A Good Idea at the Time

(This is a Christmas related story I wrote a few years ago based on middle of Luke chapter 2)

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

The stone slaps a slow, tired rhythm against my flat feet. It sounds like the tired waves that fall to the shore on a too hot day that make you wonder if creation will have the energy to go on. Like the rocks along the shoreline, the stone beneath me that was once chiseled sharp and clean has been worn smooth by a thousand feet. But my path through it is the deepest. Time has worn me down as well. I'm not made of the stuff of stones. I should never have tried to play its part.

I was young then and full of life like a rutting ram. I didn't believe in old age then. Not my own, anyway. But I did believe in grander themes. I believed in a God who had made us a blessing. Not that we are such a prize. True, we are a proud, sturdy people. That's part of our problem. We are so proud that sometimes not even the very voice of God can call us away from our own plans.

But we are also a frightened people. Our fears are the fears of old men. We have built great cities and fought great battles, but the world has grown in and over us and we fear that silent time in the middle of the night when the wind comes and whispers in our ears, "Who are you? What will become of you now that your knees grow weak and your eyes have dried out?" Hard questions and uncomfortable for a practical people. We like our feet planted firmly on the ground. It's easier to push these questions aside and ask, "Where is our next meal to come from?" and pretend we are fearless.

I remember the day it all changed for me. I came to the temple as usual—well, perhaps not quite as usual. I was in a foul mood. I'd been cross with Ruth about some money that was missing. I accused her of being careless, but I found the money before I had left home. It was there where I'd put it and forgotten. Too stubborn to admit any fault, I didn't say anything to Ruth. I was still brooding, trying to find some way to avoid the blame. I went to the temple because it was the right thing to do—my father and all Israel's fathers had gone since we settled this land--but in my heart, I was not all that I could have been. I'm telling you all this so that there will be no mistake. What happened was not because I was such a good man.

If I had told anyone this back then, they would have laughed. I would have been accused of giving way to the vain visions of the young or worse, the visions of too much wine. Now, I've been here too long for anyone to laugh. All my friends have died and no one here remembers a day of their life when old Simeon wasn't shuffling around in the corner. There is no one left who knew me young.

That day my God sent his Spirit to me. There were no lights, the earth did not shake, but there was no mistaking the Spirit. It was like laying with a woman for the first time. The air was bright and alive like a cold, flowing stream. Each breath had to be bit off, swallowed and held down as if I had been plunged naked into that same stream. My heart threatened to burst my ribs. And there was a voice. It spoke in a whisper backed by the power of thunder. My people had been promised a day when God would visit us. On that day he would give us a new spirit. Our stubborn, rocky hearts would be worn away and we would be given a new heart that could rest with God and do what is right. It would be the beginning of a great peace. It would be good, and while we lived with hardship now, we all stretched out our necks out toward that day. The Spirit came to me and caressed me and promised. It promised that I would not taste death until that day came to pass.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was young and elastic. Now, my skin is stretched and flinty, my arms are thin and the wind taunts me with every step. It exposes my bony knees and picks at my dry eyes and laughs. It has been too long. Ruth is gone. The friends of my youth are all dust. In my youth, I would never have believed that there would come a day when I would long for, hurt for, that last, long sleep.

But just now, when my hope was as frail as my bones, I saw her. The whirlwind of people around the entrance to the temple parted for a moment and there she was. She clutched a small bundle of a child to her breast. Beside her was the husband carrying two doves. A sacrifice for the child, a consecration for the first born son. They weren't much to look at and I would have passed them by, but the wind pushed me forward. The mother looked up into my eyes from across the court. The voice of the wind whispered in my ear and I knew. This was the child.

I stumbled forward and caught the woman's arm. The husband moved to catch me, but she motioned him to wait. She unwrapped the child and held him before me and the world before me grew transparent like the ghostly vapors that play across the dessert in the late afternoon. I saw through the stones around me to what lay beyond. There was a whirlwind mounting that would strike my people. This was the child that would usher in everything that God had promised. It seemed too small a bundle to carry so much. When the whirlwind finally struck, it would raise many of the low and cause the high and proud to fall. That came as no surprise. When you have lived as long as I have, you realize that the world is in need of being turned upside down. But what I saw next made me want to crumble to the ground and hide my face and weep. This child was to be the glory of Israel, but Israel would speak against it. In the end reject it. But even though we would reject God's gift, God would not reject us. He would make a new Israel around this child with men and women from every nation. We would not be forgotten.

I realized that I had been standing, trembling before this young woman and her child like some senile old man. I put on a brave face and spoke words of blessing over the child. I described the good he would do before the bewildered parents. Surely they had to know that this was God's Son sent to save us from our pride and stubbornness and bring us back to God. But I wanted to spare them from the rest. Why bring tragedy to such an important day? Then for just a moment's time I saw her face as it would look that day when they broke her son. When God spoke the truth to my forefathers, he always spoke the whole truth. Nothing less would be honest. I spoke of her pain. Maybe it would lessen it a little if she were warned. But then I remembered that I had children of my own once. Nothing could have lessened my pain.

When I finished I felt as though the force of the earth bending my body down to the dust had been released. I almost believed I could fly. God had made a promise to me and he had kept it. My time was finished. There were tears of relief and joy in my eyes as I thanked the woman for her time. But there was awe at my last glimpse of the child's eyes. For the Spirit showed me one last thing. They were the eyes of a child and you could see the child behind them, but God was in there too.

