Apparently there was a lot of debate this year on whether to go to church on Christmas or not, being that Christmas had the gall to fall on Sunday. I was listening over some friends talk about it and was curious when the last time we had this crisis. I checked. It was 1994. From what I could tell, not being a news watcher, the argument against keeping church was "Christmas is a time for family" while the other side said "No, Christmas is a religious holiday".I have at least one insight to offer that maybe has escaped notice. The other half of "Christmas is a time for family" is "Christmas is a time for family, not institution" or "Christmas is a time for the warmth and tradition of family, not the frigidity and mechanics of institution." I would say that every day is a time for the warmth and tradition of family, not the frigidity and mechanics of institution. I wish people would have the same concern for warm, nurturing relationships, turning the hearts of the fathers towards the children and the hearts of the children towards the fathers all through the year. Why do we have to wait for Christmas to have this debate?
But I have to put into context what I mean when I say "family". We have largely lost the concept of the "family of God" that Peter and Paul and others wrote about, and that all of the early church seemed to accept as reality. [1] I really appreciate what the preacher at my old church is reported to have said during his Christmas sermon—that Christmas was a time for family, and church is the only family a lot of people have. And that's why they chose to get together on Sunday, December 25, 2005. Where is the family of God? Have you seen it? When you look at Christians, do you see a striking resemblance to the heavenly Father or to the firstborn and full-grown son, Jesus? Do you see people that are as concerned about their brothers and sisters in Christ as their own husband, wife, or children? Or is it “My family is first, God’s family is second.”? Is the family name I got at my first birth or my second birth[2] more significant? more real? more important to me? Just a thought.
On this one, I feel a little like Admiral Kirk in one of the Star Trek movies, the one where the cadets had to face this theoretically unsolvable simulation. Legend had it that Kirk was the only one who ever beat it. But the truth was that he reprogrammed the simulator. I opted out of this debate. We didn’t “go” to church, but then church meets in our home, so we never “go”. But at the same time I admit that our church gathering on Christmas was only biological family—me, my grandmom, dad, sister, wife, and kids. Actually it wouldn’t be right to call it a biological family—both my sister and I were adopted as babies. And maybe that’s part of why it’s easier for me to identify with the family of God than some. Maybe that makes it easier for me to accept the “Spirit of adoption”[3] than some. Maybe.
Anyway, it was just us on Christmas, and it felt like it was going to be really down with Mom gone. Everyone says that the first everything after a loved one dies is especially hard—first Christmas, first anniversary, first birthday, and so on. We really were all kind of sad, and I don’t feel wrong about that at all. But something amazing seemed to happen to us. We shared communion and we read together the awesome story of the Incarnation from Luke 2. I listed the characters in the story—Julius Caesar, Joseph, Mary, the shepherds, the Angel of the Lord, the heavenly host, the Baby, Anna, and Simeon—and asked each one to choose one of the characters and tell us what they must have been thinking, how they felt about what was happening. Dad went first, being Julius Caesar, saying something like, “I’m Julius Caesar, the king of the world, and I have a security problem with all these people that I have conquered…so I have issued a decree that a census be taken…and plus once I count the people it makes them easier to tax into submission.” It was fun to enter into the world he set us in, and we talked about the census and taxes and also about the unlikeliness of Jesus being born in Bethlehem, a city he wouldn’t have been born in without Julius Caesar and his census, a city the Christ must have been born in for the prophecy to come to pass.[4] Grace was Mary, Benjamin was Joseph, Jill was the angel, and I was the stars. Grandmom was Anna the old prophetess in the temple, and that was fun to talk about, too. Dad, the lawyer, said that in law you want to establish credibility of your witnesses, and this account does just that with these two very respectable, known people witnessing the birth and naming of Jesus, and bringing testimony that He was the Promised One. It was great conversation, but more amazing to me was that we really seemed to enter the story. It was like the way the story was written was an invitation for us to jump in, see ourselves there, make it our own story, to be part of the family of God.
I’ve just been thinking: Isn’t it great that God rules us with a story, instead of with laws and endless debates? Isn’t it great that the Bible was written as a collection of stories rather than a collection of statutes? Isn’t it great that God’s greatest revelation of Himself is not as our judge or our prophet or our policeman or our genie or our boss, but our father?
Like I said in a previous post, “spending time with family” didn’t save our Christmas. But our Christmas was saved. It somehow felt like our family was swallowed up in the family of God, and maybe we remembered for a moment that death was even swallowed up in victory, because the family of God even reaches beyond the grave. God decided to raise a family. And not only will he raise my mom, but he will raise all of us to be just like Himself, to be worthy of the Family Name we bear. It’s a good name. It’s a good family.
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”[5]
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[1] For example, see 1 Peter 4:17, Galatians 6:10, Ephesians 3:15, Hebrews 2:11, Acts 2:44
[2] John 3:7, Ephesians 3:15, Matthew 28:19, Acts 2:38, Acts 8:15-17
[3] Romans 8:15
[4] Micah 5:2
[5] 1 Corinthians 15:50-55
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