Counter
Strike
On that first Christmas day…
It was not an absolute season of joy. It also had much sorrow and fear. Sorrow - the ‘weeping and great mourning in Ramanah’ – for the many parents whose baby boys they’ve lost (not unlike the loved-ones of the Bali casualties or those in the Moscow theater). Fear for the others seeking to escape the slaughter of their child, not knowing when calamity might befall them (like many living in potential bomb-attack areas today).
After hearing of the many terrorist acts all over the world, I often wonder if some C4 will not go off in the basement of my office building, in a nearby bus or in the surrounding vicinity. Isn’t it a little untimely - if not difficult - to celebrate Christmas this time around?
Perhaps it’s ironic that Judea and Samaria - where Herod’s infanticide occurred 2,000 years back - is today known by the United Nations as the Occupied West Bank, a beautiful but bloody breeding ground for hatred, hostility and, of course, terror. In an age of bomb blasts, hostage situations and random attacks, we need the certainty that God has come to be with us. This is what Advent invites us to see. So here’s my personal glimpsing at some Christmas-influenced ideas about the person of God, the people He likes to work with and His plans for the world.
First, the person of God.
Christmas, I think, reminds us that God is a God of waiting. Our Lord Jesus was virtually sleeping throughout the panic and terror of Herod’s systematic massacre of male infants in Bethlehem. He probably slept all the way to Egypt. God tends to work like this. There seems to always be a long period of initial silence, inaction, nada. Like the 400 years before the Exodus rescue mission, like the 500+ years of Scriptural silence a few years after the geographical return from Babylonian exile, the ministry of Jesus needed to wait three decades from his setting foot on earth for it to begin. God must love delays.
And during his first two opening years, when Magi were seeking him to worship, when a monarch and assassins were hunting him to kill (and if these guys weren’t terrorists, what are?), when his parents were on the run with him, our infant Jesus was – duh! – asleep (at least most of the time). When the Messiah finally comes, He shuts his eyes and sucks His thumb. No doubt God’s way of saying, “This evil bothers me even more than it does you; which is why it’s got to be taken care of My way.”
God seems to take quite some time to ‘wake up’, doesn’t He? Why does He take so long?
Maybe the nature of true love and true power always requires some preparatory stage of quietness, solitude and slow-grind. Maybe there is something real in waiting, something you can’t get (or can’t learn) by all the rushing, puffing and huffing like real. Try ‘rushing’ into a marriage or a biz deal (or even when catching terrorists). Maybe there has to be a 40-days/40-nights somehow.
In a sense, Christmas is all about solving the ‘problem of evil’, the terror of the Ultimate Terrorist; it’s about launching a preemptive counter-strike at cosmic corruption and doing so in the most unlikely of ways. And evil – like a fever - needs to run its course. There has to be a silent night, a wilderness, a waiting. Unless it’s been absorbed by forgiveness and mercy, maybe evil doesn’t truly end. And, when we work with God, you know, often things take time, are filled with risks, and lots of ‘character’ is needed.
Jesus’ (earthly) dad and mum are good examples of the kind of individuals God wants to use.
Joseph and Mary were hardly on the Forbes Top 500 Individuals. They were not ‘proactive’ gung-ho go-getting personnel zooming their way to the top; they were riddled with doubts and hurts. Yet they were people who held on: Mary could have told Angel G to take a hike as the news might cost her her husband and of course Joseph could have cried, “Unfaithful!” and hit the divorce button on the spot. They risked their long-term public respectability on God’s promises. They worked hard to raise, teach and care for the boy who would grow to be the Son of God, even when it no longer seemed as if their son was special. And life for them was as yet under the heel of the Roman Empire. Soon there would be more children for the couple and, sadly, Mary would become a widow by the time Jesus’ ministry begins. She would also have to see her son executed on a cross. Being Mary was no joke.
Therefore, I think Christmas also reminds us that God works best with people who give Him and each other the benefit of the doubt despite facing adversity. Another word for this is Faith. And for this you need trust - an endangered species everywhere today. It’s not the way the world works. But it’s how God insists things must be done. Wait and trust. This empowers the Advent of God, bringing His Spirit closer to our hearts.
The world today looks like one huge ‘Occupied West Bank’. Parties blame, fight and kill each other like clockwork. ‘Might is right’ philosophy and cowardly destruction is a regular feature (suicide-bombing is perhaps the most demonic of terror forms, promising heavenly ‘glory’ for the destruction of self and that of innocent others). Mutually beneficial solutions are rare and vulnerable to the latest violence. Negotiation and ‘fellowship’ is an up-mountain task. Outsiders just talk and supply more fuel (and ammo) to the conflict.
But Christmas is all about the in-breaking of God’s quiet, humble and extraordinary power and love into a war-torn community. It’s about God taking a risk by working with stressed and worried - yet trusting and loving - individuals, people who do not need to have everything planned out, people who do not need be shown the money first. People who, though plagued by doubts and insecurities, will take the ball and run because God says so. People who dance with Magnificat each time they hear a message from God. People who will wait for Him even when He seems ‘asleep’.
And with such
people, God will fight back terror with His love. He will make them pray in the most painful of places, to groan
with the most sorrowful souls. He will
use them to teach the world to wait upon Him and trust in His goodness and
grace in spite of the tears and the anguish.
Most importantly, He will wield such people to share with everyone the
joy of singing, “My soul glorifies the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my
Saviour.”
This is the plan of God, personally put into action by His Son at Christmas. A new kind of people, a true form of humanity, a foretaste of the new creation, and yet the Devil’s ex-slaves! But God wants these fellas to turn mourning into dancing, and lift sorrows away. To say Yes to God, to become this new group of people and realign ourselves to His purposes - this can be our Christmas gift back to God. And we do so in praise and thanks for His incredible Self-Gift to us…
On that first Christmas day.