What About Christmas Next Year?

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

What have we Christians done with Christmas? What might we do with it if we seriously wanted to honor the Christ whose birth we celebrate? My family and I just enjoyed a very nice Christmas together, but I confess that I would like my Christmas to be different next year.

Jim Wallis and Scott McKnight have reminded us that “Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” A CNN report from just the other day mentioned that they expect $46,000,000,000.00 (it stands out more with the zeros, I think, than to just write 46 billion dollars) worth of gifts to be returned after this year’s Christmas. That is, we will have spent more than twice as much money on unwanted gifts for each other than it would cost to provide clean water for everyone on the planet.

The Christmas we celebrate (and that so many seem concerned to “defend”) is the celebration of God sending his Son so that we might have life. Not so that we might have the most outlandish celebration of materialism possible… The time to start thinking about next Christmas is not next November, but right now. Of course we will buy presents for our children. But what if we decided that next Christmas we would celebrate Christ’s coming for us by giving much more money to those in need around the world, and to projects that would have a lasting impact, than we would give to friends and family who will still be more prosperous than most people around the world even if they receive much less under the tree, but are given the opportunity to join in with us.

The family of one of the couples in our church small group decided that for Christmas this year they would send World Vision enough money to pay for a home for orphaned children ($5,100), and they kindly invited the rest of us to join in with them. World Vision has a whole set of similar gift options that are “too big for a box and a bow,” things that cost between $300 and $39,000. Other organizations provide similar opportunities to make our giving about much more than, as Wallis put it, “a material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” Wouldn’t it be something if within a few years from now Christmas celebrations in American had begun to shift in their emphasis to such a degree that the new orientation was as ubiquitous as the latest Apple product? I realize such a change would have a huge impact on the US economy, but surely we could find a way to deal with that…

Luke 8:8-11 tells us that the first to get the news on that first Christmas morning were some shepherds out in their fields. The news was given to them rather than to Caesar Augustus or to Quirinius, governor of Syria (both of whom are mentioned in the first verse of the chapter) to remind us that the news of this savior is not news just for the top 1%, or even the top 20 or 80 percent, but “good news that will cause great joy for all the people”:

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. (Luke 2:8-11, NIV)

December Faculty Forum

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

It’s always a dangerous thing to think when you are preaching. You start wondering why the guy in the fourth pew is staring out the window, or whether you have sufficient time to include the illustration about illuminated medieval manuscript, and suddenly you have no idea what you are actually saying at that moment. What’s even worse is the ensuing awareness of your dissociation: how is it that I’m talking and at the same time I’m aware I’m talking? How many “I”’s can there be?

I was reminded of this as I looked out my window at the bare branches of the winter trees outside my office. A few years ago I was preaching in a hall with large windows in the back, looking out on the same bleak tree-scape that greets me this morning. And as I was (at least supposed to be) teaching, I was struck by how human those particular trees were looking that day.

I had been set up for such arboreal anthropomorphizing for a long while. If the Wizard of Oz’ witch and winged monkeys set the standard for childhood terror, the malicious apple-flinging trees of the same film weren’t far behind. On the positive side of the ledger, I have always thought Tolkien’s Ents are just about the best thing Middle-Earth has to offer, hoom, hoom. I am one of the few people who thought the Two Towers film could have been vastly improved with a few more hours of Entmoot-musings from Treebead and his companions. I grew up on an acre of land that was almost entirely covered with tall pines, and spent much of my youth wandering through the woods down the road.

But what I saw that day, and this, was not simply the generic human-ness of trunks and boughs. These trees, it seemed, were doing something quite specific – stretching out their bare branches to the grey skies, crying out to God for the renewal of Spring, calling out for their own annual resurrection.

In the bleak mid-winter, on the cusp of Christmas, in the bareness and brokenness of our own lives, may we go and do likewise.

What About Christmas Next Year?

What have we Christians done with Christmas? What might we do with it if we seriously wanted to honor the Christ whose birth we celebrate? My family and I just enjoyed a very nice Christmas together, but I confess that I would like my Christmas to be different next year.

Jim Wallis and Scott McKnight have reminded us that “Last year, Americans spent $450 billion on Christmas. Clean water for the whole world, including every poor person on the planet, would cost about $20 billion. Let’s just call that what it is: A material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” A CNN report from just the other day mentioned that they expect $46,000,000,000.00 (it stands out more with the zeros, I think, than to just write 46 billion dollars) worth of gifts to be returned after this year’s Christmas. That is, we will have spent more than twice as much money on unwanted gifts for each other than it would cost to provide clean water for everyone on the planet.

The Christmas we celebrate (and that so many seem concerned to “defend”) is the celebration of God sending his Son so that we might have life. Not so that we might have the most outlandish celebration of materialism possible… The time to start thinking about next Christmas is not next November, but right now. Of course we will buy presents for our children. But what if we decided that next Christmas we would celebrate Christ’s coming for us by giving much more money to those in need around the world, and to projects that would have a lasting impact, than we would give to friends and family who will still be more prosperous than most people around the world even if they receive much less under the tree, but are given the opportunity to join in with us.

