Finding Our Place

Maybe more so than any other time of year, Christmas becomes an opportunity to celebrate our traditions as families. And we all have them. Whether we realize it or not, we all have traditions. Some of them are meaningful only to us and unique to our family. Some of them are kind of across the board, traditions that most people might keep but we put our own touch to them.

I can remember as a child how my mother would make her “famous” Christmas cookies every year. It was a recipe that she adopted from her mother then adapted to make it her own. I’ve known other families who have a tradition of watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” together as a family every Christmas. Others still might take a Saturday and volunteer at a soup kitchen and that act of service becomes a meaningful marker of the love of God during this time of year.

One tradition, however, that I have treasured since childhood and we are now attempting to instill into our children, is the reading of the Christmas story from Luke 2. Every Christmas Eve our family would attend the candlelight communion service at church and then hurry home to get ready for bed. But before we would put out milk and cookies and go over our wish list one last time, my dad would call us all into the living room. He would open his bible and read the birth of Jesus as told in Luke’s gospel.

I was always captivated by the reading of the story. It is the most grand birth announcement and at the same time is invitingly simple. Mary. Joseph. Angels. Shepherds. Sheep. Travelers. Innkeepers. Caesar. Jesus.

The birth is broadcast to the world via the largest screen in nature: the pixels of the night sky. Cracked open with the glory and joy of heaven the angels step forth to tell a bunch of night watchmen about the arrival of a baby boy in Bethlehem. It is the news of good tidings of great joy are for all people.

I have always been most blown away by what the Angels say to the shepherds: “This will be a sign to you: you will find the baby wrapped in cloths lying in a manger” (Lk. 2:12). The angels somehow knew the shepherds would want to join in the action. After all, who wouldn't? Out in the cool Judean night air and all of a sudden the host of angels announcing the birth of the Son of God. Surely that will get your attention.

The shepherds looked at one another and decided it was time to go into Bethlehem and see this thing that they heard about. Luke goes on to tell us – you likely know the story better than I do – that they found the baby with his mother and father. Things were just as the angel of God told them they would be.

I think what has always drawn me into this story is that while there is something for everyone – those who want drama, those who crave action, those who are on the lookout for political power – this is also everyone's story. From the Caesars of the world to the innkeepers of our lives, the story is for everyone. But the story of the shepherds is the story of you and me. We have heard the grand and glorious announcement once again that Christ has been born. We have all been the ones sitting out minding our own business when the interruption of incarnation comes our way.

And we are invited to go and see the place where the baby lay. The angels had a gut feeling the shepherds would want to be a part of this in some way. They never tell the shepherds to go but they let their own desire to be part of the story take over. Call it the move of the Holy Spirit or call it a hunch of curiosity, there is born within all of us a desire to know God and God’s work in the world.

These guys were not the Caesars of Rome. They were shepherds. They did not manage an inn in the center of town. They managed flocks of sheep. Their jobs as shepherds is all we know that they had in common with one another. They may have come from different families and certainly all had different hopes and dreams about what they wanted to see out of life.

But each of them became one when they hurried off to find this child born in Bethlehem. They became part of the action of the story together. They have been written into salvation history because they desire to know this thing that has happened. They share the urge to know what God is doing.

That has always been one of the most incredible things about the story of the birth of Jesus – each of us are written into the story of salvation by our desire to see this thing that has happened. To experience it both ourselves and together.

I can still see our family gathered around my fathers chair in the living room to hear the story of Christmas told once again. I remember going to sleep at night being blown away at the sheer power of it all. That God would come to us in the form of a baby and that each of us are invited to come and see. Thus taking our place in the story ourselves.

Another great Christmas tradition for so many families is the decorating of the Christmas tree. No other time of year do we haul a tree inside, set it up, and put ornaments on it. But this time of year it is ok. Just last week our girls helped us decorate the Christmas tree in our living room. They loved it. For days leading up to it Annlyn would ask if she would be allowed to help decorate the tree. She was desperate to put the star on top. Eva has “ooed” and “aahed” over the brilliancy of the lights, being drawn to the beauty of the tree with childlike awe.  They both wanted part of the action. They both wanted in the story.

In this simple act of decorating the tree, we are coming to take our place in the story. The tree is an evergreen – symbolizing the eternal nature of Jesus. When we come to take our place in the story of Xmas we are finding our place in Jesus. We are grafted into the evergreen tree of Jesus Christ and his story of the salvation of the world.

The Christmas Tree is always much larger than the individual ornaments. There is always room for ornaments. We hang ornaments on the tree and might be finding bare spots until the tree is taken down. There is room for you on this tree of evergreen life. The tree is the central piece to the whole story. Without the tree the ornaments are left floundering in a sea of desired purpose. However, the ornaments hung side by side become part of the story as individual ornaments and as part of the larger whole.

That too is you and me. The ultimate expression and fulfillment – the completion of our own story and who we are is found only when we take our place in the story of Christmas. One of the greatest interruptions of the incarnation is that we are brought into the story of salvation. No longer are we bound to wandering in darkness for a great light has been lit in Jesus. Our own individual story, the flocks we have tended our whole lives, the night skies we have seen week in and week out, and the inns that are full of traveling emotions and desires, are now brought into the story of redemption.

Reading the story of the birth of Jesus is refreshing because it truly interrupts everything about life. It interrupts where we are headed on our own. It interrupts our inclination to be self-sufficient. It interrupts the taking of censuses to remind us that there is a much larger story being told than the story of ourselves. It is the story of what God has done, is doing, and will do by finishing what God started. It reminds us that when we hear the words of the angel that there will be a sign, and we head for Bethlehem to see this reality, we are all of a sudden part of something so much bigger. We are part of something that fills the skies with the glory of heaven and the praises of God. We are part of the story of stories that never gets old. We are part of the evergreen tree of Jesus as His ornaments of grace.

I will always remember Christmas traditions. But finding and taking our place in the Christmas story is something we have to do on a daily basis. Each day we decide to be part of what God is doing in the world. I pray this Christmas begins that very journey. I am grateful that the season of Advent is the beginning of the Christian year – may this year be the year of finding and taking our place in the story of the evergreen, the story of Jesus, the story of the shepherds.

So come to the tree and find your place in the Christmas story as you gather around the chair of our father to hear the good news again.

Oh God who has split the night sky with angels, to you we come. Running. Leaping for joy at the good news for all people. We are grateful for your call on our lives and that you bid us come, find our place in you, and grow as one onto the tree of your evergreen salvation. May this Advent be one of grafting and growing, one of searching and knowing, one of coming and going to find each and every day the place where you are writing us into the story. In the name of the one who has been born that man no more may die....