The one whom Christians have waited for since the beginning of Advent 4 weeks ago, has come on Christmas day: Jesus, the Christ, the long-awaited Messiah of ancient Israel. I wonder if celebrating this event yearly dulls our senses to the outrageous and ridiculous nature of the claims that Christians make about Jesus of Nazareth, born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth in present-day Israel-Palestine.
In these meditations if you have had the chance to read them, we have dared to imagine that hope, peace, love, and joy all mean so much more than what our culture makes of them in this holiday season. We are tempted with each advertisement, shopping trip, Christmas present, and movie to think that things will meet our hunger for fulfillment and meaning, but what our Advent season reminds us is that only in authentic and faithful relationship with God, our neighbors, and creation can we begin to realize what is most important in our lives.
What we have also realized in this season and dared to imagine is that our experience of Christmas is not always positive because each of us knows deep in our being that something about our world and our lives is broken and distorted. We long for things to be put right, for needless suffering to come to an end, for the hungry, thirsty, houseless, and oppressed to be liberated from persistent and perpetual need, inflicted by neighbors and societies. Our greatest temptation and expectation of God comes through in these moments when we grieve a world that seems recklessly and disastrously out of control. We start to wonder how the God of love that we worship on Sunday mornings can stand by as the world burns. We might ask God or demand that God intervenes. We might think that if only God stopped every bad action or intention, or at least stopped the worst instigators. Cannot God at least stop this senseless evil in our world? At the end of Malachi 3, the last book of the Hebrew scriptures in the Bible, the people of ancient Israel ask, “Where is the God of Justice?” What follows in chapter 4 is a prediction that Christian tradition has applied to the coming of Jesus.
What Mennonites dare to imagine each Christmas is that rather than coming as a conquering general or a strong-handed King that uses force, violence, coercion, and threats to stop the injustice of the world, God comes as a vulnerable and impoverished baby in the distant edges of the Roman Empire, growing up and learning from a particular culture, language, and worldview, taking 30 years before stepping out into the cultural and political milieu of the first-century. When God shows up, God comes as a human being to show us the way to authentic and faithful relationship. Can you imagine that?
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