CHRISTMAS!

5

The Gifts of Christmas

Tim Keller


“In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.’”
Luke 1:39–45




What God gave us at Christmas was not just his Son. He gave us a Truth—a Truth that transforms us when we take it in. What God gave us at Christmas is a
whole new life.

In the first chapter of Luke, Elizabeth says, “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accom- plished” (niv). Elizabeth is saying to Mary—and to us—“if you really believe what the angel told you about this baby, if you take it in, you’ll be blessed.”
But our English word “blessed” is so limp and lightweight. In English we use blessed to mean something like “inspired.” But in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, the word for blessed meant something much deeper than that. To be blessed brings you back to full shalom, full human functioning; it makes you everything God meant for you to be. To be blessed is to be strengthened and repaired in every one of your human capacities, to be utterly transformed.

What Elizabeth is saying to Mary, and what Luke is saying to us is, “Do you believe that this beautiful idea of the incarnation will really happen? If you believe it, and if you will take it into the center of your life, you’re blessed, transformed, utterly changed.” When we open the package of Christmas, we find God has given us many gifts—vulnerability for intimacy, comfort for suffering, passion for justice, and power over prejudice.

In all relationships—marriage, parent-child, co-worker—at some point you get into a conversation that goes something like this:
“You’re to blame!”
“No, it’s your fault!”
“No, it’s you.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s you.”

What’s happening? The relationship is falling apart because neither side will take the blame, budge an inch, or make any con- cessions. Neither side will admit wrong or drop defenses. And as long as defenses are up, the relationship is going awry.

But then sometimes this happens:
“You’re to blame!”
“No, it’s your fault!”
“No, it’s you.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s you.”
“Okay, it’s me.”

One person drops defenses. The relationship starts to come back because one person is willing to say, “Yeah, it’s me. I am to blame here.” One person makes himself or herself vulnerable, and the relationship is restored. In fact, it often becomes deeper and more in- timate than it was before.

Why would a person do that? Because in the midst of all the yelling and all the hostility, one person decides that despite how distorted the other person has become because of anger, he wants the other person back. He wants the relationship to be restored. The only way to do that is take down the In the gift of Christmas, the unassailable, omnipotent God became a baby, giving us the ultimate example of letting our defenses down, become vulnerable, and let one of the verbal blows land. It hurts, but it’s the only way. It’s a costly act of redemption for the relationship. And it works because we are created in the image of the One who gave the ultimate expression of this part of his own nature at Christmas. In the gift of Christmas, the unassailable, omnipotent God be- came a baby, giving us the ultimate example of letting our defenses down.

C. S. Lewis put it like this,

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable

There is no way to have a real relationship without becom- ing vulnerable to hurt. And Christmas tells us that God became breakable and fragile. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back.

And if you believe this and take it into your life, you’re blessed. As you take in the truth of what he did for you—how loved and affirmed you are—you’ll be able to let down your defenses in your own relationships with other people. You won’t always need to guard your honor. You’ll be able to let down the barriers down. You’ll be able to move into intimate relationships with other people.

What is in the package of Christmas? His vulnerability for inti- macy with us, which gives us the vulnerability to be intimate with the people around us.If you believe in Christmas—that God became a human being you have an ability to face suffering, a resource for suffering that others don’t have.

When September 11th happened and New Yorkers started to suffer, you heard two voices. You heard the conventional moralistic voices saying, “When I see you suffer, it tells me about a judging God. You must not be living right, and so God is judging you.” When they see suffering, they see a judgmental God. The secular voice said, “When I see people suffering, I see God is missing.” When they see suffering, they see an absent, indifferent God. But when we see Jesus Christ dying on the cross through an act of violence and injustice, what kind of God do we see then? A condemning God? No, we see a God of love paying for sin. Do we see a missing God? Absolutely not! We see a God who is not remote but involved.

We sometimes wonder why God doesn’t just end suffering. But we know that whatever the reason, it isn’t one of indifference or remoteness. God so hates suffering and evil that he was willing to come into it and become enmeshed in it.

Dorothy Sayers wrote,

For whatever reason, God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and the courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace, and thought it was worthwhile.2

The gift of Christmas gives you a resource—a comfort and con- solation—for dealing with suffering, because in it we see God’s willingness to enter this world of suffering to suffer with us and for us.

