Full Contact Christianity

Martin Luther’s father planned for him to become a lawyer. If Martin had been born 1500 years earlier, he’d have had little choice. Born in Christendom, Martin had another option: he took orders and became an Augustinian friar. Many saints’ stories begin similarly, with a teenager avoiding an odious arranged marriage by becoming a monk or nun instead. 

In the old world, any member of your village could predict with reasonable accuracy your trade, where you would live, which family your spouse would come from. It was a world where you could plan your kids’ lives before they were ever born. Through the story of Jesus (who was supposed to be a construction worker, whose followers were supposed to be fishermen, tax collectors, etc.,) another possibility was forever burned into the consciousness of the world: God might have business with your kid. 

The church instantiated that new consciousness first in the desert hermit tradition, then in organized orders, then in blessing all lawful work, but across the centuries, the message is the same: your complacent certainty of who you are, of your role in the world, is an illusion. God might at any time call you in a different direction.

For us Christmas day often turns out to be a long day. This year, it landed on a Sunday, which made it all the more glorious, but also even more complicated than usual –organization, worship, cooking and travel, cookies, ham, and egg nog, multiple houses and friends and gift exchanges, ending in a game night that lasted into the wee hours of this morning. Every last bit was worth it. It was good to revel together in the goodness of all that God has given to us. And now, with 11 days of Christmastide remaining, we settle in for a different kind of celebration: what was it all about? 

Imagine being among the sheep that night. Suddenly the air above you is alive with an army of angels, and when you recover from your terror, they send you to find the baby. It wouldn’t take much asking around. Bethlehem is small, labor is loud, and the unwed and shunned teen mom forced to give birth in a barn would be the talk of the town. You round the corner, and there they are: a frustrated construction worker unable to provide better for his bride-to-be, an exhausted girl, and a baby: tiny, bloody, bundled in rags against the cold. 

Improbable as it seems, that unremarkable sight is the root of many of your struggles and discontents today. That tiny child – the incarnation of God Himself – is the beginning of the end for the old world, and the seed of a new world that is even now being born – and birth is a messy, painful process. “Every warrior’s sandal from the noisy battle, and the garments rolled in blood will be fuel for the fire, for unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given.” This year, let’s reckon with the costs of Christmas.

The most important thing about the Advent wreath is the unlit candles standing in mute testimony that the object of our longing has not yet arrived. One by one, we light them, until finally, here we are. Christmas is far too important to confine to one day, but we’ll talk about that tomorrow. 

Today is a day of raucous celebration: plentiful meals, special treats of food and drink, relaxation and play, watching the delight in children’s eyes. All these things are gifts from a good God – feast on them by faith, in your hearts, with thanksgiving. Tomorrow we contemplate; today, we taste and see that the Lord is good!

The shepherds came to see Jesus the same night He was born; Simeon and Ana recognized Him when He was eight days old. It took the Magi two years to get there, and the priests? Well…many came to know Him eventually (Acts 6:7), but many more never got there at all.

The academics always take longer. They have questions, objections, arguments. The Magi had to search their books and star charts. The priests had their theological difficulties with Jesus, and besides, by what authority was He doing these things? He wasn’t even an ordained rabbi. He was a construction worker, for crying out loud! But the things Jesus did became the credential: “The works I do in My Father’s name bear witness of Me.” And again: “Go and tell John what you see: the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.” 

Tough to argue with that. That’s the life the incarnate Jesus invites us into. The divine nature, as it is, can flow through humans, just as we are, and we know this, because it’s already happened. You may not have the best explanations about Jesus and maybe people can argue rings around you. That’s okay. Just live your life as Jesus did—guided by the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit—and let that be your credential.

Who can argue with life?

“These are My mother and brothers,” Jesus said. As rich as that can be, we were also made to pair off and reproduce. But the world is broken. Some never find that person; some who do turn out to be infertile. For those of us in one of those categories, our lives can become tragically empty as we get older. In the new family that Jesus is building, that never need be the case.

In Jesus’ family, He acknowledges the wound, and promises to transcend it: “Sing, you barren…for more are the children of the desolate than of the married woman” and again, “Nor let the eunuch say, ‘Here I am, a dry tree,’…to them I will give in My house and within My walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that will not be cut off.” 

Let us not forget, Jesus Himself died childless at 33. We don’t imagine that He has no family; why do we think that we don’t? If He can stand and say, “Here am I, and the children God has given me” — a phrase from Isaiah that the author of Hebrews puts (metaphorically) in His mouth at the height of a dizzying display of synthetic Old Testament Messianic theology — then what’s stopping us from claiming the same family? 

What’s His is ours; that was the whole point.

While Jesus was sitting in a house teaching one day, they told Him His mother and brothers were waiting outside to see Him. He gestured around the room and said “These are My mother and brothers. Whoever does the will of God is My mother and brother and sister.” How can He do that?

