Bored With the Christmas Story

The Christmas story we’ll tell and celebrate this week is the same story that’s been told for the past two-thousand years. Nothing has changed about it. And because nothing has changed, there’s an inherent danger presented to us—boredom.

You might be bored with that story right now. Even thinking ahead to going to a church service, listening to the same songs, hearing the same passage or passages of Scripture being read might be enough to make you wish you could just fast-forward through all that same old, same old.

But you don’t have to be bored with it, if you don’t want to. You can resist the boredom by reminding yourself of the actual story. This isn’t a rebellion against the Christmas or anything like that—I think we’re still free to enjoy all that fun. It’s a chance to remember where we came from and why Christmas has any meaning for us at all.

For thousands of years, God’s people had been struggling as they followed him. The struggle didn’t start with Moses, and it didn’t start with Abraham. Adam and Eve found that they struggled in the garden. This pattern continued through Abraham, through Moses, into the judges, kings, and prophets. God’s people had a hard time finding a consistent footing as they tried to follow keep in step with him.

The result was exile. First, a spiritual one, then a physical exile.

While reflecting on the human condition, the prophet Jeremiah said that, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV). The teacher in Ecclesiastes said that, “The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live” (Ecclesiastes 9:3, NIV). The prophet Isaiah, speaking a word of condemnation and warning over God’s people, made clear their fate if they continued in their folly as he said, “ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes” (Isaiah 6:9-10, NIV).

If this wasn’t enough, God’s people continually found themselves “outside” of where and what they were made for. First, Adam and Eve were removed from the garden and prevented from returning. Next the new people of God were in slavery for 400-years in Egypt. Next, they were unable to find the promised land as they wandered the wilderness. Next, because of Moses’s disobedience—and the disobedience of an entire generation of Israelites—they were unable to finally enter the newly found promised land. From there, their exile continued as God’s people found themselves under judges and kings who treated them poorly, resulting in another exile, this time to Babylon.

Within this struggle, though, there was a hope laid out for God’s people. A hope that he would make all things new. A hope that this pattern of exile would finally end. Long before the apostle John wrote Revelation, the prophet Isaiah talked about a new heavens and a new earth. 2 Chronicles and the prophet Malachi both shared a similar hope of God doing something that he hadn’t done before—perhaps arriving to rule and reign as the true king.

After the last words of the Old Testament there were many, many years where the people waited. They knew what had been promised, and they held out hope for the promise, but it wasn’t always easy. They grew restless. They started to wonder if God was really going to do what he said he was going to do. Generation after generation would pass down this hope, reminding those who came after of what was promised. And then something miraculous happened.

Paul tells it like this:

Who [Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11, NIV)

God stepped into this world in a way he had never done before. In the ancient past God was just a little bit removed from his people. Sure, he was walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and he was going before them in the exodus, and he was present in the temple, and the prophets were his mouthpiece, but he was still unapproachable in some real sense. That is, until, he made himself nothing. God—the one uncreated being in the entire universe—became like those he created—you and me. He became a human being in the person of Jesus. He became what he was not, so you and I could be finally be what we were created to be—fully human.

Not only that, but as a human being he humbled himself—even to the point of death on a cross. God, himself, not only willingly stepped into humanity, but willingly stepped into death. Because of that he has been exalted above everyone and everything else. All honor and glory belongs to him.

This all happened because God became a human being. The cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the exaltation, the second coming, and the new heaven and new earth, are all a result of what happened on that first Christmas day.

How can we be bored with a story like that?

This story we’re a part of, this story that we get to tell and pass on to our kids, this story that makes everything else we believe in a reality is worth leaning into in a fresh way each year. We might be bored with doing the same things year after year, but let’s not confuse that with being bored about the God of the universe becoming a human being.

That was a miracle, and miracles are never boring.

A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (2)

When it comes down to it, is Christianity simply an incoherent set of belief systems?

Christians believe that the Bible was written by real people who lived thousands of years ago and yet we believe that God is the author of those same Scriptures. Christians also believe that the God we worship is one and yet three at the same time—one being in three persons, or three persons in one being. Also, Christians believe that a man was killed by being nailed upon a cross and then came back to life three days later.

Finally, Christians believe that Jesus was somehow God and man at the same time. This is where the creed comes in. It reads: Now this is the true faith: that we believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is both God and man, equally. 

According to the authors of the creed, they believe that the true faith is believing that Jesus is both God and man equally. That last word in the sentence is interesting. I think, for most of us, when we talk about Jesus being God and man, we like to say that he’s fully God and fully man. That’s helpful, but it also it’s less precise than we might be able to be.

When we think of things as being full, there’s only one sense in which they can be full. They can’t be full twice. If a cup is full of water and then you pour milk in it, some of the water will overflow out. This then is applied to Jesus and his humanity and divinity. Jesus is fully God and then some humanity is dumped in, which causes some of his divinity to overflow out. This, however, is now what the creed, nor the Scriptures say.

The Scriptures do not present a Jesus who is partly God and partly human that somehow make up a new being. Instead, they present a Jesus who is equally God and human at the same time. We cannot say that he is God over and above him being a human. Neither can we say that he is a human over and above him being God. 

The same Scriptures that present Jesus forgiving sins in Mark 2: “But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10a, NIV)—doing only what God can do—also present Jesus as eating food: “While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15, NIV)—doing what humans do.

A Moment on the Scriptures: The Theology of Christmas (1)

It’s often said that we need to put Christ back in Christmas. And that’s said as a way to lament the fact this Christian celebration has largely been lost to the world. This is probably true, but the question is: What should we do about it?

I think, in part, what we can do is to think honestly and carefully through the theology of Christmas. What does it mean that we celebrate the birth of Jesus? What is so significant about his birth? How does Christmas help us understand who this Jesus is?

Over the next several episodes of “A Moment on the Scriptures”, I’d like to use a section of the ancient Athanasian Creed that focuses on the birth of Jesus—the incarnation—and see how that creed can help us understand what we’re celebrating on December 25.

Let’s begin with the first statement from that section of the creed.

But it is necessary for eternal salvation that one also believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully. 

Admittedly, that’s a bold claim from the writers of this creed. What they have said is that in order for someone to be saved—walk in eternal life now and be welcomed into the kingdom when Jesus returns—they must believe rightly about the incarnation.

Why would they make such a statement about something like this with Jesus? This isn’t about his work on the cross. This isn’t about his resurrection from the dead. This isn’t about his own requirement that people believe and trust in him. This is about his incarnation.

I think it’s because if we believe wrongly about the incarnation, then the Jesus we are believing in is not the one shown to us through the Scriptures. It is a different Jesus. The same thing can be said for any number of things about him in general. If we started to believe that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, then the Jesus we’re believing in is not the one found in the New Testament, because that Jesus died on the cross. If we started to believe that Jesus didn’t really raise bodily from the dead, then the Jesus we’re believing in is not the one found in the New Testament, because that Jesus rose bodily from the dead. And, if we started to believe that didn’t really put on flesh through his birth, then the Jesus we’re believing in is not the one found in the New Testament, because that Jesus did put on flesh. Therefore, we would be believing in a Jesus of our own imagination, who is no real Jesus at all.

That’s why I think it is appropriate for the writers to begin where they have with this section of the creed. They are putting all their cards on the table so to speak as it relates to the incarnation.

What they are saying is, getting our thinking right about the incarnation is not about checking a box for good theology; instead, it’s about believing and trusting in the Jesus found in the New Testament—the only real Jesus who exists, the only real Jesus from whom comes life eternal.