The family of one of the couples in our church small group decided that for Christmas this year they would send World Vision enough money to pay for a home for orphaned children ($5,100), and they kindly invited the rest of us to join in with them. World Vision has a whole set of similar gift options that are “too big for a box and a bow,” things that cost between $300 and $39,000. Other organizations provide similar opportunities to make our giving about much more than, as Wallis put it, “a material blasphemy of the Christmas season.” Wouldn’t it be something if within a few years from now Christmas celebrations in American had begun to shift in their emphasis to such a degree that the new orientation was as ubiquitous as the latest Apple product? I realize such a change would have a huge impact on the US economy, but surely we could find a way to deal with that…

Luke 8:8-11 tells us that the first to get the news on that first Christmas morning were some shepherds out in their fields. The news was given to them rather than to Caesar Augustus or to Quirinius, governor of Syria (both of whom are mentioned in the first verse of the chapter) to remind us that the news of this savior is not news just for the top 1%, or even the top 20 or 80 percent, but “good news that will cause great joy for all the people”:

The Manger Still Provides Food (for Thought)

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

We have just entered into the Advent season but since I am not likely to be posting again before Christmas I can’t resist taking this opportunity to post some thoughts on Luke 2:1-20. It is one of my favorite Christmas passages, one that some of you will be preaching on in the coming days.

I think it is important to pay close attention to the one item that appears in each of the three different scenes in the story – the baby lying in the manger – and how that image communicates something different in each of the scenes. The angel’s announcement about Christ is central, of course, including the fact that the angel attributes to Christ things that Roman propaganda had falsely attributed to Caesar Augustus (that he, rather than Augustus, is the true savior whose birth is good news for all).

It is important, I think, to notice the differences between the three scenes. Most Christmas cards blend together items from very different scenes so that we see Joseph and Mary bending over the manger with a bright star or some other indication of God’s glory shining all around. But the passage has no glory shining by the manger. In vv. 1-7 we find no mention of God or angels or glory or anything of the sort. Just a couple who have to make an onerous trip because of a decree given by the Roman emperor. It is in the second scene that we find angelic announcements and glory, but that takes place in the hills outside of town, and is not something experienced by Joseph and Mary by the manger but by shepherds who will tell the story to them in the third and final scene (vv. 16-20).

In some ways Joseph and Mary’s experience in Luke 2:1-20 is similar to much of our experience as we wait between the first and second advents of Christ. We have been told of Christ’s glory and of what God is doing in the world through him, and we have heard the rumors of angels, and we have heard what they have announced and promised about Christ, but we do not get to live our lives out in the presence of observable glory. We know God is at work and will bring the story of redemption to its completion, but much of our lives is lived in contexts where those realities are no more apparent to us than they would have been to Joseph and Mary as they wrapped up their newborn baby and placed him in that manger. But now that manger serves as one more sign from God to us that he is in fact the Messiah, Christ the Lord, whose birth is good news of great joy for all the people.

In verses 1-7 Joseph, Mary and Jesus seemed to be the least important people in all of Judea. Caesar and Quirinius seemed to be the people who mattered – the real movers and shakers of the world. But by the time we finish the passage we know (along with Joseph, Mary and the shepherds) that things are not as they seem, that although God was not manifestly present his angels were able to describe the opening scene down to its smallest and most unlikely detail(s), and that little “insignificant” baby in the manger is in fact the key to redemption and renewal of the world. The placing of a baby in a manger may have been an almost pitiful image in the first scene, but it is a wonderful sign of God’s redeeming presence and key to Christ’s identity in the second scene and then a confirmation to Joseph and Mary (as well as the shepherds) of God’s faithfulness to them and to his promises to send a savior when in the final scene the people from the second scene (the shepherds) share their experience with those from the first scene (Joseph and Mary). The birth of Christ and all that it means continues to amaze us, to be pondered in our hearts, and to lead us to praise and glorify God for all he has done in sending his Son to be our Savior and Lord (vv. 18-20).

Silent Night

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

Silent Night, Holy Night

All is calm, all is bright…

It is a beloved, and lovely, song…but I do wonder just how silent things were in Bethlehem that night. Singing choirs of angels, singing in exaltation, would presumably be pretty noisy, especially if they were joined by all the citizens of heaven above; you couldn’t help but hark. Back in the manger, baby Jesus may have been meek and mild, but I don’t think that would stop him screaming his little lungs out as he gasped his first breaths of air. Mary was likely pretty animated herself as she labored to push out her first-born. And while I cannot claim any real knowledge of animal husbandry, I would not be surprised if the oxen and sheep and donkeys made a racket themselves in response to all the busy-ness of the birth.

But if the silence of the song doesn’t quite work at the literal level, it does harbor a profound theological truth. Amidst all our work and worry and words, Christmas is a time to sit still. We exhaust ourselves all year with writing and theorizing and speculating about the problems of the world and how we can solve them; now at last we can be silent and hear God’s Answer.