Modern people know better than anybody that you can’t just declare a new family willy-nilly. We’ve tried over and over with fandoms and music and various brand loyalties. Just because we both like Mustangs or My Chemical Romance or Glocks doesn’t mean we have to see each other at Thanksgiving. Declaring a new family takes serious spiritual horsepower. It takes a superior blood tie to supplant the blood of the clan—and in Jesus, we have that. But do we use it?

It’s a bit like we’ve been given a mansion—title, keys, the whole bit—but we’re reluctant to go inside and see what the rooms look like. Being united to Jesus, we are united to each other. But we can only reap the benefits of that union if we’re willing to explore it. I’ve been exploring seriously for the past 16 years, and y’all…it’s amazing. These are the people who rebuke me when I’m wrong, support me when I’m weak, heal me when I’m broken. They’ve seen me at my neurotic worst and helped me be my best. It’s real.

We just gotta go do it.

God’s insane risk tolerance allows Him to use particular people—sinful ones at that—to represent Him. It seems the craziest thing in the world. Men and women, adults and children, every tribe and socioeconomic station, all gathered together in one group—how can that possibly work? What do they have in common that’s stronger than what divides them?

It’s not what, it’s who. The Epistle to the Ephesians, Paul’s meditation on unity, lays it out: in the Church, people from all races and walks of life are united to Christ, and therefore to each other. Before the very principalities and powers that kept us divided in the old world, the Church displays the “multicolored wisdom of God.” The fact that we can unite without being perfect makes it an even greater miracle.

If we are going to become fit for the Kingdom to come, if we are going to try to cram as much heaven into the present as possible, then we have to work together. In Jesus, we can. We come to one Table together, hear one another, discern God’s voice together without regard for station. Seem like a pipe dream? I see it happen every week. Perfectly? Of course not. But truly—and if it’s real, then the kingdom of God has come upon you; heaven is touching earth.

Come and see.

If the particularity and ordinariness of Jesus is offensive, the ordinariness of His people is even worse. It’s one thing for God to work through Jesus, the man without sin. But what are we to make of Christians? Vanity, greed, lust, envy…you can find all the seven deadlies hard at work in the church nearest you. I promise.

The humility of God knows no bounds. It would have been enough for infinite God to squeeze through a birth canal and manifest in the perfect man Jesus, but He doesn’t stop there. He would rather be imperfectly present to your neighbor through your flesh and blood than be perfectly absent in the sky somewhere, safely removed from any danger that you might tarnish His reputation.

Raises the stakes, doesn’t it? You, as a human, are the image of God. You can’t opt out. Your character and conduct either reflect God’s as a good image, or they lie about Him. What’s it gonna be? The good news is, if you’re even margially willing, He won’t leave you as you are; He will pay any cost to make you fit for the job. He doesn’t care where you started; St. Paul was a terrorist and murderer, and look what God did with him.

Gives me hope.

The anonymous author of the book of Hebrews meditates extensively on who Jesus was and what He did. Because all God’s children partake of flesh and blood, so did Jesus our brother. Because we die, so did Jesus. He was tempted in every way like us, but without sin.

After a wind-up like that, you expect to hear a blistering challenge: “No excuses! Quit whining! Work harder, you lazy bums!” Instead, it says He sympathizes. “Let us come boldly…so that we might find mercy and obtain grace to help when we need it.” Precisely because Jesus knows how hard it is, He never wants us to be afraid to come to Him. Jesus wants us to ask for help.

Help with what? What are we striving for? ““What is man?…You have put all things under his feet.” The old world was under the care of angels, but God “has not put the world to come in subjection to angels.” As we move toward the future, this man Jesus, our elder brother, has ascended to rule the world to come—and He is bringing us with Him. This life is where we forge character fit to rule the world.

We need all the help we can get.

When Paul was invited to address the philosophers of Athens, he knew he was talking to a culture that divided the world into just two categories: Greeks and barbarians. Against that, Paul proclaimed that God “made from one blood every nation of men under heaven.” Every nation’s circumstances were orchestrated by God “so that they might grope after Him and find Him,” Paul said, and then added, “though He is not far from each one of us.” No special advantage for being Greek.

That was offensive enough, but Paul wasn’t done. God calls everyone to repent, he said, because He “has appointed a day on which He will judge the world…by the man whom He has chosen.” He is talking, of course, of Jesus—not a Greek, not even a scholar, but a Galilean construction worker!

It is one thing to judge the world from on high. God could do that, but in Jesus, He did something very different. He subjected Himself to the limitations of flesh, was tired, hungry, and cold, was tempted as we are, unjustly slandered and judicially murdered—and faced it all without sin. He is not only a model for us all, He is the end to our precious pretensions. Before the true divine man, we are no better than anyone else, and we have no special excuses for our failures. We are simply human.

So was He, and that is the point.