By the beginning of November, the Christmas trees on my street were going up. By the time I removed the pumpkins from my door, streaming services had holiday movies ready for us, the lights went up around our city, and our gifts were being delivered. This time of year is a spectacle of lights, sounds, and smells; gifts, songs, and parties.
The birth of Jesus, celebrated during Christmas, had a couple of spectacles like the wise men and angels attached to it. But the birth itself wasn’t a spectacle, but a scandal. Almost no one saw it, there was no party, and the gifts of the wise men arrived a couple years late.
Instead, the implications of Jesus’ birth shocks, offends, and whispers hope to all that would pause and take it in.
The Bible describes Jesus as the son of God, and at his birth he empties himself and takes on humanity. Jesus’ arrival challenges any notion we have of God being distant, because this child born to a virgin is raised by lower income parents, travels as a refugee for his formative childhood years, grows up with his brothers, works in carpentry, experiences the death and sickness of his friends, and ultimately his own. If God has entered the human experience, then God is not distant, because he has skin in the game. This is scandalous!
Jesus was born, died, was raised in a living, breathing, eating body, and he continues to live in the flesh. That means God’s plan of salvation isn’t for a disembodied, clouds in the sky afterlife. It is for us right here, right now. It means we can begin to have new life now.
A second century Turkish pastor said “the fact that God has become man, indeed flesh, proves that the redemption and resurrection of the entire earthly world is not just a possibility but a reality.”
Our day to day ordinary, unspectacular lives are affected and given hope by the birth of Jesus. This is scandalous.
Jesus’ delivery also means that we have received a gift that cannot be matched or earned, and that we need this gift. Here’s good news for our souls: God takes his salvation plan not only seriously, but joyfully! In Isaiah 55:1, everyone is invited to feast with God “without money and without cost.” It is scandalous for us to receive such a large gift in Jesus and then to never be able to “re-gift” God. But God offers Jesus to us joyfully and invites us to come to him with no expectation that we could match God’s generosity.
Whether you are or are not a Christian, I’m inviting you to take in the scandal of God with us, understanding us, and offering us salvation, all joyfully and generously. My hope and prayer for you is that you would not be overwhelmed by spectacle this season, but filled with joy in all circumstances and brokenness at the scandal of Jesus.
Gavin Jarvis is the lead pastor at Living Stones Church.
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