessing for all.

Modern people hear that and get offended – they say that is arrogant and exclusive. The truth is tha it is the least exclusive of all religious claims. What do I mean by that?

More to follow . . .

Christmas, Eden, and the Promised Child, 2

It is of note that we are not at all objective in our thinking about life or about our own selves. After a hundred years of psychological studies, no fact is more above contest than that man is messed up, a complex of defense mechanisms and lies, self-deceptions and attacks on others.

The reality of sin is present everywhere. Certainly we can talk about the great evils going on in Darfur today. We can seek to demonize Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But the Bible is clear. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, the line between good and evil is not between nations or political parties, or even religions – it is in the human heart and between man and God.

I have great sadness for the genocide in Darfur – but my sin of speaking harsh words to my wife, or being defensive when a fellow pastor points out sin in my life is of the exact same stuff. Teenage gossip and slander of people who are not cool is not any different in kind from the extermination of people of other Islamic sects by suicide bombings – or the murderous rampage of a gunman in a Nebraska Mall. I am not saying one does not have a greater consequences than the other –I am just saying they are only different in degree. The heart that would ruin someone by slander would also kill them if offered the weapons and the occasion where they would be esteemed by others for their action.

But Christmas is all about a baby in a manger and the mother with child -- cattle lowing and sheep gazing at the Christ-child.  Right?  No, there is evil in the story as told in Matthew and Luke.  If we read the  whole Christmas story we will see arrogance and genocide, selfishness and manipulation, secularism and religion gone wrong. But I, at least, do not spend much time meditating on the Slaughter of the Innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod – nor on the selfishness of the Innkeeper. Evil was then and evil is now.

 Add to this the clear teaching of Scripture, that sin is more than a tragedy of the ruin of humankind – it is a personal offense against God. God responds with righteous judgment to the insolence of our souls.

 All this bad news is necessary because the coming of Jesus is not at all about self-improvement or morality or religion. Our problem is far too great for that – we have become corrupt from the root to the leaf of our souls – we have brought judgment upon ourselves and have no excuse. A power outside of us, greater than all other powers, is the only One who can deliver us – not just from ourselves but from the wrath of God. And that Power is God the Son – the offended Holy God gives his Son to bear our sin and take our blame. And he does so in the womb of Mary, in the manger of Bethlehem, on the dusty roads of Judea, and upon the cross and the empty tomb.

This is Christmas.

Christmas, Eden, and the Promised Child

I was in the airport the other day, on my way to see my Mom, who is deep into Alzheimers. There on the newstand was TIME magazine and in it an article on the problem of human morality and evil. The author. Jeffrey Kluger, was seeking to explain the latest research into this problem. He began this way.

If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the anger and darkness of the human mind . . . . And it certainly wouldn't lie in the transcendent goodness of that mind. . . . The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person, often in one instant.

We're a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. . . .  And at the same time, we slaughter one another.

What followed was his explanation. He assumed that evil could be explained biologically and summarized the research by neurologists into brain activity related to human sin. The end, he notes, is that this is all a mystery and a matter of development.

But that is not deep enough. What lies behind the acts of humankind in good and evil is not biologically determined. Nor is there progress being made. The facts of history show that we have come no where in moral practice. No, what lies behind it is the creation of humanity in the image of God (thus our dignity and philanthropy) and the corruption of it by sin. The simple story of the eating of the forbidden fruit is profound. It passes the test of making sense of life.

And this is not pessimism. It is truth that is immediately faced with a promise. For in the account of the sin of Adam, after a sequence of interrogations and weak blame shifting and self-deceptions, after the cursing of the ground and the serpent and the pains of childbirth – God speaks a promise. The woman, he notes, will one day have a child who will crush the serpent’s head. That’s how you kill a snake. There will come a child into the world who will put an end to the ruin brought into the world by sin!

I am not reading too much into this either. The first hint is that Adam names his wife Eve – the mother of all the living. Why on earth would we do that, after God’s resounding voice of condemnation, cursing and death? Because he heard the promise of life – and the future child.

More than that, Paul cites this passages in Romans 16 and applies it to Jesus. And the entire NT echoes the truth of Jesus as the second Adam, who undoes all the ruin brought by the first Adam.

Christmas and Incarnation, 2

The incarnation was unexpected but absolutely necessary. That is because there is one line between the stable in Bethlehem and the Cross. God was not showing off in the incarnation. He was doing what must be done to save us. It was Anselm of Canterbury who addressed this long ago – in his treatise, Cur Deus Homo.

In order to redeem the guilty from sin and judgment, what was required by the very nature of God was a sacrifice of a sinless man, a substitute and sacrifice of such value that it would satisfy the demands of justice to an infinite degree, and be sufficient for many and not just one.

That God, who alone is infinite, should die – that is unthinkable.

That man, who alone can be a substitute for other humans, should be sinless – that was inconceivable.

That man should die, and then break the power of death – that was impossible.

But if God took to himself true human nature, and lived as man a sinless life, and died voluntarily as a substitute for sinners – that sacrifice would be of a sinless man, but of infinite value – sufficient for all who trust in Him.

The incarnation was necessary. Such a person was required to offer such a sacrifice to the True and Living God for the sake of saving sinners.

Here is love – that God gave his Son for us. Here is wisdom – that incarnation happened. Infinite became finite. Spirit became flesh. The un-seeable was seen and touched.

This year, we are exploring Christmas in a fresh way at Grace Church in San Diego. For sermons, look HERE.

Christmas and Incarnation, 1

Christmas is a favorite season of the year for me. As a pastor preaching Christmas sermons forces me to reflect on the person and work of Jesus the Savior. With each passing year I am becoming more and more aware of the unity of the truth of our redemptions – from the incarnation to the resurrection and return of Christ.

This year I have been reflecting on the stories in Matthew and Luke and seeing in a new way that no one expected this to happen, at least not in the way it did. Modern people look down on former generations, especially those who were pre-scientific. We think of them as superstitious or gullible. We, on the other hand, no longer find God a necessary part of explaining reality. The “’God of the gaps” has fewer gaps to explain!

But that certainly does not fit the facts of the story. Neither Greek nor Roman thought had any notion of an incarnate Deity. And while Jewish maidens may have hoped to be the mother of Messiah, no one expected a virgin conception and incarnation of the God-man.

When the news of Jesus birth was brought to Mary, she showed that she too was an empiricist, “How can these things be, seeing that I am a virgin?” The facts were clear. This was way beyond a theory. Male and female each contributed to the procreation of new life. She was a virgin and not yet married. Obviously there was a mistake here.

No, the incarnation was not expected at all. And it came to Mary with a jolt. She yielded herself to God (Behold the handmaiden of the Lord) and experienced the wonder of incarnation in her womb – but it was an idea that far exceeded her imagination.

It seems that it was only in retrospect that she understood all that was meant by the angelic messenger.

This year, we are exploring Christmas in a fresh way at Grace Church in San Diego. For sermons, look HERE.