To my joy and anticipation, the fourth and final candle on our Advent wreath was lit this evening. Tonight again the Christchild comes.
Reading through the Gospel of John this month, I'm met with this strange but wonderful Christmas message of the Word made flesh who reveals the Father. Jesus says, "If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father" (John 14:7, 9). The same goes in John's introduction to his Gospel narrative: "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known" (1:18).
But prior to Jesus' words in chapter 14 is the perplexing fact that, though he is "Lord and Teacher," he washes his disciples' feet and is among men as "one who serves" (Luke 22:27). Jesus never abandoned his full equality in being with God when he took on flesh in the womb of a poor peasant girl. He was still revealing the Father when he touched the ill, crippled, and unclean to heal them; when he was put to death in ignominy, abandonment, and shame. But how is it that in Jesus' deep acts of humility, meekness, and servanthood he truly reveals the Father? I cannot wrap my mind around this. How can God the Holy, the All-powerful, the Exalted, the Splendrous, be himself a God who serves? How is he, in his nature, a servant? How is this possible?
But Jesus shows us in his life and death that real authority looks far different than we perceive it with the eyes of the world. "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all" (Mark 9:35). "He who is the least among you all--he is the greatest" (Luke 9:48). Is it not the mystery of Christmas and the judgment of God upon the world itself that the Light of Christ "shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it" (John 1:5)?
Tonight and during the Christmas festival (that is, from today until Epiphany on January 6), let's pray with the blind beggar, "Lord, I want to see!" (Luke 19:41), that we might not try to find God in glory and power--these are the ways of the world, our sin and blindness--but as he has chosen to reveal himself: in a babe laid in a feed trough, the King of the world who has come to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
With my 25th birthday having come and gone a week ago (Dec. 16) and Christmas coming in a few short days, it's nice to think about all the cool gifts I'd like to be given but will never actually receive, living some 8,700 kilometers from home. (That's 5,400 miles for all of you living in the past. Face it: the metric system is superior.) Nonetheless, here is my second annual Christmas wish list.
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you're probably aware that I like to read a lot, especially about theology (and by that I mean, living truth about God and his ways). If it were possible and I didn't have an upcoming career in science education, I'd probably spend all my time reading, studying, and writing about such things. My theology picks are: Jonathan R. Wilson, God So Loved the World; N. T. Wright, Simply Christian; Gerhard O. Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross; and Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God.
As far as other books go, there are few authors I'm more interested in than recent Nobel Prize winner and fiction writer Orhan Pamuk. His novels Snow and My Name is Red have drawn worldwide acclaim, but I'm most interested in his memoirs, Istanbul: Memories and the City. Throw in the latest anthology of poetry by Gerard Manley Hopkins, and I'll be occupied for a long time (especially as I own many books that I haven't even read yet).
As I was perusing the Detroit Tigers web page yesterday I read that, to my joy, a four-CD boxed set of recordings from announcer Ernie Harwell's illustrious broadcasting career is to be released soon. Having many fond summer memories of his sweet, Southern voice telling of strikeout victims who "stood there like a house by the side of the road" and home run balls that were "looonnggg gone," I really want to pick this up soon.
Living in a country where the drink of choice is made from salty yogurt and the alcoholic staple is an
anise-flavored liquor that'll knock you off your chair (affectionately known as "lion's milk"), I long for some good beer. Sure, some crappy pilseners are available. But real beers have to have flavor, something that makes them memorable. Hats off to Bell's Brewery of Kalamazoo Brewing Company for my favorite, their Best Brown Ale.
Just like last year, I still want an iPod, seeing as how I spend three hours a day on public transportation, and my CD player is all but dead. (Though I still can't help but wonder how much the headphoned world contributes to our isolation from one another.) And I've got to have music for it, right? Ideally I'd be listening to The Appleseed Cast's new release Peregrine. I'm starting to dig their ever-morphing sound that is simultaneously rich yet lulling. If Peregrine is as good as Mare Vitalis, I'll be glad. Other albums I'd like: Rainer Maria, Long Knives Drawn; Mineral, End Serenading; Sufjan Stevens, Michigan; and some good jazz.
