Amid the Bad News, There is Good News for All People

I really appreciate Clarke Dixon’s weekly contribution here at C201. To read this at source (and find a puppet script that goes with it) click the title below.

Finding Joy

Where do people find joy in our society? Often through fun, entertainment, and pleasurable experiences. Which would you like first, the good news or the bad news?

Let me begin with the bad news: Whatever fun you are having, whatever pleasure you are experiencing, it will come to an end. Experience teaches us this. I love to watch the snow fall, the bigger the flakes, the more blustery the conditions, the better. Clearing it afterward, not so much. Think of any fun or pleasurable experience you have ever had. It always comes to an end. If we pursue joy through pursuing fun and pleasure, joy will always fade or be replaced by the not so fun and not pleasurable. As the Bible teaches: “Whoever loves pleasure will suffer want” (Proverbs 21:17 NRSV).

Now for the good news:

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 NRSV)

The angel described his good news as being “of great joy.” I am reminded of good news of great joy when I announced the birth of each of my boys to friends and family. It is not just a happy moment, it is a permanent change in circumstances. I am now a Dad no matter what happens. In Christ we are given the possibility of being sons and daughters of the King of kings, Lord of lords – no matter what happens. The child of God will not always be happy, but there is a joy in knowing you are a loved, forgiven, reconciled child of God. That fact is permanent. That joy is known even when happiness is not felt.

More bad news: Whatever fun you are having, whatever pleasure you are experiencing, it may distract you from what is really great. I had quite a bit of fun playing on an Atari 2600 as a young lad. But if I could go back, I would play fewer games and read more books. How did I miss so many great reads? Jesus confirms that the seeking of pleasure can distract us from what is truly great:

There is good news:

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 NRSV)

While pursuing pleasure and fun can distract us from what it truly great in life, we take delight in the the good news of Jesus Christ for it leads us deeper and closer to what is truly great in life. Justice is good. Jesus leads us there. Honesty is good. Jesus leads us there. Compassion is good. Jesus teaches us that. Forgiveness and reconciliation is good. Jesus brings it and enables us to do it. And on and on we could go through a list of truly great things that the good news of Jesus Christ leads us to. No wonder the angel said the birth of Jesus was good news of great joy.

More bad news: Whatever fun you are having, whatever pleasure you are experiencing, it may not end well. Again we know this from experience. How many people have sought happiness through sex and ended up making themselves, and others, miserable. How many people have bought something that will make them happy, only digging themselves deeper into debt and stress and therefore misery.

There is good news:

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 NRSV)

There is joy in the good news of Jesus Christ because in Christ things will end well. The book of Revelation is a great place to go and see this. The angel announces the birth of the Savior. That is good news of great joy!

Not only is there assurance that things will end well, there is also the distinct possibility that things can go well when we pay attention to the teachings of Jesus, the prompting of the Spirit, and the wisdom of the Word of God. Though being no guarantee that life will be easy, paying attention to God’s will and way will have a very positive impact on our relationships, our work, and indeed all of life. The angel announces the birth of the Lord, the Shepherd who leads. That is good news of great joy.

And some more bad news: Whatever fun you are having, whatever pleasure you are experiencing, it is exclusive, even elusive. Have you been to Disney-world? Congratulations, the majority of the children have not gone and cannot go. Do you like to watch tv? Congratulations, you have a privilege that is unavailable for many. I may be grumpy that my motorcycle trades places with my snowblower, but how many people have the opportunity to enjoy motorcycling as much as I do? Or how many people enjoy the use of a snowblower to deal with the snow?

But there is good news:

10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:10-11 NRSV)

While a select few will ever have the pleasure of piloting an airplane, skiing the Swiss alps, or sailing the oceans, the good news of Jesus Christ is good news for all. Anyone can come to salvation through Jesus, no matter your race, your abilities, your past behavior, or anything else that you may think defines you. Anyone can know this joy. I hope you do.

Now take a look around. You will see people pursuing joy through fun, entertainment, and pleasurable experiences. Joy found through such will come to an end, may distract from what is truly great, and may not end well. Just as the angels announced to the shepherds, and just as the shepherds announced to others, we have good news of great joy to share this Christmas.

