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Messy Christmas
Scripture focus: Matthew 1-2; Luke 1-2
I squinted at my dad in the photo, a barefoot boy smiling between friends in front of his school. “Dad, your friends are wearing shoes but you aren’t. Did you go to school barefoot?” He said simply, “Sometimes.” I knew, of course, that his teacher father struggled to homestead and raise five children. I knew that when Grandpa needed surgery, Grandma paid the hospital with home-canned tomato juice. I knew that my oldest aunt said Grandma only had two dresses, expanded during pregnancy and taken in afterwards. Still—I hadn’t realized that Dad only had shoes “sometimes.”
Grandpa died during the Depression. Dad and some of his siblings were teenagers. Grandma rented their land and found employment. Prayer and perseverance led all her children through the upheaval of World War II and college graduation, and into satisfaction in families and careers. Grandma eventually had a beautiful (and extensive!) wardrobe she wore into her nineties. Yet the photo of my barefoot father is a reality check, a trivial reminder that my family lived through more than I can comprehend.
I have the same impression as I read the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1. The names and stories of these patriarchs and matriarchs are familiar (well, some of them!). But do we gloss over the reality of their lives? The wanderers from Mesopotamia became immigrants in the Promised Land, refugees in Egypt during famines, exiles in Babylon, and then the subjugated, remnant population into which Jesus was born. Peace and prosperity were rare; suffering and violent death, common.
Scripture graphically describes horrors endured by people of faith: “[T]hey were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were put to the sword, they went about in sheepskins or goat hides, they were destitute, they were persecuted, they were ill-treated—the world didn’t deserve them!—and they wandered in deserts and mountains, in caves and holes in the ground” (Hebrews 11:37-38).
WOW. So are we surprised that the Messiah was born under Roman oppression? That when he was dedicated in the temple, his parents sacrificed young birds, the “budget option” under the Law? That the family would become exiles in Egypt (presumably funded by the timely gifts of the Magi)? That a violent king bathed Bethlehem with innocent blood in an attempt to kill the Christ Child?
Jesus came into a world more disordered than we can comprehend, disorder beyond a smelly stable and the messiness of birth. Mary and Joseph were surely tempted to fear terrors we cannot imagine. In retrospect, we see how God provided. Tradition says that Mary lived a long life surrounded by love. But as Jesus was conceived, born, and grew to maturity, Mary and Joseph had no certainty, only the “assurance to our hopes” and “conviction about things we can’t see” (Hebrews 12:1).
Our old world is messy right now. Overseas friends in South Korea and the Middle East live with the threat or reality of war. Closer to home, there are challenges with family, health and employment. Fissures in friendships remain in the wake of political discord and a deadly epidemic. Yet, as Ecclesiastes says, “There is nothing new under the sun.” In the words of Bible scholar Ken Bailey, “History is an arrow, and God has shot it.” We have read the last page of the story: God wins. Like our spiritual ancestors, we walk by faith.
Jesus came as Emmanuel, “God WITH us.” In messiness, uncertainty, and fear.
Fleshing out this concept (literally), Jesus abides IN us, our “hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).
We also know that God is FOR us. Paul asks, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” God is with us, he promises, through “suffering, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and sword.” He ends defiantly: nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:31-39).
If God is WITH us…IN us…and FOR us, we, too, can walk confidently. Even in messiness.
Lord, sometimes we focus on our little world. We forget how you act on behalf of your people throughout space and time. We forget that YOU win. With our finite understanding, we welcome you into the messiness of our world, and thank you for your infinite, abiding presence.
Andrea Herling
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