eighteen inches

Christmas Clichés & Cozy Christianity

Sometimes, Christmas gets old. In the midst of gift shopping and wrapping, of seeing family, and of cookies and hot chocolate, church services in the month of December occasionally feel like something to get through. The post-Thanksgiving Evangelical American experience seems a lot like this: Christians get together to read the same story and sing the same songs as the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that. It’s what they’ve always done.

A sense of guilt encroaches when I realize that my attitude toward Christmas hymns and the Christmas story has become similar to my reaction to a certain professor’s anecdotes, most of which I’ve heard seven times: inherent boredom and feigned interest. In order to rid myself of this self-reproach, I try hard to enjoy the long prologue to the lighting of the advent candles every week in order to feel better about myself. I ignore the sarcastic comments that appear unbidden in my head: “Does anybody else realize that this Christmas song doesn’t actually say anything definitive?” or “Why on earth do these lyrics describe snow? In the Middle East?” It is no wonder, however, that in America the Christmas story happens upon the same path in a Christian’s mind as a joke that’s been told too many times. For who decided that a joke should be retold because of the mere virtue of the fact that it has been told multiple times in the past? It does indeed follow that the punch line should lose its comical luster.

However, the solution isn’t remixed songs, better decorations, and a new spin on the old story. The solution isn’t catering to our entertainment. It is figuring out why Christmas has become old news to us.

The story of how Jesus came is going to be boring to us if the reason He came is also old news rather than the Good News. Christmas monotony is gospel monotony. Christ’s birth cannot be talked about without speaking of Christ’s death. Yet both, for so many Christians, have become dull and repetitive. Monotony comes when these two messages have no relevance for today and tomorrow. “Jesus died for my sins, so what?” is the question I’ve asked for years—not audibly, of course, or even consciously, but insinuated through my lifeless, vapid approach to Easter and Christmas.

Gospel indifference happens, I’ve discovered, when we have only been acquainted with that message as something that gets our foot in the door. Once you’re saved, you’re often dumped into the Christian fishbowl where your growth is scrutinized and critiqued from all sides and subtle expectations of perfection replace the reality of slow, life-long sanctification. Christ saves, but even if the world seems colorful for a while, the colors fade back into the gray doldrums of actuality. “The gospel” becomes a cliché in Christianity rather than the point of Christianity, and church happens as a way to make ourselves feel better. Tradition, though boring, is comfortable, and that is where we will remain.

Remaining here results in the strictly religious Christianity that so many have seen and disdained. Gospel-less sermons come with application that subtly but tangibly expect that you follow through—and if you’re unable, you’re most likely not trying hard enough. Gospel messages, if extended, are geared specifically toward those who “don’t know Jesus.” You participate in prayer and reading the Word in order to ease your conscience, not to learn more about and be close to its Author. Christmas and Easter get old, and perhaps you wonder, as I have wondered: “Why does it matter?”

 Let us take that very question for example. If we are asking why it matters, we are missing something. There has to be something else. Our ungratefulness knows no bounds! None of us are truly thankful, grateful, in awe enough of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We could praise Him our entire lives and it wouldn’t be enough, yet we’ve already passed days, hours, and years doing the very opposite. Our ungratefulness, perhaps we have sensed, is entirely sinful.

You have probably heard that Christ died on the cross for your sins. When He did, experiencing hour after hour of suffering as your sins held him there, He knew that you would not be grateful. He knew that you would look upon His great sacrifice and spit in His face with your apathetic boredom, asking, “Why does this matter?” This lack of gratefulness is more sinful and disgusting than you’ve ever realized. To use Tim Keller’s illustration, when Jesus looked down from the cross, he didn’t think, “I am dying, giving myself up because I know you will be grateful and that you will always appreciate me.” No, in agony, he looked down at you—denying him, abandoning him, and betraying him—and in the greatest act of love in history, he stayed. He still suffered, died, and bled so that when God gazes upon you, He does not see an ungrateful son or daughter that underappreciates His sacrifice. It is the lifeblood of His very sacrifice—the one you are ungrateful for—that covers you so that God instead sees you as having lived as perfectly as Jesus had.

Our Christmases are cliché and our Christianity is cozily shallow because we do not understand or appreciate the gospel. But it is the gospel that changes our under-appreciation. Because of the gospel, nothing hinges on our ability to produce gratefulness or joy at hearing the gospel. We are still as righteous as if we had never ceased praising God after the manner of the four creatures in Revelation 4 who day and night cry, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come!” And this knowledge, brought forth by the very gospel message we’d deemed boring, produces gratefulness and joy. Praise Him!

Like an Unrehearsed Symphony

Our Conductor has very poor musicians to work with, indeed.

