My daughter and her family have a collection of crèches – all are kid-friendly. But one figure in the largest crèche they withhold until Christmas morning – the infant Jesus. The manger, filled with hay, is empty. The children handle all the pieces – indeed the figures in the crèche migrate; sometimes the Virgin Mary goes into the play-mobile kitchen –and sometimes Joseph and the shepherds join Darth Vader in an adventure or two. But one morning our grandson couldn’t find that hay-filled manger and tore around the house crying out: Where’s the baby nest?
It became a question I asked when I learned
that Revelation 12, the current topic of our weekly Bible study has been
described as another view of the Christmas story – reading it, I want to know
where that baby nest is too! What
John saw sure doesn’t sound like what Luke and Matthew report! Eugene Peterson
agrees and writes:
It is St. John’s Spirit-appointed task to supplement the work of
St. Matthew and St. Luke so that the nativity cannot be sentimentalized into
coziness nor domesticated into drabness, nor commercialized into worldliness.
He makes explicit what is implicit in the Gospel stories . . . The splendors of
creation and the agonies of redemption combine in this event, this center where
God in Christ invades existence with redeeming life and decisively defeats
evil. It is St. John’s genius to take Jesus in a manger attended by shepherds
and wise men and put him in a cosmos attacked by a dragon. The consequence to
our faith is that we are fortified against intimidation. Our response to the
Nativity cannot be reduced to shutting the door against a wintry world,
drinking hot chocolate and singing carols. Rather, we are ready to walk out of
the door with, as one psalmist puts it, high praises of God in our throats and
two-edged swords in our hands. (See Psalm
149:6, Reversed Thunder –The Revelation
of John & the Praying Imagination, pp121-122)
Is that how the remembrance of Christ’s birth
inspired you?
In spite of good spiritual intentions, I bought into the
world’s celebration of a baby’s birth, holed myself up with loved ones, and had myself a merry little Christmas.
By the season’s end, I am just so glad the hoopla is past, and so looking for a
fresh start in the New Year, that I forget to remember the
person whose birthday I just observed is A Savior – which is Christ the Lord. No wonder, I don’t have much of a new song, nor have I much
of a sword.
Revelation
depicts spiritual warfare – the supernatural battles between God and Satan. Such a revelation isn’t
the lens through which most of us admit we see the world in which we live, even
as we live in a world filled with spiritual longing and superstition. The Bible
is plain, though, from Genesis to Revelation that God is an infinite and
personal spirit. (Not symbolic) And His enemy, while
not flesh and blood, is also spirit, and masquerades so we don’t immediately
recognize him, or his servants. (2 Corinthians 11:14) He is no symbol either;
he is God’s most unwilling servant.
A created being, he serves God’s purposes. Unhappily, the visible church
says too frequently – Satan isn’t really real
– and the Holy Spirit is just a symbol. (George Barna)
Dealing with
realities beyond us doesn’t make them non-existent or invincible.
C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters,
wrote:
"There are
two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils.
One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel
an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally
pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same
delight."
And he warned
"The
safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot,
without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
Curling
up and falling asleep in the comforts of this great nation is a great way to
gradually squander a great inheritance. Willfully ignoring a holy and personal
God may seem desirable – Eve thought so.
God help me wake up and sing -- – and make useful a limp sword. (Hebrews 4:12)
"Only when we stand in awe of God will we cease to stand in
awe of Satan." (Erwin Lutzer, The Serpent of Paradise)
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