~Clarke Dixon

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I don’t usually think of this as a Christmas piece, but as I was preparing Clarke’s notes today, it occurred to me that it would go well in a medley with Joy to the World.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything other than a brief audio excerpt. The song is Rejoice, Rejoice, Christ is in You by Graham Kendrick.  There is also this cover version:

 

The Bible’s Story Arc Culminates in Christ

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

~Heb. 1:1-2 NIV

After four years of blog poaching here at Christianity 201, today we’re poaching from one of the best, Bible commentator D. A. Carson. The verse in question here is often referred to at Christmas, even though this was posted in mid-November.  As always, C201 readers are encouraged to read items at source, click here to read today’s post.

THE CONTRASTS IN THE OPENING VERSES OF Hebrews 1 all tend in the same direction.

“In the past” contrasts with “in these last days.” God spoke “to our forefathers” stands over against the fact that in these last days he has spoken “to us.” In the past God spoke to the forefathers “through the prophets at many times and in various ways.” But in these last days God has spoken to us “by his Son” (Heb. 1:1–2).

Indeed, the form of that expression, “by his Son,” in the original, suggests pretty strongly that the author of Hebrews does not think of the Son as one more prophet, or even as the supreme prophet. The idea is not that while in the past the word of God was mediated by prophets, in these last days the word has been mediated by the Son, who thus becomes the last of the prophets. Something more fundamental is at issue. The Greek expression, over-translated, means “in Son.” The absence of the article “the” is significant. Moreover, “in Son” contrasts not only with “through the prophets” but with “through the prophets at many times and in various ways.”

The point is that in these last days God has disclosed himself in the Son revelation. In the past, when God used the prophets he sometimes gave them words directly (in oracles or visions), sometimes providentially led them through experiences they recorded, sometimes “spoke” through extraordinary events such as the burning bush: there were “many times” and “various ways” (Heb. 1:1). But now, God has spoken “in Son”—we might paraphrase, “in the Son revelation.” It is not that Jesus simply mediates the revelation; he is the revelation. It is not that Jesus simply brings the word; he is himself, so to speak, the Word of God, the climactic Word. The idea is very similar to what one reads in the Prologue of John’s Gospel. The Son is capable of this because he is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being” (Heb. 1:3).

Strictly speaking, then, Christians are not to think of the New Testament books as just like the Old Testament books, bringing the next phase of God’s redemptive plan to us. Mormons argue that that is all they are—and then say that Joseph Smith brought a still later revelation to us, since he was yet another accredited prophet. But the author of Hebrews sees that the climax of all the Old Testament revelation, mediated through prophets and stored in books, is not, strictly speaking, more books—but Christ Jesus himself. The New Testament books congregate around Jesus and bear witness to him who is the climax of revelation. Later books that cannot bear witness to this climactic revelation are automatically disqualified.

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Mission Statement: Christianity 201 is a melting-pot of devotional and Bible study content from across the widest range of Christian blogs and websites. Sometimes two posts may follow on consecutive days by authors with very different doctrinal perspectives. The Kingdom of God is so much bigger than the small portion of it we can see from our personal vantage point, and one of the purposes of C201 is to allow readers a ‘macro’ view of the many ministries and individual voices available for reading.

Scripture portions from various translations quoted at Christianity 201 are always in green to remind us that the Scriptures have LIFE!

Grace and Truth Came

For the first of two thoughts today we go to Pete Wilson pastor of Cross Point Church in Nashville, Tennessee.  This appeared at his blog Without Wax under the title Grace Upon Grace.

Read this amazing passage this morning that I wanted to share with you.John 1: 14-18

¹⁴And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵( John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”)

¹⁶And from his fullness we have all received,grace upon grace. ¹⁷Forthe law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

What a powerful verse reminding us of the beautiful miracle of Christmas. We have received “grace upon grace.” So powerful.

Reminds me of this quote from Fredrich Beuchner in Secrets in the Dark

Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of Him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of man. If the holiness and awful power and majesty of God were present in this even, this birth of a peasant’s child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there also. And, this means that we are not safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in to and recreate the human heart because it is where he seems most helpless that He is most strong and just where we least expect Him that he comes most fully.

