Carded

This is the time of year in which card sellers make the majority of their profits. I'm sure of it.  Everyone you've ever met, all your family and friends, all those whom you perhaps have forgotten, they all still get a Christmas card, amirite?  We exchange cards with one another send them out hither and yon, and we recieve cards back in return, decorating our homes with wonderful winter scenes.  As an aside, how loopy is it that we are now in a world in which we'll complain about how cold it is outside, meanwhile, we'll have pictures of snowy woods up IN OUR HOMES?

We do this because winter is pretty.  All of us who don't like to shovel, all of us who are all done with the nonsense, with the plugging cars in, with the ice, with the wind, with the accumulation of all the puffy white powder all over our houses and cars, all of us, there's still something magical about sitting inside your house, sipping a cup of hot ovaltine, and watching the beautiful snow fall.

The point is, that we have a certain disconnect in our brains, in that we feel, genuinely feel, as though we can watch the snow fall, see that it is pretty, sip our tea, and not have to deal with the freezing, back breaking labor that inevitably will ensue.  How else can you explain the popularity of Irving Berlin's "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas?"  Pretty sure it'll be a white Christmas regardless, Irving.

So here we are, as a group of people, who know that the winter is pretty yet hate the winter all at the same time.  And we wish, sincerely, that we could have all the benefits, with none of the fallout.  And you see, this is where our understanding of the incarnation comes in.

Have you seen Christmas cards with the nativity on them?  If not, there's one to the left here.  These cards always, without a single exception, show people looking awfully well put together.  Mary and Joseph are typically kneeling in adoration around the manger, and the incredibly tidy Jesus is sweetly gazing back at them.  If there are shepherds or wise men (and there had better not be wise men), they are well put together too, and in no way look like they were just working in the fields, or had just finished an incredibly long camel journey across a desert.  The animals, if they are there, are quite benign, and are limited in role to just looking on, and to being in the background.  And this is the way that we approach the nativity, nay the entire life of Christ.  That he could be near the world, but only the world as it existed in a snowglobe, or a Christmas card.  Where everything was drawn in pencil shapes, or fashioned out of ceramics, or carved out of wood.  Where everything smelled nice, and looked nice, and where the people were practically perfect in every way.  Almost every single peace of sacred art I've ever seen has had a pretty sanitized slant on it, in order that the people who were there, they ought to look nice.

This ties into the question that Jesus asks the crowds who are there to see him, and there to see John, asking them 'what did you go out to see?  A man dressed in soft clothes?  No, I tell you, for those in soft clothes are living in king's palaces."  You see, people didn't expect the prophet of God to be showing up, wearing animal skins and eating bugs.  They expected him to be nice, presentable, and equivalent in almost every way to wearing soft clothes, hanging out in king's palaces, and looking good.  They didn't expect what they got.  So too, we expect Jesus to be nice, pleasant, presentable, and in no way seriously engaged with the world we live in.  For comparison, this is one of the best pictures of the nativity I've ever seen.  Look at Mary:  She's exhuasted!  She can't even hold her own baby!  She's being very tender with her midsection, and the ubiquitous chickens are not in the background, they're basically underfoot!  And we have Joseph, stepping his daddy game up, and holding the baby that he has promised to raise as his own, showing immediate tender care towards a baby that isn't his.  This is what it's all about:  The stable was doubtlessly dirty and smelly, it had straw everywhere, animals all over the place, unsanitary, dangerous, poorly lit, and honestly rather unpleasant. And we want to sanitize that, we want to make it seem nicer, because we want Jesus to come into a nice place, where it is fit for him.  But that's not what he's all about.  He's not here to wear soft clothes and live in King's palaces, he's not here to look nice, or to only go into nice places.  He's here to enter into the most dangerous, dirty, filty, unsanitary place you can possibly imagine God heading into.

He's heading into your heart.

Your heart with all that depraved nonsense in it, your heart with all its sin and shame, your dark heart, where you love the darkness so that nobody can see your deeds, your heart with all its anger and wrath, that's where Jesus is heading.  Because he's a carpenter.  He's a guy who does repairs.  Have you ever seen HGTV?  If you're a lady, I bet you have.  And you have on those shows on HGTV, something like income property, and there are two types of people.  People who wear soft clothes and  live in king's palaces, and people who are the fixers.  Most people want to move into a place that is already perfect, move-in ready, and they have in mind to have it perfect before they even show up.  Contrast that, if you will, to someone like , Bronson Pinchot Vanilla Ice, Scott MacGillivray or Hillary Farr from love it or list it, and you'll see that they're people who want to live in a nice place, but who are willing to move into a place that isn't yet perfect, in order to fix it up, repair it, so that is eventually will be worth moving into.  Your heart is one of those places, all busted up, with rats and mice infesting it, major structural damage, damp and overrun with animals, covered in straw and filth from those animals, just an absolute mess.  And that's what Jesus walks into.  To make your heart a fit place for him to reign.  By forgiving your sins, and cleansing you from all unrighteousness.

All Christianity is incarnational Christianity.  If you're a Christian, and you think the idea of a dirty, smelly, run down ramshackle stable is offensive, then you need to take a serious look at what you're asking Christ to do in your own life.  Do you want him to be in soft clothes, and living in king's palaces?  Or do you want him to leave all that behind, and walk into the filth?

And if you don't for one second sincerely believe that your heart is a much grimier, more dangerous place for the son of man to enter in, spend a few moment with Him in His word, and see how far off you are from what he would have you do.  And realize that he's not in soft clothes in a king's palace.  He's in the meager manger of your heart.  And through his forgiveness and grace, he will make it into a fit place for him to call his home.

Advent blessings, as always,

PJ.