I go away to die now. It's not a sad thing. There is no one left to say good-bye to. I'm tired and I want rest. I will see God soon. It really is comforting. Once it would have been frightening, but today I have had a preview. I've seen God's eyes and there is love there.

Stagnation is Cool... Then It Stinks

As a kid I loved exploration, poking and prodding the things that made up the life around me. One of my favorite activities was capturing and watching, bits and pieces of my environment. I had cans and bottles and jugs filled with a bit of the stream that ran through our backyard or of a lake or filled with random ingredients. I'd watch them to see what would become of these samples.

There were glorious surprises. A can with a bit of peach juice in the bottom would grow luxurious strands of grey mold. Swamp water would grow swarms of single-celled animals large enough to see with the naked eyes. Strange, wiggling life forms would begin to emerge from algae-choked jars of water.

It was great for a couple of days, but then the inevitable happened. Decay set in. The stench of death dimmed my fascination. The wiggly things turned out to be mosquito larvae, and I didn't want to be around when they morphed into winged predators with a taste for my blood.

Stagnation has a limited appeal, and what was true for my early nature experiments is true for faith. I have a goal. It has actually sparked concern and alarm among traditionalists at times. I want my view of the world and of God to go through some radical change every two years or so. If not, I feel nervous.

Why? Because I don't want to stagnate. I'm not looking for some new and radical truth that no one else has ever been able to figure out. Originality is not my goal. I'm looking for understanding that is new to me. God is so big, his wisdom so vast, his understanding so far beyond me that I never want to be content with what I already know.

Spiritual stagnation comes when we stop exposing ourself to fresh opportunities for insight. What was in my jars died because they were cut off from new nourishment. They had become a closed system unable to survive. Each little environment consumed itself and died. My spiritual growth is dependent on an open system. Nourishment comes from God and his Spirit. That may seem sufficient, but it is not. God has chosen to work through his people to add to our, (if you will allow me to stretch out the analogy), spiritual nutrition.

The ‘me and Jesus’ model of spirituality can't be found in Scripture. Instead, we are given people who are gifted as pastors, teachers, and more, to instruct and train us (Eph 4:11-13). We are gifted by the Holy Spirit to minister to each other (1 Cor 12:7-11). These influences come from those immediately around me, or have been preserved by the writing of people such as Augustine, Luther, N. T. Wright, Timothy Keller, or Andy Stanley (This is not a comprehensive list).

God's truth is eternal, and my understanding is eternally lacking. If I don't work to push out the boundaries of my understanding, then I'll merely consume what I already know. If I don't challenge my assumptions, then God will not be able to correct the half truths that I carry with me. Tradition will replace a dynamic life. If I don't continue to ask, seek, and knock, if I'm not willing to test what I think I know while being open to be proven wrong (while God is proven right), then I will stagnate and never know the true meaning of abundant life.

Christmas: Focus Beyond the Family

The practice of celebrating Christmas began as a community festival to celebrate the birth of Christ much like Easter was already celebrated. It was a worship gathering and a festival to be shared. In our individualistic culture it has shrunk from the community celebration to a family gathering. This has changed the celebration in many ways and taken some of what is special and redemptive out of Christmas.

Jesus' birth marks the beginning of a new people a new stage in God's work to establish his Kingdom on earth. Jesus' life exemplifies Jesus' love; his death and resurrection establish the possibility of being united with God; and the gift of his Holy Spirit unite us together as the new community of God. As Paul says when describing communion, "And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf." (1 Cor 10:16-17) Our individual commitment to Jesus leads to a new corporate reality where love, care, and forgiveness are actively practiced.

The celebration of Jesus' birth should be a celebration of his mission. No wet blanket here. Celebrations are a good thing. God gave Israel feast days to celebrate and remember his great works. The work isn't finished, but that doesn't mean that we should be miserly in our celebration of Jesus' decisive and game changing acts. God's promises were fulfilled in Jesus and the angels heralded Jesus' birth as the day everything began to change.

But Christmas is also a day to remember that the Kingdom has not yet been fully established. Many believers come from broken, damaged, and damaging families. As a community we encourage, heal, and give hope. As individuals, people remain alone. Many twenty-somethings are separated from their families due to jobs, education, and even missions. Young professionals today tend to be more isolated. Many of this generation are now labeled nomadic Christians because they have ceased to belong, but maybe our focus on the nuclear family, orphans those who don't have a nuclear family of their own. Families are important, but the New Testament places its emphasis on the gathered community of God.

Christmas was also a time to remember the poor and the abused. To include the outsider. It was not seen as the one day to make up for ignoring the poor the rest of the year. Instead, it was a reminder that God's justice was meant for all, a reminder of how we were to live the rest of the year. It was a reminder that God expected more of us than to be good capitalists. The pagan villain of Dickens', A Christmas Carol was a great capitalist. He would have made modern writers like Ayn Rand proud.

I don't reject capitalism. It has much to commend it. But any "ism" must be tempered by God's wisdom and love. God's love doesn't only extend to the poor, the forgotten, and the abused, but it even embraces my enemy. And it extends - and this is hard in today's protective political climate - to the stranger, the immigrants among us.

How do we celebrate and care for those around us without wearing ourselves out or giving up in despair? We do it together as communities. Christmas doesn't really have to be less than a feast, a time with family, and even a football game. But it can be so much more. Presents aren't necessarily an evil, but people are more important. Together, Christmas can be an active celebration of God turning back the curse, of love breaking into the world, and a foretaste of what God has in store for us. Christmas was meant to be a public, community feast and celebration that reminds the world who we hope in and what we hope for. Enjoy it together.