QUARANTINE BLOG # 636

December 26, 2021

“Christ Our Center” from The Word in the Wind, by Bruce L. Taylor

What is it in us that is thrilled and excited by holiday celebrations, on the one hand, but then is so eager to return to life as usual, which is to say, life as it was before the celebration? To put it a bit cynically, God’s annual intrusion into our culture’s consciousness had left hardly a footprint on the world’s agenda, except a new record against which to measure next year’s shopping spree. Or were there enduring moments of wonder as, for the first time, a young child peered innocently over the side of a pasteboard manger? Were there lingering moments of reflection as modern angels singing “Gloria” coaxed a tear down the cheek of an adult who remembered how his or her parents used to sing a bedtime song about shepherds sore afraid on a hillside and then offering jubilant praise in a stable? Were there surprising moments of gratitude when someone long burdened by a sense of sin suddenly realized that Christmas is not a sentence of doom for our failures, but the dawn of hope for a new beginning?

Who can resist the charm of Luke’s story of the shepherds and the manger? Who can hear it without painting a mental picture that can be revisited time and time again? But it is more difficult to fathom the profound words of Johns Gospel that tell us why Christ’s birth was so important:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being ... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a fathers only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14).

If we really ponder the opening words of the Gospel of John, we have to understand that Christmas is not just an annual nudge to be a little more generous and a little less judgmental. Our Christmas Day celebration should be an annual witness to the day two thousand years ago on which all of history changed forever, which demands that human priorities must be completely reordered, after which nothing could ever be the same as it was before. Christmas is the abnormal, extraordinary, unusual day on the calendar that declares that we should no longer think of any day as normal or ordinary or usual. That first Christmas, the most amazing miracle happened that could ever happen, and the most important event. That first Christmas, God entered the world to walk among us and alongside us. That first Christmas, the Word of God became flesh.

In an inevitable process that no politician, no army, no nation can thwart, either by orchestrated insanity or by unspeakable atrocities, either by rampant materialism or by a steady diet of amusement, everything is coming into its proper place arranged around and having its only real meaning in Jesus Christ, the Word of God. The world may be too preoccupied with its busyness to acknowledge the truth. Dictators and business tycoons may ignore it. Shoppers and moviegoers may not realize it. Scholars and tramps may be unaware. But everything is being brought to a focus in Christ, and as far as God is concerned, Christ is the center of the entire universe and all of history. 

Nothing has significance apart from Christ – no fact, no object, no thought, no emotion, no deed. No institution has significance apart from Christ – no government, no school, no economic system. No relationship has significance apart from Christ – no friendship, no marriage, no employment, no rulership. Only as they are focused through the lens of the truth of Jesus Christ are any relationships genuine, are any institutions worthy, are any facts, objects, thoughts, emotions, deeds important at all. Because only in Christ are they seen in the light of the truth of God’s purpose for all of creation, and the light of the truth of God’s destiny for all of creation. Only in Christ are heaven and earth joined in the redemptive fellowship of the creatures with their Creator. Only in Christ are human pride and fear and jealousy and greed and hatred overcome by and through the ultimate truth – the Word of God, revealed to us in the very person of Jesus Christ.

All of us, to some degree, show by what we do and think and say on December 26th that we suppose there are two universes, that we suppose we can operate in two realms of existence, that we believe in two truths, if you will – the truth of Christmas, and the truth of the rest of the year. Shocked by a truth that he had worked hard to ignore, Ebenezer Scrooge announced near the end of Charles Dickens’ masterful tale that he was going to keep the spirit of Christmas throughout the entire year. And perhaps we can even imagine that he did, as a fictional character. But a hundred messages from the culture we have built – what we think of as the realities of business, the requirements of school, the duties of family life – tell us that it is the message of Christmas that is not quite real. It is a toasting of virtues that we can never attain, a championing of a hope that we spend the rest of the year unraveling, an idolizing of what we can never be. 

“Let’s get back to business,” “Let’s return to normal” – those sayings suggest that it is the Word of God lying in a manger that is the fantasy, a gentle falsehood, and that it is everything else we do and say and think that is real, that is true – money-making, amusement, seduction, war. Doesn’t it seem these days that Christmas is an annual pause in things as usual, and then it’s back to outwitting the competition, foreclosing mortgages, and spreading gossip? In other words, back to truth as Madison Avenue tries to define it, as Wall Street tries to define it, as Hollywood tries to define it, as the Pentagon tries to define it, as you and I try to define it in our self-interest and our self-concern? Maybe even the truth as King Herod tried to define it in his pride and his jealousy?

But Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Pentagon, our self-love – none of those is the Word of God. None of those is the rightful focus of our existence and of all creation, the world and everything that is in it. None of those can reveal to us the true purpose of life, and our part in it all – what is expected of us, and how we should show gratitude for what we have been given. 

Jesus Christ is the Word of God, the light, the revelation, the truth that stands above and judges every fact and object and relationship. Jesus Christ is the focus, the hub, the pivot around which all of history turns. Jesus Christ is the norm, the standard, the measure of significance and worthiness and goodness of every human thought, word, and deed. Not just a teacher, his very life and death and resurrection are what God wants us to learn. Not just an example, he himself is the way and the truth and the life. Not just a character in a charming story that we like to recite once a year, he is the person whose birth, whose life, whose death, and whose continuing life have real importance for every race, for every nation, for every generation. No event of history is truer than Christ – not storm, not war, not conquest, not recession. No threat to human existence is truer than Christ – not disease, not hunger, not injustice, not oppression. No enemy of human hope is truer than Christ – not pain, not divorce, not unemployment, not even death.

The Word of God, which is Christ, existed before time was, and will exist even after history comes to an end. All creation came into being in and through him. All things have meaning and worth and destiny only in relationship to him. Everything out there that competes for our attention and our allegiance is only secondary to the truth of God that is Jesus Christ, the Word of God that became flesh to live among us that first Christmas so long ago. And whether they are aware of the truth or not, whether they acknowledge the truth or not, whether they honor the truth or not, every person and every event that ever was revolves around him. He is the meaning, he is the focus, he is the center.

You and I say that we know that truth. You and I have seen the miracle of the manger. You and I must never think that Christmas is a diversion, an interruption, an abnormal suspension of our daily reality. God coming into the world in Jesus Christ is the one truth, the one reality that should be our focus in life. We must never allow all the competing claims of all the other days of the year to deceive us or distract us, to misdirect us or mislead us. We must allow our lives to be ruled by the truth of Christmas, so that Christ, the Word of God who was in the beginning with God, remains the center on which our life, like all of history, is focused. For “all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (John 1:3-4). Praise God. Amen.

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