A Filthy Portal

In my last post I began to explore why the angelic birth announcement of the Messiah came to shepherds.  The first reason was that he came from their ranks, a shepherd for the people. The second reason is that he came to their ranks, more interested in the humble and hurting than in the prosperous and self-righteous.  Shepherds are a model of the former.  These are the kinds of people he came for. This post began as prose and morphed into loose poetry.  No mention of shepherds is made, but the idea remains.  He came for people like shepherds…and me.

A stable, suitable for animals. 

Mud encrusted hoofs, matted mains, grass entangled wool.

Dim and dank. 

Barnyard stink heavy in the air

A gritty maternity ward, makeshift and unadorned. 

In our sterilized Christmas we inject cuteness where none was present. 

This is a filthy backdrop. 

Christened with blood,

Dampened with amniotic fluid.

Ringing with the echoes of labored cries and anxious panting,

Rank with sweat.

A trough for feeding becomes a cradle for divinity. 

The setting of a holy birth.

The props of incarnation revealed.

This is the entry point for the son of God, far removed from satin sheets and room service.

He comes through a filthy portal into a filthy world to redeem a filthy people.

I take my place in the queue, dirty heart and dirty hands.

I bring my filth to the cradle.

I am appalled,

Revolted by my soiled self,

Ashamed of what lies in dark corners of my rebel heart.

He is not disturbed.

He was born into this. 

This is how he came. 

This is why he came.

To lead us out of filth and into cleansing.

“Today, in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:11)

Merry Christmas

The Bethlehem Shepherds Guild

The desired of all nations (Haggai 2:7) has just been wiped clean of amniotic fluid.  A proper birth announcement is in order.  An angelic messenger, suffused in divine glory brings the news in knee-knocking fashion.  The message culminates with a vast throng joining the angel to proclaim, “glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14).  A filmmaker’s fantasy.  All manner of special effects employed. It comes with the flare and spectacle deserved of a king.

All of this hoo-hah, bombastic and regal, is fitting the occasion.  This, after all, is the long awaited Messiah.  We would expect an announcement of this import to be delivered in full spectacle.  All should hear.  It is, after all, a message of “good news of great joy that will be for all people” (Luke 2:10). An angelic choir seems the ideal delivery system.  This is news that should be delivered far and wide.

Except it’s not.  Delivered far and wide, that is.  The surprise comes not in the delivery, but in the recipients.  The message circumvents palaces and cities (both in close proximity) and comes instead to a band of ragtag shepherds in an open field outside an insignificant village in the middle of the night.  An angelic misfire?  A wrong turn for these celestial couriers?

Do we really need all this hoopla for shepherds?  God could scale it down and still deliver the message effectively.  One talking sheep would do for these bumpkins.  Save the angelic hosts for the city of Jerusalem with a wider reach and more cultural leverage than these blue-collar grunts. 

So why shepherds?  I don’t think this was a purely random choice.  There is reason that the birth of the Messiah is announced to these men in particular.  One I will explore in this post, another I will save for my next post.

The first is that Jesus came from their ranks.  He belonged to the Bethlehem shepherds guild.  This had ben determined long before his birth.  Even with a carpenter from Nazareth as a father, his future as a shepherd from the rural backwoods of Bethlehem was certain.  It had been predicted by the prophet Micah seven hundred years earlier. 

In his most familiar prophecy, Micah pinpoints the Messiah’s origin as Bethlehem (Mich 5:2).  But he also anticipates the Messiah’s vocation.  “He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord” (Micah 5:4).  A shepherd from Bethlehem.  His fellow shepherds should be informed.   

A shepherd is Bethlehem’s only claim to fame.  In history, the town is rarely mentioned.  But they did have one famous resident who began his career as a shepherd on these same hills.  David, son of Jesse, had tended flocks in these fields.  Long hours of attentive watchfulness over vulnerable sheep had prepared him to shepherd a nation.  He became the great king of Israel.  Micah recognized that the Messiah would take the same career path.  The Messiah would be the great shepherd of the nation.

Much is made of Jesus being a carpenter’s son, but he never refers to himself as a wood worker.  Jesus came as a shepherd.  And while we don’t know that he ever owned a flock of sheep, he does identify himself with the shepherd’s union.  So, in Matthew 26:31, he applies Zechariah 13:7 to himself, “I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be scattered.”  The striking of the shepherd is the crucifixion; the scattering of the sheep is the ensuing cowardice of the disciples.  Even more direct is John 10:11, where Jesus calls himself the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. 

