This is war

This is war like you ain't seen.
This winter's long, it's cold and mean.
With hangdog hearts we stood condemned,
But the tide turns now at Bethlehem.

This is war and born tonight,
The Word as flesh, the Lord of Light,
The Son of God, the low-born king;
Who demons fear, of whom angels sing.

This is war on sin and death;
The dark will take it's final breath.
It shakes the earth, confounds all plans;
The mystery of God as man.

-This is War - Dustin Kensrue

I have long said that I'm not a fan of the image of Christmas that is popularly portrayed in this day and age.  I'm not talking about Santa Clause or commercialism or anything like that.  I am talking about the neat, clean, peaceful image of Christmas focused on a child.  We have songs such as Silent Night which talk about everything being calm and quiet, with radiant beams shining from Christ's Holy face. We have images of Mary looking beautiful and very put together after just going through 12-24 hours of labor with no epidural or any sort of medicine, really.  In all, we fail to see the whole point of it all.

Your image of the peaceful white Christmas is about as far away from the nativity story as is possible.

Let's get a few things straight:

1.  Jesus wasn't born in December.  He was most likely born towards the end of September.
2.  His home nation was occupied by a harsh and oppressive Roman Empire.
3.  Both his mother and step father can trace their lines back to King David, and anyone who had even the slightest bit of davidic blood in them would have done the same.  So when they had to report to their home towns for the census, thousands showed up in Bethlahem, which was probably a town no bigger than 300-1000 people normally.  When we say "there was no room at the inn", what we are really saying is that the town was litterally overflowing with people.  Imagine thousands of people who are homeless wondering around a town that is smaller than Ault.
4.  Jesus was born in a stable. This wasn't a nice clean structure with well behaved, not-stinky animals.  This was a barn.  Straw isn't soft and smooth.  It's itchy, it stabs you where you don't want it to, and the animals eat it rather messily.  There would have been mice, bugs, germs, feces, urine, rotting plant and animal matter everywhere.  It wasn't sanitary.  It was perhaps the worst place for a baby to be born.
5.  Mary was likely around 13-16 years old.  Joseph probably late teens to early 20's.  Imagine being a new mother at that age, far away from home, stuck in a barn with a man you're not actually married to yet, going through labor and having nothing to put your child in but the feed trough for a bunch of dirty animals.
6.  Leaving the arguments about christian holidays being repurposed pagan celebrations, the purpose or meaning of Christmas is not often fully discussed.  What is the reason that Jesus was born?  Do people draw the connection between his birth (Christmas) and his death (Easter)?

Jesus was born for one purpose:  To be sacrificed.  The Jews had been looking for an earthly king and Jesus came in the most humble, desperate situation imaginable.  This is akin to a baby being born in the grounds-keeping shed because the hospital didn't have an open bed for a mother in labor.

But why was Jesus born at all?  Why is he such an important character in all of history?  To answer that we have to go back to Genesis and see where it all started:  Adam and Eve and Satan.  God created the first humans, Adam and Eve.  He gave a simple command to Adam, who in turn gave it to Eve, who was in turn tempted to break that command by Satan.  And ever since then, every person in the world is inclined to turn away from God and do what is evil (If you think that all humans are inherently good, spend some time with a two year old.  Watch them grab a toy from another kid and scream "mine".  Pay close attention to those temper tantrums.  Did someone teach them to do that?  No.  It's a part of human nature).

That turning away from God, that breaking of his commands, that doing evil things, this is sin.  That word has been misused so often to describe the pleasure of eating a decadent desert and other stupidity like that, we don't understand the weight that it carries with it.  God is so pure and so perfect that to be in the presense of that sin goes against his very nature.  He is so just that he must punish it.  This means that anyone who is marred by that sin, they are guilty of committing a crime against God, and they must face the consequence, being separated from God for all of eternity.

The bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from above (God).  This would imply that every bad and evil thing comes from that which is not God.  Therefore a separation from God implies nothing but evil and bad things.  The bible describes Hell as a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of fire and pain and torment.  I believe that this is due to the absence of God's mercy and goodness, and the presence of his wrath.  You see, when we turn from God, we become his enemies.  We fall right into the ranks of Satan and we earn that wrath.

But for all of God's justice, he is also merciful and gracious.  In ancient Judaism, he created a provision of animal sacrifice as part of the codified Mosaic law.  This would cover over a persons's sin in the eyes of God, their sin essentially transferred onto an unblemished lamb which was then slaughtered.  Something had to die because of that sin, and the lamb was a substitute in death.  And all through the Torah, all through the Old Testament, we see pointers to a Messiah who would take away the sins of the world and establish his government on earth.