We are a mixed crowd of secretaries, unemployed hipsters, lawyers, teachers, and doctors that know nothing about music. In our concert black we might look at least somewhat presentable on the outside… except, perhaps, for the one wearing suspenders and dark skinny jeans rather than slacks. Where is his tie, anyway, and how can he play his instrument with his iPhone glued to his hand? We have been given one small morsel of direction: “Watch me,” He says. Yet for some reason our eyes always manage to stray, most frequently to survey the audience for signs of approval or disapproval.

Thank goodness the Director is a much better Teacher than we are students.

We cannot make music. In fact, we are incapable of it. Our standard for pleasant tunes soars far out of our reach. It is with miserable trepidation we gaze at the score, jumbled like a foreign language. Stomachs plummeting, the concert starts, and we expect nothing but disaster to occur.

Yet… miraculously, it does not. The trumpets are not a train wreck and the flutes escape their solo without causing widespread eardrum hemorrhaging. The timpani and the snare drum drive the tempo in complete unity. The melody and harmony are not merely acceptable, but magnificent! And at the end of the score, when the notes in the air fall silent and applause takes their place, we stay rooted to our seats in utter awe rather than stand. For we know something that perhaps the audience does not: It was not the musicians that created the music.

This unrehearsed symphony is what astounds me about being used by God for His glory. For what is my most prevalent excuse as to why God should not choose to use me to further His kingdom? “Well, I am unqualified, of course. I am too this, and not enough of that.” I don’t have a certain set of qualifications that would, in my estimation, deem me usable by God.

…As if I myself were capable of creating those qualities in myself. As if I could muster a little bit more of something, and suddenly God would use me. As if God could be found standing around, tapping His foot anxiously and saying, “Sarah, hurry up and be good enough to work for the Kingdom, because time is ticking and you’ve got people to save!” Everything about that concept is preposterous! Isn’t the substance of the gospel the very idea that I am of worth not because of my adequacy but because He died to account for my great insufficiency? I myself am in such need of that very same message that He uses me to share!

If it were my merit that deemed me usable, then the glory would not be all His, would it? The truth of the matter is, the more incapable l am, the more evident it is that He should receive all the praise, honor, and glory. And as it stands, any satisfactory ability that I possess that He should use to further His kingdom was given to me by Him to begin with.

It was never about me and what I can or cannot do. It’s not about whether I stutter or whether I am awful at phrasing things without a pen and paper at my disposal. It’s not about my ability to synthesize the gospel into a nice, neat little package that is presentable - in my eyes - to the audience.

Yes, my friends, God’s unrehearsed symphony of Kingdom work is never about the musicians or their capabilities. He has chosen us for His glory, not for our competence. And there is nothing more humbling than to sit at the end of the marvelous performance knowing that the success has nothing to do with our ability - and that it has everything to do with His.

to adorn a palace.

I didn’t ask for it. Most likely none of us knew we’d needed it.

Sometimes, we are blessed by more than a whisper.

“I turned back,” the man in the park had said. “I didn’t want to. You know how it goes.”

It had started to get cold, yet none of us could keep from smiling at the fatherly man that had happened upon us in the English gardens as we’d been taking pictures, laughing, and talking as we strolled. When he’d passed by us earlier, he’d joked and talked with us for a bit, then continued on his way. But a few minutes later as we left the gardens, he’d turned to meet us once again.

“I have something for you,” he said. I was immediately leery. He didn’t seem threatening, but one never knows. But any wariness was soon assuaged, for from his pocket he pulled out a small Bible and read to us, ” ‘Then our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.’ “

Immediately I was amazed that this man had the boldness to pull out his Bible in read this to us, but had to wonder where he was going with this particular verse.

“At first I wondered why our young women weren’t compared to plants, but were instead supposed to be pillars,” he continued. “But then I thought there must be a reason. You see, our daughters think they have to do something to be loved. But in reality, all they have to do is to be and stand strong - to adorn the palace and to reflect Christ.”

It is interesting, I have thought since first hearing those words, that the action of corner pillars in this verse is to “adorn.” A corner pillar holds up an entire building, yet the word “adorn” would seem to contribute to the building aesthetically.

Then I thought of the article I’ve been writing about beauty and modesty, and the research I’ve been doing on beauty. I have discovered that in Scripture, beauty as seen by God comes from the character (1 Peter 3,  2 Timothy 2, 1 Samuel 16:7, Proverbs 31:30, 1 Timothy 4:8).

Ahh. So perhaps the analogy breaks down eventually, as most analogies do. But perhaps we are beautiful not because we were first aesthetically appealing, but merely because God placed us in His palace. Perhaps we are beautiful because our job is to reflect Christ, for His glory.

While these thoughts were rolling around like marbles in my head (such is the usual case for my brain), the man in the park went on. “You see, when I first stopped and talked to you, I could see by the light in your eyes and the joy in your manners that you were children of God. I’d like to say a blessing for you today.”

And there in the park, we bowed our heads and he prayed for us.

Indeed, thank you, Lord, for blessing us with more than a whisper that day.

Psalm 144:12.