I blinked after Thanksgiving, and now we’re in Christmas week. Maybe there’s something to the idea that the older you get, the faster time passes. I recall as a kid the slow, agonizing build-up till that final morning when I’d finally get to tear my way through a pile of gifts and find out whether I’d gotten the HO scale electric train, the microscope, and in later years, that .22 rifle, and fly rod.
And yet none of it would have been complete without the setting of the people around it, of family, and extended family. Our home had been the one most predictably open to relatives over the holidays. We hosted dinners, finger foods, a discrete amount of alcohol, jokes, laughing, visiting, and occasional run-ins because of some careless comment made. The soundtrack of the season was Elvis Presley’s “Blue Christmas,” and Charles Brown’s “Bells Will Be Ringing.” In a real sense, the people and the setting they created were Christmas to this young boy.
In contrast, whenever I heard “the” Christmas story, something about it always seemed stark and lonely. Even though there had been a shepherd’s visit, those guys came and went. The angelic celebration was something situated in heaven, appearing briefly and then disappearing. As for the wise men, they weren’t to show up for about two years, an inconvenient truth for all front-yard nativity scenes.
Otherwise, the first Noel came down to a simple carpenter, his young wife, and their baby. Because of this austere Bethlehem beginning, I also viewed the rest of the Christian story as a bit depressing.
But a seed rarely displays much of the properties we observe in its later maturity as a tree. Eventually what grew out of that humble beginning was God’s own family of faith, the church, an innumerable group from every nation, tongue, and tribe.
These people would be the eventual fruit of Christ’s cross, a family bigger by far than those few of His own biological pedigree.
This new family is built upon and within “the mystery of godliness that God was manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:15). Not only did God become a man named Jesus, but in a certain sense, He provided more of Himself through His members, His believers. It was an extension of His incarnation–more mouths (for the good news), more hands (for good works), more feet (for going to the needy), more presence (for the lonely).
Most of my early understanding of the Bible missed all of this, and I’d wager a lot of readers do the same today. For instance, a careless perusal of 1 Timothy might give you the mistaken impression Paul is only interested in correctness of teaching, and administrative arrangements for the church.
But in chapter 5 of First Timothy, the apostle advises his younger co-worker on the treatment of diverse ages and categories of people. It is more than a manual. It’s all about the family getting along when they get together.
The church is a place of human, moral, ethical, and spiritual relatedness. It was never meant to be merely theoretical. In fact, no family is ever theoretical. Problematic maybe. Disappointing sometimes. But always full contact.
This was what I had missed in my early years, back when I thought of the church as a medieval ghetto.
That babe in the manger was the beginning of a new family born of faith, indeed, an entirely new creation (Eph. 2:13-16) animated with an indestructible life. How was I to know back at the tender age of nine, that He would rise up and lead me into joyous exchanges over cheeseburgers, of tearful admissions in private rooms, of faith-filled discoveries, and a multiplication of “houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands” (Mk. 10:30) in ways I had never expected?
Meanwhile, the biological family rhythm I have lost due to the ravages of time and death, distance, and divorce, were the best a biological family could give. God bless ‘em, they tried. I’ve got a head full of fond memories, and a box full of photos to prove it.
But Bethlehem managed to give better.
This is an updated edition of a post originally published on John Myer
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