Enter Jesus, born into a war between God and Sin, born as the ultimate weapon to destroy the strongholds of God's enemies, to tear down their fortresses and weaken their powerful grip on humanity.  Jesus was born for one purpose:  To be murdered.  Jesus wasn't just like you and me, though, you see.  He was God.  He was divine.  Yet, he was also completely human.  He never sinned, he never deserved God's wrath, he never did a single act that would be deserving of punishment.  He was that unblemished lamb I mentioned before.  So you see, the true meaning of Christmas... is Easter, where we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Jesus was hated by the religious leaders of his day, was arrested by the local government because of his claim to be God, but was also accused of being a conspirator, inciting the people against Caesar in order to give him the death penalty with Rome.  He was tried in secret in the middle of the night, passed from official to official and eventually executed for the sole purpose of appeasing the people who were demanding it.  The very people who had praised him as a hero had turned on him and demanded his death.

He was crucified over the course of several hours, slowly suffocating to death in the most painful method of execution ever devised - crucifixion.  So painful was it, that a word was created to describe the experience:  excruciating.  Jesus was then buried in a tomb and all seemed lost.  But then three days later, as was foretold, he came back to life and is now sitting in heaven at the right hand of God.  This is significant, as it means that the eternal separation from God no longer needs to happen.  Jesus can took sin on himself and it died along with his body.  The whole purpose of his birth was to die and to take our sin with him.  His return marks his victory in the war that he was born to fight.

Christmas isn't a clean, fluffy, peaceful holiday.  Christmas is D-day in WWII.  Christmas is the invasion of the allied forces into Europe to stop the unbeatable German war machine.  Christmas is war, and this makes me appreciate it all the more knowing that.  I can only imagine what the Frenchman would have thought as he encountered the american soldier dropping from the sky, but my response to the birth of Christ should be similar - gratitude, awe and excitement that the war would be soon coming to a much anticipated end.

Tonight, as I worked on getting craft products loaded into a store, I was listening to various pastors teach on different topics, and I came across a young woman whose story is incredible.  You've probably never heard of her, and if not for the advent of the internet, you never would.  She is a young woman who has given up everything, a promising education and career, money, position, you name it, to pour her life out in Uganda.

Katie had everything, she could have named the college she would attend, was the home coming queen, loving family, promising future, strikingly beautiful, she had the American Dream well in hand.  Yet she chose to go on a short term mission trip to Uganda in high school and was then haunted by the need when she came back.  She has since become the foster mother of 14 young girls and continues to give and give to people who are dying of aide and TB.  Why would anyone do this?

To some degree, I can understand.  I am haunted by the images and conversations I've had.  What we would call superstitious beliefs and a lack of hope.  I went on a short term trip to the country that holds the 3rd largest economy in the world, where people seem to have simply become used to being depressed and stressed, yet they do everything they can to hide it.  A culture where it's considered rude to offer to lend a hand because it speaks ill of a person's ability to handle a situation, where love simply isn't expressed because it's just too deep.  A culture that desperately needs Jesus but refuses to consider him because he's considered an "outsider".  To the Japanese, Christianity is foreign.  In Japan, I won't be dealing with AIDS and TB.  Instead I'll be dealing with depression and isolationism.

I know a woman personally whose life is such an adventure that it could be written as an epic story.  She's traveled the world, befriended the craziest of people and all for the sake of honoring God.  She always inspired me to live outwardly, yet a part of me never knew how.  But, I think that God is changing that in me now.  A desire to live outwardly, a desire to die to myself and simply let God do his thing.  Yes, God.  Have your way.

My point in all of this isn't to say that these people like Katie should be held as heros, rather they should be held as examples of what the normal Christian life should be.  We in America are so dominated by our dreams and ideals, our stuff demands out time.  How often do we deny someone access to our life because of the inconvenience?  Or that we're afraid of being tainted.  Yet Jesus ate with tax collectors, he forgave adulterers, he fed hungry crowds miraculously, he touched unclean men to heal them of deadly diseases.  We should do the same.  Do we often think of our homes as our sanctuary?  Do we say to ourselves that we don't want to house a group of people who need help because we don't want our carpets messed up or our hardwood floors scuffed up?

I am challenged by the life of Katie because she holds so loosely onto things.  She holds so tightly on to Christ.  I have a heard time breaking away from my job long enough to give someone a ride to the airport.  Do I visit the sick in the hospital?  Would I befriend someone who was dying of AIDS?  I'm forced to ask these questions and then begin asking the question, "What am I willing to sacrifice for the sake of God's glory and the spread of his Gospel?"  I am then forced to rephrase the question:  "What in my life is preventing me from loving others to the glory of God?"  The question isn't if I'm willing to sacrifice.  Christians are called to sacrifice even their own bodies if necessary.  No, the question really is, "What am I clinging on to that is keeping me from letting God use me in profound ways?"

I honestly think when we stop asking what we're willing to sacrifice and instead ask what simply NEEDS to be pruned out, and we actually follow through, that's when we get out of the way and the world can truly see God at work in us.

Katie Davis is the founder of Amazima ministries and her blog can be found here:  http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/