Minister's Minute from the December Journal of Hope and Joy

What is Christmas but the celebration of the God who comes? That is good for us to remember. I wonder if we now try so hard to keep the Christ is Christmas that we have ignored who the Christ is? And the answer, of course, is the God who comes. Occasionally we make our prayer, “Come Lord Jesus, Come,” but at this time of year we celebrate that God did come. Came like one of us. Crying, cold, wetting himself, needing to cared for, weak, just like us. Some people do not want to hear that and I understand why. We want to lift up God past this dirtiness of life, to move God beyond the gross and mundane and terrible and sad. We want God outside the limitations of our humanity, and outside the things that we cannot control, because, I suppose, we are looking how to get out of it ourselves. It is hard to think of a God that shows up as a little baby right smack dab in the middle of the messiness of all of this. And, if we are to be honest, it was even worse than we think. It is nice to sentimentalize things, because it allows us to stand at distance from it psychologically. However, as the story goes, he was born into utter filth. An unwed mother and a father who was not his acting as a nurse having to birth him into some place where animals ate and defecated, not exactly a lovely beginning. Yet we cannot see that in our scenes of the nativity that we use to adorn our homes. Why would God choose that? Perhaps the answer is truly simple, because God wanted to. God wanted to be born into the muck and mire, the filth and garbage, the horror and terror, the sickness and sadness. God wanted to be discovered where others would never think God would be. And therein lies the hope of it all. When we pray for God to show up, God does. God shows up in the mess that is our lives even if we think is too messy for such a holy God. God makes way into the places where evil reigns and death rules. God goes to the places of illness and treachery and grief. We expect to find God in places that we deem are sacred, and yet we keep finding God in places of filth turning the filthiness sacred simply by being there. We have the God who comes! This is the good news of great joy and it still is. We do not have to go to places to find God, God comes to us to find us. God comes into our lives and works to redeem them. God does not care what grossness may be found within us or around us. We have a God who was born into utter filth, something that we could not imagine, and we know why. Because God’s love moves God forward even as we run back. God’s love forces God in. God’s love is not turned off by icky, awful mess we are, because God’s love does not stop and goes where we would never think of going to find those who God loves. This Christmas season pray for God to come into the mess again. The good news is that God will, and in that way we will not need to try to fight to keep Christ in Christmas, he will come on his own. With anticipation of the Spirit’s wave, Garrett