As ordinary time is coming to an end within the Christian calendar, we begin to prepare for the time of preparation...the season of Advent. Advent is when we celebrate the coming of God in Jesus, the incarnation of God in humanity. It is a beautiful time of celebration for the greatest gift given, the gift of Jesus.
I don't mean to upend the beautiful ceremonies of Christmas and advent, but I wonder if we have a full picture of what Christmas and more particularly, the coming of Jesus is all about. Christmas should not only be the picture of the manger; of the babe laying in straw, surrounded by his parents and covered with the light of the star. If our Christmas paintings of Jesus stay in the stall he was born in they miss greater picture of a God who came to suffer for us.
I know it doesn't sound logical. How can a God who is all powerful actually suffer. However, as inconceivable as this is, it is wrapped into the inconceivable mystery of the incarnation. We as Christians believe as the great theologian Karl Barth who said "the incarnation is inconceivable but it is not absurd." As we have faith in the truth of God become man in Jesus, we must also see that he became man for a purpose, and part of that purpose was to suffer for us.
The apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Phillipi these words of Jesus, which were most likely a hymn they had sung before: "who, being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing being made in the human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death even death on a cross."
At the center of the incarnation is the center of God's heart...he loved us so much he sacrificed, emptying himself, to become human, for the purpose of suffering for us.
So, if this Jesus we celebrate on Christmas is "image of the invisible God" who suffers for us, and we are live in him, for him, and through him...than this Christmas we might need to ask how we can sacrifice and suffer for someone else. Let's not keep our faith in the manger, but take our journey of following Jesus to the cross.
