Pastor’s Blog

I’m always fascinated this time of year to see how people decorate their house for Christmas. Not the inside—the outside. Some like to go all out, ensuring that their home can be seen from space. I enjoy looking at those displays; I just wouldn’t want to put it all up (or especially take it all down).
We’ve never been much for decorating the outside at the Johnson home. This year, however, we have a new wreath on the front door with blue lights. For us that’s positively Griswoldian!*

Big Christmas displays are impressive, and certainly the arrival of the Messiah is something to celebrate in a big way. But we should note that the event of Christmas itself—the birth of Jesus—is drenched in paradoxical humility.

Humility because Jesus was placed in a manger when there was no room for him in the Bethlehem Holiday Inn. Paradoxical because Jesus was the one who created space (and time) itself.

Humility because Jesus was held in the hands of human parents. Paradoxical because He had made those hands and those parents.

Humility because Jesus came into this world as a helpless little baby. Paradoxical because the baby was God in the flesh.

Humility because Joseph, Mary, and their baby Jesus had to flee a murderous Herod. Paradoxical because the baby could have slain the king with a word.

Charlie Brown’s friends ridiculed him for the sad little tree he brought back for the Christmas play. Yet that tree (as his friends came to realize) portrayed the true posture—the humility—of Christmas.

There is a glory to the birth of Christ, to Christ himself. As John 1:14 tell us,

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory…

Glory, yes. But it’s cloaked in humility. Jesus didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant.

He did it so we could be something—children of God.

Christmas warrants big celebration. But remember, at the heart of it is humility. The King of kings became a child. The Lord of life came to die.