Part of the Christmas message is God telling his people, “You can’t predict me. I’ll show up anytime and anywhere. I’ll show up in the midst of the most unlikely circumstances and through the most unlikely people.”

Why?

Because I’m God and you’re not.

~Pete Wilson

Advent: It Begins

It seems increasingly that Evangelicals are employing matches, cigarette lighters and fireplace starters on Sunday mornings to light candles in celebration of the season of Advent, a part of the Christian calendar more unfamiliar to some until recently.

While last Sunday was “the first Sunday of Advent,” the season of Advent begins for others with the first of December with the start of opening the little windows on the Advent calendar, another seasonal custom heretofore foreign to Evangelicals until recent years.

The blog St. Mark’s Lutheran Church kicks us off today:

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…Isaiah 64:1

The Christian season of Advent begins with this plea from the prophet Isaiah. Sitting in exile in a strange country and feeling estranged from his God, the prophet prays: tear open the skies and make your presence felt, O God. Break the chains of your people and bring us peace and healing and freedom.

This prayer prepares us for the coming of the Christ-child. The heavens would be torn apart but not as the prophet had imagined. Instead of an eruption of heavenly wrath, complete with shaking mountains and nations trembling before the presence of God, there was an angel choir on Bethlehem’s hillside. Heaven had opened and a child had been born – just a child whose birth cries were lost amid the lowing cattle and the braying ass.

This Advent text reminds us of two wonderful promises of God. The first is that God does answer prayer. The deepest hopes and needs and dreams of our hearts move God.  At the heart of Christmas is the message that God’s heart is moved for us – not that our hearts are first moved for God. This is a wonderful mystery so remarkably demonstrated in the celebration of our Lord’s birth. That this should be true; how this can be true is inexplicable – but true.

The second promise is that when God comes, it is always in a way that is redemptive; God brings shalom – the healing peace for which the prophet prayed and for which our world yearns. This is the great surprise of God: God tears the heavens not just in judgment but in love… and a child is born who will rend the veil of death.

So, like the prophet, we pray and wait. Come Lord Jesus, come. Amen

An excerpt from a piece at Happy Catholic

… what continues to hit me, hard … was the picture of perfection that is painted for us by Isaiah.

A celebratory feast for all of us.

No more sadness or death for any nation because the veil is removed. That’s what we hope to find in prayer and at Mass, a time when that veil between God and us is lifted just a little. But Isaiah tells us that it will be permanently removed for all of us. Every person, every nation.

It will be as it should have been from the beginning.

During Advent we are to look for the two comings of Christ. We look for his Incarnation as a baby among us. We look for his second coming. For the first time, I really caught a sense of just what that second coming means. For all of us. For every person, every nation. I can look forward with great anticipation, thanks to that moment when the veil lifted for a second so I got the bigger picture from this reading.

Come, Lord Jesus.

From the blog, A Seat at the Table

Advent is always a new beginning. It is actually a beginning and an ending. We are beginning a new life with Christ at the center, a life that is full with Christ. We are leading and ending an old life. This must be so. There must be this movement…. We need to relinquish and empty ourselves, so that the newness Christ brings can enter and have a place to stay. We as Advent pilgrims on the way to the manger — to the great newness that the child brings — must allow ourselves to pass through the desert where John is preaching.

Paul H. Harkness, “Our Journey to the Cradle,” 4
in People’s Companion to the Breviary

This one is from a blog, Thinking Outloud (a similar but different name than my other blog)

…Advent marks the beginning of the church’s annual liturgical review of the great stories of the faith.

Traditionally it starts with the prophets, who warn that God is among us and will show her/his self even more clearly in the days to come. Get ready! they shout. I’m always puzzled at this exhortation. How can a human being get ready for God?

It’s this great human gift and problem of looking into the future. As far as we know, other mammals aren’t able to imagine the future in the same way we do. They live their lives much more in the “now” than in the “then.” But humans are so in love with the future, we think anything is possible there. The allure of a future we can imagine makes us all less attached to the present, I fear. We put off anything we can. The present? Well, we’re just passing through.

The answer for me is the spiritual skill of waiting. It’s some of the toughest emotional work we do, holding ourselves in the present while expecting something in the future. It’s not about gifts and presents, I think. It’s about waiting for God to be fully revealed to us and to a hurting world.

