28 March, 2024

The Ironic Opportunity of Christmas

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by | 20 December, 2009 | 0 comments

 

by Ethan Magness

For centuries, church leaders have been creatively using the cultural opportunities available to them to proclaim the gospel and the reign of the kingdom of God. Most of our current Christmas traditions developed in this way.

Cultural practices (many pagan in origin) were adapted and redeveloped in the context of celebration of Christ”s birth. In fact, although the precise history is murky, it is likely the date of the celebration itself was chosen to co-opt the ancient celebration of the sun that occurred at the winter solstice.

These opportunities to redeem the culture around us and focus it on Christ are a gift to every generation of Christians. Recent developments in mission strategy have demonstrated that wherever we can redeem cultural practices instead of replacing them with an outside culture, we are living out the good news that Christ has come to redeem not only individuals but also the whole world. When the church functions as an agent of cultural redemption, we are salt and light to the world.

In light of this continuing pattern, I am convinced the current American culture of Christmas presents an ironic opportunity to the church. The opportunity we face is to once again respond to the darkness of our culture with the redeeming love of Christ, to affirm what is good in our cultural expression and take that goodness and direct it toward the love of Christ.

The irony is that the dark culture that needs to be redeemed is a culture we helped create.

Christmas is in crisis. The crisis is deeper than changing greetings at the checkout lines. It is more profound than the rise of Santa and the decline of nativity scenes. The crisis is that our cultural (and perhaps even our religious) celebration of Christmas is rapidly becoming nothing more than a winter celebration of material excess, communal goodwill, and family. Perhaps we should thank those who insist on calling it the holiday season, not because they are removing Christ, but because they have the decency to leave Jesus out of a celebration that has nothing to do with him.

The church must not waste any time condemning the current Christmas culture””it won”t do any good and it isn”t what we are called to do. Even more importantly, the church must not waste any time lamenting a lost era. The culture we have today is but the natural consequence of the Christmas culture of 50 years ago.

Instead, ironically, we must again do for Christmas what the church did for so many other cultural festivals. We must redeem our culture, even the culture we helped create.

I don”t have all the answers of how to redeem the culture of Christmas. Some things must surely be abandoned, and others rediscovered. However I will suggest three ways the church might respond to the ironic opportunity of Christmas.

 

The Opportunity of Advent

One of the problems of the culture of Christmas is that it consumes the months before it in its preparations, and these preparations are almost exclusively focused on the most secular (perhaps pagan) parts of the celebration. We count the “shopping days” till Christmas as we prepare with shopping and decorating. Is it any wonder these preparations consistently lead to a celebration of consumption and spectacle?

The good news is the church already has the tools to redeem this time of preparation. Advent is precisely the season of preparation and longing, waiting for Christ. The church developed the practice of Advent recognizing that preparation matters. In our worship services and in our lives we must be challenged to prepare for what matters most.

If we wait until Christmas Eve to focus attention on Jesus, it is too late. The culture has already captured our attention. If we fail to prepare, then we have prepared to be just like the culture.

A practical step you might consider is to hold your family gift exchange at Thanksgiving, so that December is focused on preparation for the worship of Christ rather than the worship of the mall.

 

The Opportunity of the Magnificat

Our celebration of Christmas ironically has suffered, in part, from our culture”s (and perhaps even the church”s) use of the Christmas story itself. It has been reduced to a charming story: a young girl says yes to God, a young couple sleeps in a stable. Have our pageants, plays, and carols created a culture that has lost track of the true impact of this story?

This is the story of how the empires of men are overthrown by the Prince of Peace; the powers of this world are sent scurrying by the weakness of a baby; the grandeur of God is made flesh in the cries of a baby.

Scripture itself can rescue us from this malaise of manger scenes and Christmas plays. When Mary reflected on the birth of Christ, she sang, “My soul glorifies the Lord . . .” but she went on to sing, “he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:46; 51-53).

What would our Christmas program look like if it expressed the truth of this song? Would the program be a pageant and play or a communitywide service project?

For the record, I love pageants, but I find myself wondering how our world would be amazed if we put as much energy into expressing the radical implications of Mary”s song as we have into depicting the little town of Bethlehem.

A practical step you might consider is to visit adventconspiracy.org for lots of ideas about how you and your church might transform your Christmas programming far beyond pageants and plays into an active embodiment of Mary”s song.

 

The Opportunity of the Incarnation

Perhaps the most powerful opportunity we have to redeem our celebration of Christmas lies in recovering the principle of the incarnation. Currently one of the most interesting parts of the American Christmas celebration is the cultural moment of generosity. Charitable giving spikes around Christmas and this, of course, is good. This impulse to give may be a glimmer of generosity or it may be part of a culture that seeks to appease a guilty conscious with a few righteous acts. This impulse, however, is immanently redeemable; all it needs is the incarnation.

We have weakened the culture-redeeming power of the incarnation by presenting it primarily as a doctrine to be understood or perhaps a mystery to be celebrated. This presentation is not false, of course. I applaud attempts to teach this doctrine, and even more those opportunities to celebrate this mystery, but I am convinced the true culture-redeeming power of the incarnation is not as a doctrine but rather as a model for ministry. This is how we help our culture (and even the church) transcend giving as a way to appease the conscious and, instead, move toward true Christian generosity.

The incarnation is the truth that Christ left the comfort of Heaven to minister and serve among those who were lost and least and lonely. This is what we claim to celebrate at Christmas””that someone loved the world so much that he left the comforts of home to enter the lives of the outcasts, rebels, and despisers of God.

No wonder the world is confused. We, the church, have created a commemorative holiday that fails to commemorate the event for which it was created””to celebrate the incarnate one. He left his home; we bundle up into our homes and our churches. But this confusion is our opportunity to redeem our world. This Christmas or next (if this Christmas is already too busy), we, God”s people, could begin to redeem Christmas by recognizing that long before it was a doctrine, the incarnation was given to the church as a model of ministry for any who would follow Christ.

I must conclude this reflection with a confession. I haven”t done any of these things. My life is not yet a role model in any of these areas. Perhaps that means I should be silent. But I take the risk to speak about what I have not yet done because I want to be a part of the solution. I want my life and the life of the church to incarnate Christmas again, in a way that will startle the world almost as much as the angels startled the shepherds.

Not all cultural practices are redeemable, of course. Not all can be transformed into a healthy part of a Christian”s life. The cynics may say that Christmas is lost; it will end as it began””a secular winter celebration of excess, friendship, and goodwill. But I am a hopeful person, and I am convinced if the church begins to practice the incarnation as well as we preach about it, even Christmas can be redeemed.

 

 

 

Ethan Magness is pastor of spiritual formation with Mountain Christian Church, Joppa, Maryland.

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