Coming of the King
We think of the Christmas season as a warm and sentimental time of the year. This is the time when we listen to music that makes us nostalgic and wistful, and we fill our days with celebrations. But life has a way of disrupting our plans. As I write these words, we are preparing for the funeral for one of our people, we got news yesterday of the passing of another, several in our fellowship are enduring long-term health problems, and still others in our church family are nearing the end of their days. Christmas is anything but merry for many in our fellowship.
This blog post, originally published in 2021, addresses the question of how the coming of the baby Jesus speaks to us in our darkness and sorrow.
For many people, the Christmas season evokes so many warm memories of family and tradition. Even people who are hard and cynical sometimes become soft and tender at the thought of fond Christmas memories. Christmas traditions invite us to go back to the wonder of childhood, and we revel in those memories.
But not all people feel this way about Christmas. For some people, the Christmas season brings back sharp and painful memories. So even the thought of carols and feasts and time with loved ones only opens up old wounds. They may not say it out loud because they don’t want to spoil the mood for everyone else, but it’s “Bah, humbug!” under their breath. Their pain is too deep.
For many other people, Christmas is bittersweet. Along with the warm and cheerful sentiments of the season, Christmas is also a painful reminder of loved ones who are gone from this world and will never again be part of those warm family scenes. And for those people, especially soon after they are bereaved, it is inconceivable that they could ever reconstitute the joy they once knew at Christmas.
But what if Christmas isn’t about nostalgia?
What if there’s something even richer and deeper in the story of the birth of the Christ Child?
When Paul wrote to the church in Philippi about the coming of Christ, he didn’t speak in nostalgic and sentimental terms. He struck a stirring, triumphant note, singing not only about Christ’s first humble coming as a baby and His humiliation and death but also about his ultimate victory and glory.
Though he was in the form of God,
he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but he emptied himself
by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:5-11)
Scholars think that Paul’s soaring rhetoric was a well-known Christian hymn. These were lyrics his readers knew well. In other words, when he quotes these lovely words about Christ’s humility in becoming a man and submitting himself to a shameful death, when he trumpets the news of his glorious triumph over death in his Resurrection from the dead, Paul is singing.
In God’s invasion of human history, Paul wants us to celebrate not just His gracious humility but also His glorious triumph over the forces of darkness that afflict us, the powers of sin and death and hell.
In other words, the Good News about Jesus is not that we will win the victory over sin. The Good News is not about our victory at all; it is about how Jesus has already won the victory.
This is Good News that makes the birth of our triumphant Savior a cause for celebration, even when we are in pain, even when we are sad.
We can celebrate because we know that in our long and exhausting battle with sin and death, the final outcome is no longer in question.
The King has come.
And He has triumphed.
Persevere, Paul Pyle Pastor of Discipleship
(There will be no Discipleship Weekly post for the next two weeks. Have a blessed Christmas, and we’ll see you in the New Year.)