No other religion—whether secularism, Greco-Roman pagan- ism, Eastern religion, Judaism, or Islam—believes God became breakable or suffered or had a body. Eastern religion believes the physical is illusion. Greco-Romans believe the physical is bad. Judaism and Islam don’t believe God would do such a thing as live in the flesh. But Christmas teaches that God is concerned not only with the spiritual, because he is not just a spirit anymore. He has a body. He knows what it’s like to be poor, to be a refugee, to face persecution and hunger, to be beaten and stabbed. He knows what it is like to be dead.

Therefore, when we put together the incarnation and the resurrection, we see that God is not just concerned about the spirit, but he also cares about the body. He created the spirit and the body, and he will redeem the spirit and the body. Christmas shows us that God is not just concerned about spiritual problems but physical problems too. So we can talk about redeeming people from guilt and unbelief, as well as creating safe streets and affordable housing for the poor, in the same breath. Because Jesus himself is not just a spirit but also has a body, the gift of Christmas is a passion for justice.

There are a lot of people in this world who have a passion for justice and a compassion for the poor but have absolutely no assurance that justice will one day triumph. They just believe that if we work hard enough long enough, we’ll pull ourselves together and bring some justice to this world. For these Christmas is the end of thinking you are better than someone else, because Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come
to you.

Lastly, in the package of Christmas, there’s the ability to reconnect with the part of the human race you despise. Have you ever noticed how women-centric the incarnation and resurrection narratives are? Do you realize that women, not men, are at the very center of these stories?
For example, in the story of the resurrection, who was the only person in the world who knew that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead? Mary Magdelene, a former mental patient, is the one Jesus tells to take this news to the world. Everyone else in the whole world learns it from her. Women are the first people to see Jesus risen from the dead.

In the incarnation, the annunciation comes to a woman. God penetrates the world through the womb of a poor, unwed, Jewish, teenage girl. The first theological reflection group trying to wrap their minds around this to figure out what this means and what is going on is Mary and Elizabeth.

We know that in those days women had a very, very low status. They were marginalized and oppressed. For example, we know that a woman’s testimony was not admissible in court. Why? Because of prejudice against women. We say to ourselves, aren’t we glad we’re past all that? Yes, but here’s what we have to realize: God is deliberately working with people the world despises. The very first witnesses to his nativity and resurrection are people whom the world says you can’t trust, people the world looks down on. Because we don’t look down on women today, we don’t look at this part of the story and realize what we’re being told. But here’s what we’re being told: Christmas is the end of snobbishness. Christmas is the end of thinking, "Oh, that kind of person".

You don’t despise women, but you despise somebody. (Oh, yes you do!) You may not be a racist, but you certainly despise racists. You may not be a bigot, but you have certain people about which you think, They’re the reason for the problems in the world.

There’s a place in one of Martin Luther’s nativity sermons where he asks something like, “Do know what a stable smells like? You know what that family would have smelled like after the birth when they went out into the city? And if they were standing next to you, how would you have felt about them and regarded them?” He is saying, I want you to see Christ in the neighbor you tend to despise—in the political party you despise, in the race you despise, in the class of people you despise.

Christmas is the end of thinking you are better than someone else, because Christmas is telling you that you could never get to heaven on your own. God had to come to you. It is telling you that people who are saved are not those who have arisen through their own ability to be what God wants them to be. Salvation comes to those who are willing to admit how weak they are.
In Christmas there is a resource for something most of us don’t even feel the need of. We might be able to admit we have trouble being vulnerable or that we need help handling suffering or that we need more passion for justice. But almost nobody says, “What am I going to do about my prejudice and snobbery? I really need help with that.”

Do you remember what an incredible snob you were when you were a teenager? Teenagers generally want nothing to do with people who don’t dress right and look cool. Do you think you ever got over that? You’re not really over that. You just found more socially acceptable ways to express it. You see, teenagers let that aspect of human nature out and don’t realize how stupid they look, and after a while they get rid of it. But really they are just papering over it. There are all kinds of people you look down on and want nothing to do with—and you know it. But in Christmas you have this amazing resource to decimate that—to remove it and take it away.
These are the gifts that come in the package of Christmas— vulnerability for intimacy, strength for suffering, passion for justice, and power over prejudice. And you are blessed if you open this gift and take it into your life. If you do, you’ll be blessed. You’ll be transformed.


