Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote from Tegel prison to his fiancé, Maria.
“The Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong. The way we see the world, how we imagine we succeed in life, what we think of as safety for ourselves or our family, or our world—it’s all wrong.”[1]
What, then, is the message of Christmas we ought to understand?
- Emmanuel, God with us: God moved into my neighborhood and yours. Teresa of Avila said God is “all-near.” Not distant or “up there” somewhere but here, now, present, with us.[2]
- In the first year of life, Jesus experienced the outcome of political oppression. His family escaped political persecution as a political exile and immigrant to Egypt because of Herod’s threats.[3]
- Mary’s song, forever known as The Magnificat, echoed in Jesus’ life as an infant, child, and adult.
- God is savior
- God is mighty, holy, and cares about those of “humble estate.”
- God shows mercy from generation to generation.
- God scatters the proud for their arrogance and honors the humble.
- God has upturned the value of power and reversed our priorities from seeking wealth to seeking the well-being of the poor.[4]
- Jesus’ birth is a news broadcast[5]. What is the news? The kingdom is at hand. Fulfillment comes through the peaceful reign begun in an unexpected place (a stable) to an unexpected infant (a poor, Jewish boy) in an unrespected place (Nazareth) by an unexpected mother (a poor Jewish teenage girl who was pregnant) by an unexpected father (The Holy Spirit).[6]
- “By accepting Jesus as the final and definitive revelation of God, the Christian church makes it impossible for us to make up our own customized variations of the spiritual life and get away with it…Jesus is the incarnation of God, God among and with us…He performed God’s works of healing and compassion, forgiveness and salvation, love and sacrifice among us, men and women with personal names and personal histories.”[7]
We need to see Christmas with different eyes
If Bonhoeffer is right, then we need to see Christmas with different eyes and with a clear vision of biblical revelation of the surprising, unexpected birth foretold centuries before. So, if Christmas only confirms your deeply held, loved, and sentimental views, listen carefully to words and music you have heard so often they may no longer find a home in your mind, your values, your worldview, and your actions…
- Toward the rich and the poor.
- Toward the powerful and powerless.
- Toward unrespected and seemingly unimportant places.
- Toward undervalued people, especially the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in your land.
- Toward the scandal of an incarnational God who lives now in your neighborhood.
- Toward your image of a God who is willing to upset the value most cultures place on wealth, status, location, preferred ethnicity, and power.
Practice: Try to come to Advent and Christmas as if for the first time. Listen. See. Wonder. Be curious. Let your questions arise in your soul. Let the eyes of your faith see what is truly present in unexpected ways.
[1] Winncollier.substack.com, An Advent Letter, December 02, 2024.
[2] John 1:14
[3] Matthew 2:13-14
[4] Luke 1:47ff
[5] Luke 2:10
[6] Luke 1:35
[7] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays In Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, p. 33