Shepherds

“There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them...” (Luke 2:8,9a).

The angel bypassed Jerusalem and the religious folks of that day and appeared to a band of shepherds “living in the fields.” No one back then would have thought that shepherds would be interested in such things, for they were hard, profane men—more like Idaho’s Owyhee County buckaroos than the sanitized shepherds we associate with the story these days.

Yet, like all of us, these were spiritual men, for “spiritual” is not something we seek, but “something we are and cannot escape” (Philosopher Dallas Willard). In all of us there is a deep, insatiable hunger for transcendence, that elusive “something more,” and our hearts break with that longing.

Here is our satisfaction: “Today in the city of David a Savior has been born for you; he is Christ the Lord.” And this is where you will find him: “wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

And so the shepherds went off to search for the baby. They skirted the resorts, spas and lodges of the rich and famous (for there were no feed troughs there) and went looking for a stockyard, a feedlot, or a sheepfold. They found the baby “nearby” (They had no idea how near he was), lying in a manger—the "savior who is Christ the Lord.”

Let’s hear it for the shepherds who found salvation. Let’s hear it for a God who was willing to humble himself to save—the only God worth having; the only God for you and me.

The shepherds found the baby nearby—an easy thing it was to find him. I hope you’ve found him too. If not, I hope you’re still seeking. Wise men and women do.

If you’re seeking, I can tell you where to find him. He’s not in our culture, devoid as it is of any indication that our savior was born. We've left him far behind.

Not to worry, however: he’s still very near: “You’ll find him wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.”

DHR

What If Christmas Means More?

He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME!

Somehow or other, it came just the same!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-feet ice-cold in the snow,

Stood puzzling and puzzling: “How could it be so?”

“It came with out ribbons! It came without tags!”

“It came without packages, boxes or bags!”

And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore.

Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before!

“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store.”

“Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little bit more!”

-Dr. Seuss, How The Grinch Stole Christmas

As incredible as it may seem, a manger is where Christmas CAME! The God of the universe came to earth—to a cold and solitary cave and was born as a tiny, helpless infant. How could it be so?

My task is not to explain it, but to take it into my heart. The more I do, the more I discern the heart of God.

Here’s the lesson for me: That God loves us enough to share our brokenness, weariness, worry and sorrow. He clothed himself in mortal flesh "that so, he might be weak enough to suffer woe" (John Donne). He was and has always been, as one of Israel's prophets put it, “acquainted with grief." 

The world is steeped in sadness these days. Despite the season that promises great joy there is little that comforts and satisfies us. Poet Mathew Arnold was right: "And the world, which seems / To lie before us like a land of dreams, / So various, so beautiful, so new, / Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, / Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; / And we are here as on a darkling plain..." —Dover Beach

Ribbons and tags, packages, boxes and bags can never dispel that sorrow, nor can they heal our broken hearts.

We know that's true; it's a simple and undeniable fact, empirically verified every Christmas. We've all tasted the sadness that descends upon us when the holidays are over and everything is done. Life again becomes "dukkha," as Buddhists say, painful, disjointed and unhappy.

But what if the Grinch was right? What if Christmas doesn't come from a store? What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more? What if it means that God loves you—you, the one reading these lines.

Indeed, God does love you like you wouldn’t believe. He loved you before you were born; he loves you now; he will love you after you die. He has "appeared...from afar saying, 'I have loved you with everlasting love'" (Jeremiah 31:3).

Human love has reasons to love—wealth, beauty, intelligence or other attributes that make love's object loveable and desirable. But divine love is not based on merit or distinction. God loves you, not merely because you are yourself, but because he is himself: "God is Love" (John 4:8,16). Philosopher Peter Kreeft argues that God cannot answer the question, "Why do I love thee?" He can only say, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

One measure of that love is the Crib where God, for our sake, become a wee bairn—the final proof that he loves us as no other.

Why, then, are there no crèches these days? Why do we try so hard to avoid the mystery of God's amazing grace when it is so simple and so blindingly clear? Why are we so afraid of His three little words: "I love you"?

You are God's beloved. Why not tell him, "I love you, too."

 DHR

THE CHILD

I was walking through our mall last week and thought of an old Doonesbury cartoon: Michael J. sits ensconced in his easy chair watching TV. After loud shouts and the sounds of gun fighting the announcer says, “This concludes our regular broadcast day. Stay tuned for film clips of the Marines, a story from the life of Jesus and our National Anthem.” Doonesbury gets to his feet and joins in the singing of the anthem.

There you have it—the good, old American way: Equal time for everything and everybody. Nothing is special any more, not even Jesus, who, if we acknowledge at all, we place in a cluster of traditions.