Adapted from “Mary,” sermon by Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York, December
23, 2001. Copyright © by Timothy Keller, 2007. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Scripture references are from The Holy Bible: New International Version®.

42

More than living a good life

Some cool quotes from Tim Keller

“Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did.”

"Christianity not only leads its members to believe people of other faiths have goodness and wisdom to offer, it also leads them to expect that many will live lives morally superior to their own. Most people in our culture believe that, if there is a God, we can relate to him and go to heaven through leading a good life. Let’s call this the “moral improvement” view. Christianity teaches the very opposite. In the Christian understanding, Jesus does not tell us how to live so we can merit salvation. Rather, he comes to forgive and save us through his life and death in our place. God’s grace does not come to people who morally outperform others, but to those who admit their failure to perform and who acknowledge their need for a Savior."

“The Bible’s purpose is not so much to show you how to live a good life. The Bible’s purpose is to show you how God’s grace breaks into your life against your will and saves you from the sin and brokenness otherwise you would never be able to overcome… religion is ‘if you obey, then you will be accepted’. But the Gospel is, ‘if you are absolutely accepted, and sure you’re accepted, only then will you ever begin to obey’. Those are two utterly different things. Every page of the Bible shows the difference.”

- Tim Keller

The Gospel thru Jesus shows us a God far more Holy than any conservative religious Moralist can bear and yet more merciful and gracious than any Humanist can conceive.

"The insignificances of daily life are the importances & tests of eternity, because they prove what spirit really posses us! It is in our most unguarded moments that we really show and see what we are"

- Andrew Murray


"People loved to have lived a great life & story, but few people like the work it takes to make it happen. But joy costs pain."

"There is a force resisting beautiful things in the world, & too many of us are giving in"

"The greatest trick of the Devil is not to get us into some sort of evil. But rather to get us comfortable and into wasting time. If he can sink a mans mind into habit, he can prevent a mans heart from engaging God and the world around him."

-Donald Miller

I turned 25 a little over a week ago. 25 years on this earth. Every breath and every day has been a gift. I am thankful for where I am. Thankful for who I have become and who I am becoming. Never when I was younger did I imagine I would be playing in a Rock band for a living and be married to a girl like Melissa. I am happy, content, and proud of where I am at.

But then there is also a restlessness. A restlessness knowing that I am not truly who I wish I was. Not restless in the since that I wish I had more money or a better job. But a restlessness in knowing I could be a better me. That I could live the insignificances of daily life in a deeper way. I could be kinder to people & I could love others better. I wish I did not waist time as I do & I wish I prayed more. I wish i thought about others more than myself & that i was a better husband. I wish I was more joyful and I wish I really thought of everyday as gift. I could go on forever....

I am not saying these things because I feel sorry for myself. Its just that I have been stepping back and examining my life some lately, and realizing there is so much more I want from me. Life is so short. It could be over tomorrow. I have lived 25 years. Lived some of it really really well and yet also wasted alot of it. I desperately want more. I desperately want to live life to the fullest.

25 years. I hope that I get 25 more. I hope and pray that I can live them well. That I can live them even better than my first 25. The older I get the more I realize how little I really have figured out. My greatest enemy is and always will be ME. I am always trapped in my own self interest.

James 4:14 "Yet you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."


"ME is a most exacting personage, requiring the best seat and the highest place for itself, & feeling grievously wounded if its claim is not recognized. Most of our quarrels (among people) arise from the clamoring of this gigantic ME. How few of us understand the true secret of life.....that is taking our seats in the lowest of rooms. "

- Hannah Whitall Smith

mending the hole

"He that shall call a man from mending a hole in the wall of his house, to quench a fire that is consuming the whole building is not his enemy. Pour Soul! It is not your sore finger, but your hectic fever that you are to apply yourself to the consideration of. You set yourself against a particular sin and do not consider that you are nothing but sin."

-John Owen (Of Mortification of Sin)

"Talking about the blood of Jesus is gross. But it is not nearly as gross as the sin it deals with"

- Marc Driscoll

So often i find myself trying to clean myself up. Trying to muscle my out of my own brokenness w/ discipline and perseverance. But i always fall flat on my face. But only by embracing the wholeness of my brokenness & clinging to the work of Jesus blood on the cross am i ever clean. There is great freedom in admitting that every part of me is indeed broken. I am a great sinner, but Jesus is a greater savior.