This is a flock, not of four legged wooly creatures, but of two legged men and women. We, the susceptible ewes, foolish and shortsighted, herd-driven and reckless, convinced that the grass is always greener in the field just over the fence.  He, the wise shepherd, alert to danger, aware of the needs of his flock, sacrificing comfort and ease for the goodwill of his sheep.   He beckons.  His sheep know his voice and follow.

Christmas is a subtle invitation to find pasturage under his gentle rod and staff.  To graze peacefully, as the shepherd wards off dangers.  And to trust him for provision even in scarcity.  He knows how to make us lie down in green pastures and lead us beside still waters.  For he fills the manger long after he outgrows swaddled cloth.  This is the good news of great joy that will be for all people.  And a shepherd would understand that most of all.

God In Flesh

I don't write poetry.  This may be as close as I've come, possibly even crossing the line. Typically, the incarnation is approached from a historical or theological angle. This is my attempt to come at it from a practical point of view. 

The incarnation.

The all powerful God embracing impotence

A hurricane in a thimble.

The all present God confined to a space

Bethlehem, in a feeding trough.

In this manner

In this place

God arrives, in flesh.

Deity stripped of finery. 

The Desired of all Nations in his birthday suit.

The naked truth.

God undressed. 

It’s a bit awkward, don’t you think. 

All this skin.  

Too much exposure for a holy moment.

No pipe organs or stained glass. 

Rather dust and dung, flies and flesh.

We’ll avert our eyes,

swaddle him quickly,

lay him (modestly) in a manger.

Have we forgetten

That before the babe was wrapped in clothes

He was dripping with amniotic fluid,

Naked as a jay bird.

What if there is an implication in this.

A living parable,

A whisper of truth.

This is a frightening prospect.

If God came naked, so must I.

Stripping myself of self-sufficiency, hypocrisy, pride

 Laying aside the whitewash, the mask, the pretense.

Exposing my true self –

Which from some angles,

under bright light,

is mortifying

And, ironically, life giving

So I swallow hard, and begin unbuttoning.

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Christmas Lights

Despite landing just a few days past the Winter Solstice, the day with the shortest amount of daylight, Christmas is a season saturated by light.   When the world is at its darkest, we push back by illuminating anything and everything.  Lights are wrapped around trees, strung from gutters, and entangled in wreathes.  They illumine our oversized inflatable snow globes, Santa Clauses, Coca-cola polar bears, and Frosty the Snowman lawn ornaments.  Not to be outdone, Santa himself follows a reindeer with a shiny red nose that glows like a lightbulb.

Light even invades the first Christmas, long before LED bulbs and icicle strands.  Matthew focuses on a star that guides the magi.  Luke depicts the glory of the Lord shining around the shepherds and Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, poetically anticipates the birth of Jesus as the rising sun coming from heaven "to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace" (Luke 1:79).  A baby is born and the darkness is pierced, shadows are dispelled, a path is revealed.  The Christmas lights are lit.

In our day, Christmas lights are primarily decorative.  Drab winter is turned into magical Christmas with the help of oodles of lights.  String lights on a barren tree and it doesn't look so barren.  The browns and grays of winter are overcome by an array of illuminated colors.

But for all the luminescent beauty of light, this image of Zechariah's is not trimming. Light is only secondarily decorative.  Zechariah depends on a more fundamental function.  Light illuminates, reveals, exposes.  When we are engulfed in darkness we don't need decoration, we need illumination.  We need light just to keep from stumbling.  This is Christmas.  The manager scene is as much a sun rise as a baby's birth.  In Christmas, the light is just cracking the horizon.  Light is penetrating a dark world.

And this darkness cannot be restricted to that which is other and outer.  It is more personal.  It's not just a darkened world, it's a darkened heart.  I know what lies hidden in the shadows of my soul.   I am petty, arrogant, selfish, bitter, deceptive, angry.  There is a parade of ugliness beneath the surface.  Zechariah makes plain what is intended by the metaphor of light invading darkness when he says that the Lord will, "give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins." (Luke 1:77).

Advent is a reminder that what I need most desperately is not a life more attractively decorated, despite what the Sunday glossies would have us believe.  I need my darkened souls illuminated.  This is the sun that is rising.  The darkness of sin is being overcome by the light of the infant Messiah.  I It won't shine in full glory until Easter.  But those first rays of light breaking through the darkness are glorious indeed.