Unwrapping Christmas Part III

The invitation was sent out, a grand banquet, food and goblets to rival the Babylonian kings, and the king’s own table! And they refused. One had oxen to look after, another was just married (Luke 14). Silly excuses is the consensus of scholars. Given such a lavish invitation, they refused. Why? And in another parable, one man failed to put on the wedding garments (Mat. 22:11). Given all, provided the rich robes of a king’s banquet, yet he refused. Why?

In a little humble manger, the King who will host the banquet descended. The Holy God in a babe. God condescended, accommodated himself in a little babe. The God of the burning Sinai mountain, the God if whose ark is touched issues forth in death, the God before whom Moses and Isaiah cried woe when they just caught a hidden glimpse of him, comes in a little babe who touched lepers, ate tomatoes and hummus and pitas, who banged his thumb learning to nail and chisel. God came close. Too close.

To attend a wedding, other business must be left. We must change clothes, wash up. A radical departure.

When the holy Mount Sinai God comes close even in a babe, fire burns. Refining happens. Impurities are melted away.

When the holy God accommodates himself in a true revelation of God in swaddled-babe, God defines himself and we must bow. Our images are shattered.

by Morgan Weistling

The incarnated God who had a first birthday, whose hair got tangled, who fell and scraped his knees, whose voice awkwardly changed in his teen years, who helped to feed and bathe his younger brother and sisters in a Palestinian house, this is our older brother. He is the true Adam, all what it means to be truly human. He is the firstfruits. Thus, his life defines our life.

Defines our life.

This God-Man, the humble babe in a manger, means that I can no longer define me for myself. I can no longer speak of autonomy. Christian or non-Christian alike, our lives are defined by Christ. Those who do not profess his name define themselves against him. They refuse to attend the banquet for to do so would be to lose their claims to their own agendas, life, schedules, interests, identity. They refuse to don his wedding clothes. If we confess his name, then we are defined by him—our lives become one of suffering following in his footsteps, losing our lives to follow him, lives of joy and power, lives of service, lives of peace and peace-making, lives of giving away as he gave all.

God’s Son, God-Incarnated-In-Man-Flesh, becomes the one in whom we become adopted. In the God who toddled like us, we become sons of God in the incarnated Son, our firstborn brother. J. Todd Billings writes about adoption:

The prospect of adoption in this sense is an offense. It is too much closeness—it is the sort of closeness that requires giving up one’s own identity… [The doctrine of adoption] shows us an astonishing state of affairs: the high King, the Lord of the universe, desires for us to be his adopted children. Thus, while God is holy and transcendent, he is not at a convenient distance. God’s gracious, loving call is, in fact, a threat to our autonomy, our deep and pervasive strategies to keep hold of our lives rather than losing them for the sake of Jesus Christ. (1)

The Holy in the Common. The God whose mere glory cloud on the mountain gave instant death to anyone touching (not from his anger, but the pure holiness consuming any unholiness) now touching lepers. On the cross, the veil was torn. Holiness was released into the common. Zechariah’s prophecy was fulfilled:

And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar. And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. (Zech. 14:20-21).

But holiness makes demands. God is still as holy as on the mountain. The difference is holiness has become a person who fulfilled all holiness and righteousness for us, but we can come to God only in this person of Jesus. God comes close, and Jesus has to define us, one way or the other.

Oh what closeness! To think of it—access to the All in All, the Satisfier, the Shield, the Reward, the Bread of Life, the Holy One who lives in unapproachable light! This is what our heart longs for, and this is what the image of a heavenly banquet just tries to grasp in human earthly terms.

Oh, what a cost! The holy God empties himself, takes on flesh, dies…. But to accept his price for us is not a cheap insurance ticket. It is the most priceless joy, but “he died for all that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15).

***Can you picture yourself at the heavenly banquet? Picture Jesus with you? Picture yourself with the delighting Father and the Spirit? Drink deeply of this for a moment!

Our older brother—we become like him. He gave all; we give all to follow in the Creator-Carpenter’s footsteps, who trod both clouds and clods. We must be willing to put on his righteousness, not wedding garments of our own making. It is a hard thing for our pride and independence and self. We must let him be birthed in us, so that it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us, and the life we now live we live by faith in the incarnated Son (Gal. 2:19-20). No longer able to pursue our own desires or our own pleasures which are corrupted by oh so good!, we are a holy set apart people who go through the furnace so that we may be proven as gold for the glory of the radiant holy God whose very city can only be described in human terms as golden (2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Pet. 2:9-10; 1 Pet. 1:7; Ps. 66:10; Prov. 17:3; Isa. 48:10; Deut. 8:2; Job 23:10;  Isa. 43:7). The Holy God has come close, and all is laid claim to. It is a closeness few can handle, few can imagine, few are willing.

Yet, losing all to this God who gave all, we gain all (1 Cor. 3:21-23). To the lepers, the prostitutes, the ones recognizing their finitude in the face of cancer, the abuse survivors who are at the end of themselves, the ones whose days are filled with weakness and pain, Jesus defines them—he is their perfection, their sure standing before God.  No longer weak, they are strong in him; no longer nothings, they are heirs of God; no longer aliens, they are adopted and fellow citizens; no longer not-a-people they are the people of God crowned with a mission (Eph. 2:19; 1 Pet. 2:10-12; 1 Cor. 1:26-30; Rom. 8:17; Gal. 3:29). They are invited to the wedding, and the same hands that held his earthly father’s hands as he learned to walk, the same hands that cooked fish over a fire for his disciples will take our hands and present us as his bride to his Father and will sit and eat with us at his Messianic banquet in his kingdom fully come. Oh! Can you see him?! Can you see yourself?!

***Will we pray for those who are refusing the banquet? There is still time!

***What do I still hold back from my King? Where does God’s holiness in Christ get “too close”?  

***How do you delight in God's closeness? 

What child is this who laid to rest

On Mary’s lap is sleeping?

Why lies He in such mean estate,

Where ox and donkeys are feeding?

Good Christians, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Nails, spears shall pierce him through,

the cross he bore for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

the Babe, the Son of Mary.

NOTES

J. Todd Billings, Union With Christ, p. 17, 21.