But none of this would really be worth anything without home, without my family. Dear Mom and Dad, all I want for Christmas is a plane ticket home for a week.
I've recently begun helping with a Christian interparish refugee assistance program in the city providing housing, food, clothing, child care, and routine medical aid to migrants seeking a new life. Each week I get the privilege of having fun with children from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Iran, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Most of them are knit by the common language of Arabic or, for those from Iran, Farsi. It really is a blast!
This morning as we got all the children together for a group photo, a conversation I had last night with Ziya Meral was still in my mind. Currently a human rights activist, Ziya has also authored several books, including one about what it means to have a truly native Christian theology. That is, for him, what does it mean to live as a Christian in 21st-century Turkey? You see, here as elsewhere in the Middle East, those who become Christians bear the stigma of being labeled traitors and converts to Western, Anglo-Saxon cultural ideologies. Having read a book last year about countries with shame-based worldviews (unlike Western guilt-based worldviews developing from Plato's Republic and Roman law), I began to see the importance of a truly cultural, indigenous idea of what it means to live as one bearning the name of Jesus Christ.
At the same time, culture shapes what we see and cherish in the gospel of the person and work of Jesus. For those in America, oftentimes the gospel is that Jesus bore the punishment for our sins and we are declared innocent or "righteous" before God. In Jordan it's that God himself is restoring the shamed and outcast to a position of honor, with his Son bearing their alienation and reproach. In Laos and animist cultures Jesus is the Victor who wields power and triumph over all evil spirits. In Bolivia Jesus brings equality and crushes injustice. All of these are true and biblically valid ways to understand and embrace the Messiah.
So this morning with the children I wondered, For each of the varied faces gathered there, could there be a unique Jesus for him, Jesus for her? (Yes, there is!) And I wonder just how much more there is to Jesus and God's amazing restoration that I cannot or have not yet seen simply because of who I am in culture and history. The Great News of Christ is so expansive that its contours cannot be boxed or constrained or limited or defined. No crack caused by sin, no fear or stain or injustice or disorder will be left unturned, unredeemed!
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You can check out two essays of Ziya's here: The Persecuted Church: Fighting Cultural Alienation with Contextual Theology and this passionate plea, A Message to the West from the Persecuted Church.
The guys in our Bible study had decided a few weeks back that we'd like to take a few weeks' pause from 2 Corinthians and instead read some Advent sermons of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Last week I decided that this morning we'd read a sermon of his with Luke 12:35-40 serving as the text.
Last night I woke up at 4:45 because I heard someone walking around the foyer of our apartment, shut the door, then quickly run down the five flights of spiral stairs. Knowing that break-ins are very common here, I feared the worst. I quickly got up to check our house. All looked sound.
Right now we have a friend staying with us for a week, and looking at the couch where he was sleeping, it looked like he was still there; I could swear it was him I heard breathing as he slept. But even on the odd chance that it was he who had gotten up and left at such an early hour--he wasn't home when I got up at 7:30--the whole incident was a wake-up call (no pun intended).
Then this morning we read Luke 12:39-40, in which Jesus warns, "But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have allowed his house to be broken into. You too, be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour that you do not expect." Wow. Talk about bringing Scripture to light! Seriously, any day we could be going about our business, and Jesus will return, as suddenly and unexpectedly as whomever may or may not have been in my apartment last night. We will not be able to choose sides or shape up our lives then; we'll only be left in an unchosen reaction to his coming. How we live and what we choose now will determine whether we will at that day lift up our heads and see his coming as a thing of unimaginable joy, relief, and beauty; or else we'll melt in shame and fear, "our faces aflame" (Isaiah 13:8) in seeing Christ the King as a terror that humbles our worst of nightmares.