Especially at Christmas. We keep the Christ–child around to grace an occasional manger, but he’s merely one symbol among many: Rudolph, Scrooge, St. Nicholas and his elves, toy soldiers, little drummer boys, shepherds, angels, Christmas trees, Yule logs and Jesus, all vie for our attention; everything alongside everything else. The Son of God gets lost in the Yuletide clutter.

Melissa knows better. She’s one our grandchildren. Some years ago, Carolyn and I took her to the Festival of the Trees—an event here Boise in which businesses and organizations decorate Christmas trees, competing with one another in various categories. The display is magnificent.

We were enchanted by the grandeur of the hall as we moved from one tree to the next, pointing and exclaiming. But Melissa soon lost interest, surfeited by splendor, until she came to a small manger scene and there she paused transfixed.

Nothing else mattered—not the magnificently decorated trees, not Santa Claus who was nearby and beckoning and not even an incredible talking tree.  She was captivated by the Child.

We tried our best to urge her on—we wanted to see the trees—but she lingered behind, wanting to hold the baby, pressing closer to him despite the ribbon stretched around the cradle, keeping her away.

Finally, she agreed to leave, albeit reluctantly, looking back over her shoulder to get a glimpse of the crèche through the trees. And as we were leaving the building Melissa tugged on my hand and asked, “Papa can we go see the baby?” We returned to the manger and waited while she gazed long and longingly at the Child. 

As Melissa adored Him, I marveled at her simplicity. Unlike her, I often fail to see Jesus for the trees.

“There are some things worth being a child to get hold of again,” George MacDonald said. “Make me a child again,” I prayed, “at least for tonight.”

DHR

Journey of the Magi

“A cold coming we had of it,

Just the worst time of the year

For a journey, and such a long journey:

The was deep and the weather sharp,

The very dead of winter."

And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,

Lying down in the melting snow.

There were times we regretted

The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,

And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling

And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,

And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,

And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly

And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:

A hard time we had of it.

At the end we preferred to travel all night,

Sleeping in snatches,

With the voices singing in our ears, saying

That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,

Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;

With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,

And three trees on the low sky,

And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.

Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,

Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,

And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.

But there was no information, and so we continued

And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon

Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This: were we lead all that way for

Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,

We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,

But had thought they were different; this Birth was

Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,

But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,

With an alien people clutching their gods.

I should be glad of another death.

I’m drawn to T.S. Eliot’s brutal honesty, his willingness to write what he really felt rather than what he would like to feel. “The Journey of the Magi” is one such study in candor.

Christianity came hard for Eliot. Like C. S. Lewis, he was “dragged into the Kingdom kicking and screaming.” His was a desperate leap from bitter cynicism, characterized by a good deal of uncertainty, “wavering between profit and loss,” as he put it. Here, in this poem Eliot spells out his ambivalence. 

“The Journey of the Magi” purports to be a monologue in which one of the wise men, traveling from the East to find the Christ-child, recounts his journey with all its hardship and perplexities. 

The opening paragraph of the poem (in quotes) is a direct quotation from a Nativity sermon by a seventeenth century bishop of the Church of England, Lancelot Andrewes, lines Eliot admired for its stark realism. Instead of the simple Gospel report that “magi from the east arrived in Bethlehem,” we read of one man’s arduous journey: the cold, the distance, the dirt, the sleepless nights, the regret, the memories of a palace and the pretty girls left behind; and the hostility of those he encountered on the way, their lack of understanding and encouragement, singing in his ears, “This is all folly.”

One after another (note the repetitious “and”) we learn of the obstacles along the way. The man has little confidence in himself as he pushes toward his goal, haunted by doubt and no assurance that he will find what he seeks at the end of his journey.

The next paragraph opens with a ray of hope: “Then at dawn we came to a temperate valley”: dawn and freshness, the rich smell of damp earth and vegetation, running streams and mills beating in the darkness. Yet in the midst of these pleasant surroundings there are ominous signs: three trees silhouetted against the sky and sinister hands dicing (throwing dice) for pieces of silver, and “no information.”

Nevertheless the wise man journeys on, and eventually arrives one evening, “not a moment too soon” (catch the moment of heightened expectation!) to find “the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory”—a masterpiece of understatement if there ever was one! The goal of the grueling quest is an anti-climax. There is no feeling of fulfillment; no drama, no excitement, no ecstasy. Only perplexity and paradox.

The old man’s faith is firm, “I would do it again,” but what was the purpose of it all? Was it only to die to his past life—his friends, and the ease and affluence of his former days? Having found the Child, he cannot go back to the old life and “an alien people clutching their gods.” He is no longer at ease there. Yet, his new life is “hard and bitter agony,” something “like Death.” Is there nothing now to live for but to wait for “another (final) death?”

Here is one man’s dark night of the soul, a period of unhappiness and skepticism in which he wonders if it’s been worthwhile to leave everything to find and follow Jesus. Who’s mind, if we’re true to ourselves, has not harbored that thought?

