Why Christmas?

A friend and I recently talked about the reason God came into the world. The typical answer is "to save the world from sin," and there might be something to that, but my friend wondered, What if God came into the world to find out what it's like to be human? His question is worth pondering. In several Old Testament passages God seems stymied with his creatures: "Why do you persist in rebellion?" he asks Israel. Or look here at the heart-wrenching agony God goes through because his people have left him: "Have I been a desert to Israel or a land of great darkness? Why do my people say, 'We are free to roam; we will come to you no more'? Does a maiden forget her jewelry, a bride her wedding ornaments? Yet my people have forgotten me." These passages bring out a dimension in Christmas than I have not considered before. God came down from heaven to learn about us and to win us back to him. He is grief-stricken at our neglect of him and, like a mother who's lost her child, is frantic to find and coddle us. Walter Brueggemann likens God's ache for us to that which a mother feels in her breasts because it has been too long since she nursed her child.

Simplicity

Simplicity. It’s a beautiful word. Beautiful in how it sounds. And beautiful in its meaning too.

I think of monks, who go about their litany of life day in and day out. They rise to the bells and pray and eat and work, and the bells ring again and they come in from their various duties. I envision them on green lawns moving in and out from the monastery, coursing to the rhythm of bells and chores and eating and sleeping.

What is it that allows monks to live so simply? Perhaps it’s their distance from the rest of the world. Often monasteries are out in the country or up on a hillside, geographically as well as socially removed from the chaos of things.

Or maybe it’s the absence of greed. I don’t mean to say a monk never covets his brother’s tunic or bread, but let’s face it. Not much enters a monk’s line of sight that an ordinary person couldn’t do without.

Maybe it’s greed that complicates our lives. My first year after graduating from college I lived in a twelve-by-twelve room with a desk and a few shelves built into one of the walls. I had a twin-size bed, a dorm-size refrigerator and microwave, and a closet without doors where I hung my clothes and my towel. I used a community bathroom and, when I wanted something to eat that couldn’t be cooked in my microwave, a community kitchen.

I lived there because I had no concept of how far money went. I don’t know what I was making, but I was an administrative assistant and knew that administrative assistants didn’t make much, so I took the cheapest accommodations I could find that still afforded some measure of safety.

And here’s the thing. I was remarkably happy. I remember talking on the phone with my parents. They seemed concerned about how I was doing ("Are you sure you’re okay, honey?" my mom asked), and I can remember telling them I was fine, that in fact I had everything I could possibly need.

But then I got a raise and a promotion and a new job with a bigger company. It just seemed natural to get a bigger place and then I had to buy stuff to fill my bigger place and then my place was too small for all my stuff so I got a bigger place and, well, you know how it goes. Simplicity became roadkill when I smashed into it on my way to Pier 1.

A Book's Beginning

We all like to be good at something. Well, I am the world's master at writing the first page or two of a book and then stopping. The following was going to be a book about exploring the interactions Jesus had with others.

I remember talking with my friend Eric about his conversion to Christianity. "I’ll tell you why I became a Christian," he said. "Jesus wouldn’t get off my back. He haunts me still. I can’t escape."

Author and Cambridge scholar C. S. Lewis said, "You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalene, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

I don’t know if Lewis continued to feel his approach after converting, but I did. I still do. I’ll go weeks without praying, wondering why life is so stressful and miserable, when Jesus shows up. He knocks on the door of my limited attention span, urging me to commune with him.
He does the same thing in scripture. A crew of men try to sail through a storm, and there he is. Two guys walk down the road having a conversation, and there he is. A lady goes to draw water from a well, and there he is. He just shows up, and then it’s up to us to respond. "Well, a God descended," Dar Williams sings. "And now we have to live with what we did with what we saw."

Maybe it’s because Jesus has a habit of pursuing people that I want to know more about him.
I mean, who is he? The way he’s depicted in a lot of paintings, films, and tee shirts does not ring true. The beautiful man with flowing hair. The buff weightlifter whose pain is your gain. Mr. Magic on the playground. Such depictions seem off-base to me. But who am I to say? If it were up to me, Jesus would wear a jet-powered backpack, drink Guatemalan coffee, play a mean game of chess, and listen to Martin Sexton. Let’s face it. If it were up to us, Jesus would look a good deal like we want him to look.

But I want to know the real Jesus—the Jesus who woke up in the morning, pulled on his sandals, and walked around the sandy sick world that was Palestine. What were his thoughts? What were his passions?

I’m interested in how Jesus interacted with others, mainly because I think people are ultimately all that really matters in this world. In fact, the undeniable preciousness of people is one of the best pieces of evidence I can think of for the existence of, if not God, the sacred. It is when someone close to us draws near to death that this truth burns so brilliant, it blinds us from seeing anything else. Three years ago my grandmother came close to dying but eventually, thankfully returned home in good health. I still can see my grandparents in their living room a few days later, Grandpa rocking back and forth in his chair. "None of the rest of this matters," he said, waving his hand. All that matters is people.