Jesus Has Come

I posted all these nifty things abut Advent, one for each week, fully intending to write something just like it for Christmas. You know, the post about what it means that Jesus is here, that He came into the world, that I have Jesus in my life. Like the other posts, I could surround it with nifty quotes from the Bible and call it done.

It hasn't quite worked out that way.

I thought about it. I read all the readings. I went to three services at two different churches. You would think I'd be so crammed full of words and ideas that this blog post would write itself -- or at least be splattered with a jumble of words that exploded out of me.

But no: nothing. At the end of the day, I have no fully formed idea of what it means that Jesus came into the world. I have no idea what that means for and in my life. Oh sure, I have a lot of theological ideas in my head about salvation and light and theosis. But that doesn't really tell me what it means.

I know what Jesus' birth means for me in little ways, in the small ways it affects my life and my decisions. But I don't really have a handle on the big picture. It's just too much: too large, too bright, too encompassing. I can't see it. I can't get a firm grasp on it. It's like trying to see the blinding light of the sun. It's blurry and uncertain and cannot be fixed in my sight. I see what the sunlight does to the world, but I just can't look into it and see it for itself.

So I admit it: I have no idea. There's nothing I could come up with other than this not-knowing, this not-understanding. Sorry, but I guess Christmas is just like that for me. I'm not quite sure how to face it head-on. It's easy to explain away uncertainty in the half-darkness of Advent. But when it comes to Christmas itself, I guess I'll just have to settle for living with blindness, and all the feelings that come with being unable to understand the biggest and most important thing in my life.

Love

"The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end"" (Luke 1:30-33).

I was reminded this past Sunday that love can be incredibly inconvenient. Our Nativity pageant was told from the perspective of the innkeeper and his wife: imagine their ire when all these people kept showing up at their inn! They'd had a hard day's work, but here they all came, insistent, untimely, demanding. No wonder the innkeeper was perturbed! 

Love can be inconvenient. It comes -- and is demanded of us -- at times we weren't expecting. It is messy. It is entangled. It can be brutally heartbreaking. Love makes great demands on us. Nowhere are we reminded of this more than in the reality of God becoming flesh.

God chooses a confused virgin as the dwelling place for the Son as He grows within her. It's more than a little inconvenient.

Our God is born in a stable to a mother accompanied by no midwife to help her give birth. It's more than a little messy.

Jesus has a human mother, married to a husband who raises the child as his own, and a Father in heaven, which prompts him to disappear for a few days in the Jerusalem temple, leaving everyone else terrified. It's more than a little entangled.

Jesus' dedication in the temple is accompanied by Simeon's prophesy to Mary that "a sword will pierce your own soul also" (Lk 2:35). Her son, whom she loves, will leave his family to travel around preaching the good news. He will be both wildly popular and popularly reviled. He will die, horribly, on the Cross. It's more than a little heartbreaking.

Yet Mary "treasured all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:51).

For love of their son, Mary and Joseph became a refugee family as they fled to Egypt to save his life. Mary meets her son carrying his own cross, and watches him fall. She receives his body, and sees it lying in the tomb.

Sorrow and love and mystery, all bound up together. Most of us won't have to face the staggering loss that came with Mary's love. But we all know, from our own lives, that saying yes to love is bound up with messiness, with pain, and with inconvenience alongside the joy. Love fulfills our deepest human needs, but no one ever said it was easy.

Our longing for God is bound up with inconvenience. We are called upon to say yes to God in ways that aren't always easy. God comes into our lives in unexpected ways, sometimes in ways we don't enjoy. We are asked to step out of our comfort zone, to do things we don't want to do. This is what loving God entails.

God's love for us comes in the glorious manifestation of His promise, the Incarnation and final coming of Christ. Christ the King, Christ the infant. They are the same. Love in all its messiness is tied to love in its glory. We are preparing to celebrate God's coming into the world. Through it all, the thing that matters most is our own willingness to love and be loved, to embrace love in all its fullness and complexity. 

"And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing [...] And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love" (1 Corinthians 13:2-3, 13).

 

Joy

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 16-21).

Gaudate Sunday is all about joy. But this time of year, with the holiday approaching, isn't necessarily a joyful time for everyone. People are worried about money, about family, about all the things in their lives that haven't turned out the way they'd like. Hopelessness, darkness, and despair plague many. And we, as Christians, have the audacity to talk to them about joy.

It can be a bitter pill to swallow, this thing about joy. Why am I not feeling it? Is there something wrong with me? Am I missing the point in all my anxiety? People can be shocked, and even angry, when they realize they aren't feeling the happiness everyone around them is preaching. Why can't my holiday be like the one on the television?

Many people have said this before, but it bears repeating: happiness and joy aren't the same thing. Happiness is a feeling, an emotion, a sensation that comes about often due to an experience. Of course it can also be a person's disposition, true enough, but happiness fluctuates easily depending on how much sleep we've had or what we overheard our coworker saying behind our back. Happiness is like a bubble that expands, contracts, and can even be popped.

Joy isn't like that.

Joy is a thing that we can't always feel the way we feel an emotion. Joy is planted inside us by God and it's there all the time, but we don't necessarily feel it. Joy is something deeper, something more lasting, quietly guiding our lives.

Imagine the joy in Mary's heart when she saw the angel, when she said 'yes' to God and carried Jesus within her. Sure she felt happiness: she was carrying a child for whom she was full of love. But I bet she was also full of anxiety, of fear, maybe even panic. She didn't fully know what she was getting herself into. But she knew it could be bad. There would definitely be some kind of consequence. After all, you can't hide a pregnancy forever, not even a supernatural one.

Joy is like that: it hides underneath other emotions. It gives us strength. Other people can see it in us even when we can't see it ourselves. It brings us happiness, but it also leads us through pain and doubt.

We all have a calling in this life -- to follow Jesus, to discern the ways in which he leads us, to follow Him with all of our strength. That is joy: joy planted in us, joy growing stronger, joy leading us onward into the light. Joy is the thing that helps us transform our pain through prayer so that it becomes something else. Joy is the thing that finds strength in our weakness and brings light into dark places. Joy is saying 'yes' to God.

In joy, our pain and sorrow becomes something deeper, something more meaningful; hidden in joy -- or with joy hidden within it -- we discover that God does not leave us alone, that our lives have a bigger meaning than ourselves, and that nothing bad can go on forever because it is never the end. Only a step on our larger path.

That doesn't mean that joy obliterates sorrow and sadness. It shouldn't, and it can't. But in it we find our darkest moments are being transformed. In it, we find the place inside us where God dwells, filling us with His love.

"My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name" (Luke 1:46-49).