Some individuals live in their heads; they’re born with a questioning, inquiring spirit and are predisposed to doubt. It’s the way God made them. Other’s doubts are born of argument: a comment by a respected, but unbelieving university professor, a random word spoken by a friend, an article on the Internet, reflecting the spirit of this age. Or doubt may come through sickness, disappointment, or a friend who succumbs to sin. All give logic to unbelief. What then can we do when “doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind”?

We can take comfort in the thought that doubt is not displeasing to God. He knows how frail and fragile one’s faith can be. “He will not quench a smoking flax.”^[1]  He is wonderfully compassionate, and infinitely patient with our misgivings. He was himself tempted in all points as we are.[2] He fully understands.

We can pray, for nothing is of ourselves, not even faith. Faith is a gift of God. [3]  “I believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” is the cry of honest skepticism.[4]

We can turn doubt into action. We can take up the next duty, the very next thing God is asking us to do. Like Mother Teresa, who, if we can belief her biographers, floundered in deep despair in her final years, we can live a life of service in the midst of our uncertainty. No matter how dark things seem to be there is truth to be lived and, though it seems odd, that obedience can begin to restore our faith. As Jesus said, “If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.”[5]

Finally, we can ponder Peter’s response when Jesus asked his disciples if they too would go away: “Lord,” Peter asks for all of us, “to whom shall we go?”[6]  

DHR

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[1] Isaiah 42:3

[2] It’s worth noting that doubt is not sin, but mere temptation.

[3] Ephesians 2:8,9

[4] Mark 9:24

[5] John 7:17

[6] John 6:68

The God Who Would Be Man

“It seems, then,” said Tirian, smiling to himself, “that the stable seen from within and the stable seen from without are two very different places.” “Yes,” said the Lord Digory. “it’s inside is bigger than it's outside.” Yes, said Queen Lucy. “In our world too, a Stable once had something inside that was bigger than our whole world.”

—C.S. Lewis in The Last Battle

“The Incarnation is the central miracle asserted by Christians,” C. S. Lewis insisted. “They say that God became a man.”

One of first questions raised by the early church is how did it happen? How did the immortal, eternal Word become flesh? Matthew and Luke explain Jesus’ entry into the world as a virgin birth, or more correctly, a virgin conception, for it was Jesus’ conception and not his birth that was unique.[1] Mary was a normal woman in every way and Jesus’ gestation and birth was normal in every way that matters. But his conception was unique for he had no human father. As the old text puts it, Mary “had known no man.”

Mary herself was concerned with this question, for nothing in her schooling necessarily led her to the expectation that Messiah would be virginal born:[2] “How can this be?” she asked the angel, who then explained, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:34, 35). This is a miracle and a mystery.

Every conception, of course, is a miracle. No woman ever conceived a child, no mare a foal, no doe a fawn apart from God. But once, for a very special purpose, God dispensed with natural process and a long line of descendents. With his naked hand he touched Mary and made a wee bairn who was…well, himself.

Here’s where clinical explanations falter. All we can say is what the first writers said: the child was “conceived by the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20). This was inexplicable then as now, and yet was acceptable, a staunch belief enshrined in the earliest creeds.[3] It became part of the minimal faith of new converts. Today it stands at the heart of our faith.

“But does it matter?” you ask. Of course it does. “All this took place,” Matthew informs us, “to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:  ‘The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel’—which means (Matthew translates), ‘God (is) with us’” (Matthew 1:23).

God is with us. That’s what the virgin birth meant and still means. This is an answer to the old question: Does God care? Does disease, pain, infirmity, handicap and death overwhelm him as much as it does us? Does God weep? Does it matter to him that babies are hooked on drugs and infected by AIDs in utero? Dostoyevsky’s cynic, Ivan, asks of human suffering, “What do the children have to do with it?” Does it matter to God that children suffer?

The answer is the Incarnation, for in this act God entered fully into our suffering. Pain was his lot in the slow ascent from a struggling, kicking embryo to an utterly dependent baby, through gangling, awkward adolescent to become a man—a “man of sorrows.” Through all, he was “acquainted with grief.” “In all our afflictions he was afflicted.” Yes, he understands. He cares like no other.

Dorothy Sayers says it far better than I: “For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—He had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever the game he is playing with His creation, He has kept his own rules and played fair.  He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself.  He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death.  When He was a man, He played the man.  He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.”

Jesus’ conception, though one of a kind, is timelessly typical of what is eternally true of God. He “never undoes anything but evil, never does good to undo it again. The union between God and (human) nature in the person of Christ admits no divorce. He will not go out of nature again…”[4] He is, and has always been, Immanuel: “God with us; the God who became just like you and me.

