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In This Issue...
Articles
- A Theology of Humor by Cheryl Taylor
- Ministering With Humor by Stephanie Nance
- Christian Leaders Having Fun? by Pam Morton with Kathy Jingling
- The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter by Dwenda Gjerdingen, MD, MS
Resources
Book Reviews
- Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins
- The Purse-Driven Life by Anita Renfroe
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The Birth of Christ
From ground level, Joseph and Mary were insignificant nobodies from a nothing town. They were peasants. They were poor, uneducated, of no account.
Joseph and Mary capsulized the mystery of grace—because the King does not come to the proud and powerful, but to the poor and powerless. As happens so often in life, things were not as they seemed to the world around, because humble Mary and Joseph were the father and mother of the King of kings.
They appeared to be helpless pawns caught in the movements of secular history. But every move was being made by the hand of God. The Messiah had to be born in tiny, insignificant Bethlehem! As the virgin traveled, she bore under her steady beating heart, hidden from the world, the busy thumping heart of God.
The baby Mary carried was not a Caesar, a man who would claim to be a god, but a far greater wonder—God who had become a man!
We are all familiar with the haunting simplicity of Luke’s description of the birth: “While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son.”
In Bethlehem, the accommodations for travelers were primitive. The eastern inn was the crudest of arrangements. Typically it was a series of stalls built on the inside of an enclosure and opening onto the common yard where the animals were kept. All the innkeeper provided was fodder for the animals and a fire to cook on. On that cold day when the expectant parents arrived, nothing at all was available, not even one of those crude stalls. And despite the urgency, no one would make room for them. So it was probably in the common courtyard where the travelers’ animals were tethered that Mary gave birth to Jesus—with only Joseph attending.
If we imagine that it was into a freshly swept County Fair stable that Jesus was born, we miss the whole point. It was wretched—scandalous! There was sweat and pain and blood and cries as Mary reached to the stars for help. The earth was cold and hard. The smell of birth was mixed into a wretched bouquet with the stench of manure and acrid straw. Trembling carpenter’s hands, clumsy with fear, grasped God’s Son slippery with blood—the baby’s limbs waving helplessly as if falling through space—his face grimacing as he gasped the cold and his cry pierced the night.
It was a leap down—as if the Son of God rose from his splendor, stood poised at the rim of the universe, and dove headlong, speeding through the stars over the Milky Way to the earth’s galaxy, finally past Arcturus, where he plunged into the virgin’s womb where he was carried until birth in the midst of a huddle of animals. Nothing could be lower.
Luke finishes the picture: Mary “wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” Mary counted his fingers. She and Joseph wiped him clean as best they could by firelight, and Mary wrapped each of his little round, steaming arms and legs with strips of cloth—mummy-like. No one helped her. She laid him in a feeding trough.
No child born into the world that day seemed to have lower prospects. The Son of God was born into the world not as a prince but as a pauper. We must never forget that this is where Christianity began—and where it always begins. It begins with a sense of need, a graced sense of one’s insufficiency. Christ comes to the needy. Ultimately he is born in those who are “poor in spirit.”
The story moves quickly as Christ’s birth is announced. Shepherds were the first to hear. “And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear.” The shepherds on that wintry night were naturally huddled close to their fire, while above, the icy constellations swept by. Suddenly, as if a star burst, glory dazzled the night, and an honored angel stepped forth as the shepherds recoiled in great fear—despite his reassuring words.
That the message came to shepherds first, and not to the high and mighty, once again brings us to the refrain that God comes to the needy, the “poor in spirit.” Shepherds were despised by the “good,” respectable people of that day. They were regarded as thieves. The only ones lower than the shepherds at this particular time in Jewish history were lepers.
God wants us to get it straight: He comes to those who sense their need. He does not come to the self-sufficient. Christmas is for those who need Jesus! Whatever our situation, He can deliver us. The angel said the “good news” was for “all the people.” Whoever you are, He can deliver you. As the writer of the epistle of Hebrews puts it, Christ “is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25). Listen to the angel’s words again, slowly: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.”
Now see what happens:
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’”
Here we need a little Christmas imagination. Perhaps there was a flash, and suddenly the bewildered shepherds were surrounded by angels.
The angels departed, the glory that lit the countryside faded, the constellations reappeared, and the shepherds were alone. They allowed no grass to grow under their feet. They took off running, leaping the low Judean fences, and entered the enclosure wide-eyed and panting. They searched the stalls and quickly found the new mother and her Babe out in the open among the animals. Immediately they began to announce the good news, telling all who would listen about the angels and the baby. When they left, they continued glorifying and praising God for all they had experienced.
This Christmas it is not enough to hear about Jesus. It is not enough to come peek in the manger and say, “Oh, how nice. What a lovely scene. It gives me such good feelings.” The truth is, if Christ were born in Bethlehem a thousand times but not in you, you would be eternally lost. The Christ who was born into the world must be born into your heart.
Christmas sentiment without the living Christ is a yellow brick road to darkness. That is the terrifying thing about all the Christmas glitz—that Christmas can be buried by materialism, and sentiment and people will not even know it or care.
He really did come into the world; and because of this, He really can come into your heart. This Christmas, let us lay our lives before Him and receive the gift.