I will be thinking about Waiting this Advent. How hard it is, why it’s important to grow that emotional muscle, what living in the present while expecting the future feels like. I think it’s the central work of faith, managing the now and then. A belief that both the present and the future deeply matter. 

This one has appeared twice at Gerry Straub’s blog:

“Advent is the beginning of the end of all in us that is not yet Christ.” -Thomas Merton

Since the tenth century, Advent has marked the beginning of the Church year in the West. Today, Advent is hardly noticed, rarely observed, obliterated by a shopping tsunami. Advent is not four weeks of shopping for Christmas. The word “advent” literally means “arrival.” Advent is a time for being awake and aware, a time for longing and waiting, a time for preparing for the coming of Christ. Jesus tells us to light our lamps and wait for the Master. Our waiting should be an active not passive waiting. During Advent we get ready to become active participants in God’s incarnation by creating peace in our spiritual, social and personal relationships. In Advent we are asked to look at our lives, and if we see something amiss, we need to correct it. We need to turn our swords into plowshares. Our lives need to be transfigured into vessels of God’s love and compassion. Advent is a time to renounce our clinging to false securities so our eyes will not be so blinded that we cannot see the arrival of Christ in our midst. Jesus may come to you today in the form of a beggar.

We have become so familiar with the Nativity story that it is almost rendered impotent in its ability to speak to us. Advent invites us to look carefully at that cold night long ago, when there was no room at the Inn for Mary and Joseph, as we prepare to open the doors of our hearts to the coming of the Messiah.

Part of the power of the Christmas story is that it describes beautifully the spiritual birth of Christ in the heart of a mystic. In metaphorical language, Christ is born in the poor manger of our own empty hearts, the poor manger inside us, emptied of all ego, of all clinging neediness. Advent is the time of cleaning, of emptying ourselves of ourselves (and anything else) to make room for the birth of Christ. Swept clean and empty, it is the poorest, most humble place on earth and yet the perfect place for the birth of God. St. Francis and St. Clare understood this living story so well and embraced it so fully that they indeed became human vessels of the Christ child.

The best way to celebrate Christmas is to actually experience the birth of Christ within us in a deeper way than ever before. In order to do so, we need to make the inner crib ready for this new life by eliminating all the noise and inner clutter that would crowd Him out. The best way to do this is to set aside time for silence, prayer and intentional love and reverent kindness.

Jesus is coming and will soon knock on the door of your heart. Get ready–that is the message of Advent. And it is a message we need to repeatedly hear throughout the year. God’s coming transcends past and future, is more than a past event or a future expectation…God’s coming is now, this very moment. God is coming. Is my heart ready to become God’s dwelling place? I’m afraid to answer.

I wanted the last word to belong to Clark Bunch at The Master’s Table

…One aspect of studying prophesy is to realize that just as Jesus fulfilled all of the prophecies of his first coming he will someday fulfill the New Testament prophecies of his second coming.  The incarnation of the God’s Son is the greatest event in history… so far.

In the Parable of the Tenants Jesus relates the story of a land owner who leased out a vineyard to some wicked men.  They either brutalized or killed the messengers he sent to collect the rent.  Finally he sent his son, reasoning that he would be respected.  They killed the man’s own son, thinking if the heir were dead they would inherit the land.  The first century audience responded that those evil men would suffer horribly when the landlord returned.  Jesus told this parable against the leaders of the Jewish faith.  Just as their ancestors killed the prophets – God’s messengers – so they were about to kill God’s own Son.  Further, he said the Kingdom would be taken from them and given to others, namely the faithful believers among the Gentiles.

In the Old Testament, the coming of the Messiah was foretold.  Paul says that “when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son.”  God is not a man that he should lie.  He is faithful and just concerning his promises.  These are scriptural truths to consider as we honor the waiting for Christ’s first coming and eagerly await the second.

Persons wanting to discover more of the deeper implications of incarnation have no shortage of online material to spark their discovery.  Each day between now and December 25th, thousands of new pieces are added.  Just do a Google blog search (type “advent” as your search criteria) or a WordPress search, then prayerfully ask God to guide you to some articles that will enrich your appreciation of the season.