DHR

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[1] The virgin birth should not be confused with the “Immaculate Conception," the Roman Catholic tradition that Mary was free from original sin, or the “Immaculate Reception,” a Franco Harris catch in a play-off game against Oakland in 1972.

[2]Isaiah's prophecy (Isaiah 7:14) does not necessarily raise this expectation. The word Isaiah uses, usually translated virgin ('alma), is ambiguous and may simply mean "young maiden." The near fulfillment of the prophecy probably was a child born to the prophet's wife who was not a virgin. (She had already borne children.) Matthew, however, translates and interprets Isaiah's prophecy with the Greek word, pathenos that is not ambiguous and unequivocally means "virgin" (Matthew 1:14).

[3] The earliest creed, the so-called Apostles' Creed states in part: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord: Who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary..."

[4] C. S. Lewis, Miracles, p. 123

Logos

“The lion was pacing to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song... Polly was finding the song more and more interesting because she thought she was beginning to see the connection between the music and the things that were happening. When a line of dark firs sprang up on a ridge about a hundred yards away she felt that they were connected with a series of deep, prolonged notes which the Lion had sung a second before. And when he burst into a rapid series of lighter notes she was not surprised to see primroses suddenly appearing in every direction. Thus, with an unspeakable thrill, she felt quite certain that all the things were coming (as she said) “out of the Lion’s head.” When you listened to his song you heard the things he was making up: when you looked round you, you saw them” (C.S. Lewis Magicians Nephew p.126).

C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

Plato, the Greek philosopher, reasoned there must be an “idea” (or “form”) behind every object in the material world, one that preceded its existence. And if that idea exists, there must be a mind that conceived it and spoke it into being. These three transcendent realities—a divine mind, an idea, an utterance—Plato combined into one absolute and named it the “Logos” (the Word).

Plato was very near the truth, so near, in fact, that early Christians sometimes referred to him as “one of our own.” But though he caught a glimpse of “the true Light that gives light to every man coming into the world” (John 1:9), he did not fully comprehend it. Something more was needed, something tremendous, something yet to come, something the wisdom of man could not conceive: “The Word (Logos) became flesh and dwelled among us …” (John 1:14). The divine Logos and a mortal man together bore one name: Jesus. This is what Christians call The Incarnation, the final, irrefutable proof that God really, really cares.

American Theologian Frederick Buechner had this to say: “We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want — scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all — would not, in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind to keep the whole show going, but that there is a God right there in the thick of our day-to-day lives who may not be writing messages about himself in the stars, but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move down here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world.  It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want, but whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence.  That is the miracle we are really after, and that is also, I think, the miracle that we really get” (Secrets in the Dark, p.16).

All through the Old Testament we read that God has been doing his best to get next to us, humbling himself, condescending to make himself known, but nothing can match what happened that night in that cave. It was there that the Logos became the little Lord Jesus, a helpless infant with unfocused eyes and uncontrollable limbs, needing to be breast–fed, swaddled, cuddled and cared for, “the infinite made infinitesimally small,” G. K. Chesterton mused. “Immensity contracted to a span.” That is indeed the miracle we’re really after and the miracle that we got: The Logos become Immanuel: God with us.

John speaks of the Logos in a most personal way: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled—(this was) the Word (the eternal Logos)!” (1 John 1:1).

John was astounded by the thought that he had heard and seen Plato’s Logos, and held him in his hands.[1] The one who made up the universe “out of his head” and spoke it (or sang it) into existence was “pleased as man with men to dwell.” Why did He do it?

It was love—pure and simple.

DHR

11/28/11

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[1] The Greek word translated “handled” suggests something more than a tentative touch. It has the thought of familiarity and affection—perhaps a hug. 

Love Finds a Way

“Love never dies.’ (1 Corinthians 12:8 The Message)

Years ago I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker Magazine that depicted a sour, disgruntled, elderly gentleman standing in rumpled pajamas and robe at his apartment door. He had just secured the door for the night with four locks, two deadbolts and a chain latch. Later he noticed a small white envelope stuck beneath the door. On the envelope was a large sticker in the shape of a heart. It was a valentine. Love had found a way.

We ought to have a reason for the hope that’s in us, Paul says, but reason alone can never change another person’s heart. Only love can.

(Do you recall Dostoevsky’s parable of The Grand Inquisitor and Ivan Karamazov’s arguments against the love of God? His brother Alyosha did not debate the issue. He simply leaned over and kissed Ivan—a “line of reasoning” that burned its way into Ivan’s heart.)

Folks don’t believe much in God’s love these days. We have to show it to them—incarnate it, as God did in Jesus. In that way we can—so to speak—help him bring salvation into the world.

Authentic love, however, is not the matter of a moment, a month or a year. It is eternal: “Love never dies!” It is the gift that we keep on giving.

DHR

11/22/11