I read this interesting commentary of Catholic apologist Jacob Michael concerning the Christian versus secular views of the Christmas holiday, and I find it quite interesting and prophetic (although this really only works in branches of Christianity who celebrate Christmas on December 25, unlike our Orthodox brothers, who celebrate it on January 6).
". . . what Christians do (or should be doing!) during Advent and leading up to Christmas is a foreshadowing of what they will do during the days of their lives that lead up to the Second Coming; what non-Christians refuse to do during Advent, and put off until after Christmas, is precisely a foreshadowing of what they will experience at the Second Coming.
"We Christians are to prepare for the Coming of Christ before He actually comes -- and that Coming is symbolized and recalled at Christmas. Non-Christians miss this season of preparation, and then scramble for six days after the 25th to make their resolutions. By then, however, it's too late -- Christmas has come and gone. Our Lord has already made His visitation to the earth, and he has found them unprepared. This is precisely what will take place at the Second Coming, when those who have put off for their entire lives the necessary preparations will suddenly be scrambling to put their affairs in order. Unfortunately, by then it will have been too late, and there will be no time for repentance. The Second Coming will be less forgiving than the Incarnation. There will be no four-week warning period before the Second Coming, like we get during Advent. There will be no six-day period of grace after the Second Coming during which to make resolutions and self-examination, like the secular world does from Dec. 26 until Jan. 1."
Last week I had the privilege of spending a few days in Prague, Czech Republic, with some friends. One day we visited the Jewish Quarter of this beautiful city of countless bridges. Next to a tiny, egregiously overcrowded burial plot -- the only land allotted to Jews for interment for three centuries -- stood the Pinkas Synagogue. On its interior walls were written the full name, birthdate, and date of death for all 77,000-plus known Czechoslovakian Jews who perished under the evils of the Third Reich from 1939-45. It was incredibly moving.*
During these past few weeks standing at the cusp of the Advent season -- not the Christmas season, which begins when the Light of God's Son enters our world late on Christmas Eve -- the narrative of Luke 1-2 has walked through the chambers of my mind, challenging me in what the Coming of the Messiah really means, and means to me. While at the synagogue those like the Virgin Mary, the priest Simeon, and the prophetess Anna came to mind, who were eagerly awaiting "the consolation of Israel" and "the redemption of Jerusalem" (Luke 2:25, 38). They may have been back within the physical boundaries of the Promised Land, but centuries of foreign occupation and oppression pointed them to the fact that they were still in exile, awaiting their homecoming in the kingdom of God. And something tells me that the erosion and pain the Jews have had to face is, really, that of all of us who belong to the new Israel of God by faith in his crucified and risen Messiah.
Am I so content with my life right now and what I have seen of God and his redemption that I no longer yearn with such pangs for our King's Second Coming? The Apostle Paul said that he groaned and longed for release from the pains of this life -- be they persecutions, illnesses, discouragement, slandering, his own sin -- into the freedom and glory of life in intimate, relational presence with his Lord when "what is mortal will be swallowed up by life" (2 Cor. 5:1-5; Rom. 8:18-25). Am I discontent with the now? Do we long with eager yearning for Christ to come, slay all enemies of his church, and make all things new? Is the news of a coming Savior the chief desire of ours?
O Mighty God, you have blessed us with your Son's coming to defeat sin and death and offer the promise of life and rescue to all who would flee to him. Free us from the love of the things of this world that cause us to sit in idleness and some discontent with the fact that it will all one day -- suddenly, like a thief -- be done away with, and you will be the sole source of joy to remain. May we learn to fix our hope fully on the grace that is to be ours at your revelation. Amen.
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*I thought it was especially poignant that on the synagogue's interior was written Lamentations 1:12: "Is it nothing to all you who pass by this way? Look and see if there is any pain like my pain which was severely dealt out to me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of His fierce anger."
To my joy and anticipation, the fourth and final candle on our Advent wreath was lit this evening. Tonight again the Christchild comes.
