God on the Ground

Does your life feel crazy & chaotic right now? The hectic pace and demands on us at this season of the year are crazy. It seems like this should not be -- but actually it is a really great thing. Why? The closer you get to the profane, the closer you get to God. Paul told the Romans: "...where sin abounds, there grace abounds all the more."

The Christmas season brings out the absolute worst in us. It's the number one time for an intervention on a family member who cannot seem to pull it together!

That's exactly what God did. The world weas messed up, so He came to it. We're messed up, so He comes to us.

He doesn't wait until we're all cleaned up before He hangs out with us. That's what makes the Christmas story so great!

Here are three examples of how ungodly and profane and wicked the Christmas story is, and how perfect it is to find God in the midst of that.

Jesus' lineage was filled
with immmoral people
Matt 1:3 lists Tamar. Go read her story in Genesis 38 -- Tamar would be a great addition to the Jerry Springer show!

Matt 1:5 lists Rahab. She's another prostitute, but she's not even in the family!

Matt 1:8 lists Ruth -- another outsider, from the enemy! Sort of like having the President of Iran in your lineage...if you're an Israeli.

A later verse simply lists "Uriah's wife" -- that was Bathsheba, but they didn't even put her name there! It was too scandalous a story!

Matt 1:16 says this checkered lineage leads to Jesus. This is good news, but even in that last verse there's Mary: an unwed pregnant teenager whose fiance almost left her.

This is the bloodline from which Jesus came. He was a Jew. He was born into their chaos. Their history -- His history -- has some royalty in there but it is by and large full of messed up moldy-black moss-spots on the family tree.

In the incarnation Jesus brought together
the eternal sacred with the temporal profane.

The shepherds were irreligious
According to Jewish law at the time, the shepherds were unclean. They could not participate in festivals or feats, etc. They're excluded. They could not testify in a dispute because everyone just assumed they were liars.

Imagine you're God, and you're going to get the word out to people that the King was born...

When Prince Charles & Princess Diana had their boys, announcements and invitations went out to the hoity toity of the world in which they circulated. God told the shepherds.

It's like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir practices all year long, and then the curtain opens and who is in the audience? 8 guys from night shift. That's it!

Luke 2:1-20 tells the amazing story.

The Shepherds get the call. They probably assumed everyone else heard as well, so they expected a huge crowd of insiders who'd be there. No crowd. No mayor of Bethlehem. No city council. No religious dudes. They get there and there's Joseph and Mary, and a cow.

And the baby

"Wow, we get to see him real close!"

The Magi were foreign new-agers
Gold, frankincense, & myrh. Three gifts are listed so we assume there were three Magi, but we don't really know how many there were. Because of the social and cultural norms of the day we can assume they were men, but they weren't religious leaders. They weren't even Jews. They weren't eagerly waiting for the Messiah. They were from Iraq!

"Magi" comes from "magistrate" or possibly "magician" -- making the Magi sort of a cross between a politician and a pagan astrologer-priest.

Sadly, Christians meet people like that (today we call them [gasp] "New Agers"!) and put up the sign of the cross like they're Dracula or something. They certainly don't invite New Agers to be major players in the church's Christmas pageant.

But God did. He is not freaked out by the Magi. God spoke to them in a way they would understand, and respond.

What about the "good guys"? Why doesn't God speak to the High Priest; any priest? These guys fast and stay pure and are looking for the Messiah. And they. Get. Nothing! What's up with that? They'd paid their dues!

God isn't into rewarding us after we've "paid our dues" -- instead He simply comes to us when we need Him most.

The incarnation tells us that in our chaos, God comes. Christmas choas, emotional chaos, spiritual chaos. God comes in the midst of that.

It was the start of a pattern of living He would continue Go read Matt 9. Jesus is at Levi's house (Levi was [gasp] a Tax Collector!) and people ask what that's all about; how come He hangs out with the outcasts? He answers the critics by saying says He came to hang out with the people who need him most!

Read Matt 11. Jesus is accused of being a glutton for hanging out with "the wrong crowd" again. Jesus said

Umm. Yeah. See, I seem to blow away the line between what is sacred and what is profane BECAUSE YOU HAVE IT WRONG!

The incarnation is our model for ministry. People don't need us to preach to them or "try to save them!" -- people don't need someone trying to change them and tell them what is wrong and bad about them. They need someone to live and walk among them.

That's what Jesus did, and He calls us to be like Him: God-filled people, on the ground with other people.

The more we hang out with non-Christians the more we become Christians ourselves.

That's what Jesus did: He came through immoral people, he came to the outcasts and spiritually weird.

Those are the people to whom He chose to announce the coming of The Kingdom!

It inspires us to be like Him.

This year don't just celebrate the incarnation.

Be the incarnation.