Christ in Christmas

The joy of God goes through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye but finds life precisely within it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945

Streets are deserted as the wind whispers its cold breath against closed doors, sending a silent echo in the soul of this city. Bethlehem is empty this Christmas. 

From life to death, beginning to new beginnings, Bethlehem to Calvary holds historical significance for Christians around the world. Historians have considered Jerusalem as a Pythian city which exhausts itself in preserving the most ancient past and auguring the most distant future, held under pressure in an almost infinite chronological arc from Genesis to Apocalypse.  I wonder if similar sentiment stands for Bethlehem. Its Church of Nativity is renowned for and revered by many as location of Christ's birth (despite scholarly debates and division over whether it is here or Nazareth or non-existent altogether). 

The former glory and glow of Christmas is no more this year. Manger Square is the heart of a ghost town in mourning. In a nearby church, Christ's cradle is nestled in debris of death and destruction. A nativity in rubble to represent Gaza genocide. Celebrations are cancelled in Bethlehem as the city grieves and sadness spreads across the Holy Land.  It is a striking scene in contrast to what is a season of special celebration and a time of festivity for many people these days. Yet, what is indeed Christmas?

In 1038, we find the first use of the word "Christmas". Short for "Christ's mass", it was recorded in Middle English as Crīstesmæsse and in Old English as Cristes-messe. Crīst is from the Greek word of Khrīstos (Χριστός), a translation of the Hebrew word Māšîaḥ (מָשִׁיחַ), meaning "anointed" and mæsse is from the Latin word missa, the celebration of the Eucharist. Unlike the name, history of Christmas does not begin with Christ. In fact, the actual date of Christ's birth is not on Christmas. The fact that Christmas falls around the same time as the winter solstice and the ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia is no coincidence as many Christmas rituals evolved from pagan rites.

From the Roman celebration of god Mithras on 25 December came a festival that was adopted by the Christian Church to commemorate the Nativity. When was Christ even born? In the oldest surviving Christian chronology written in AD221, the historian Julius Africanus postulated that Jesus was conceived on 25 March which later became known as Lady Day. Yet, the prominence of Christmas increased over the time and by Tudor times, preparation for the Yuletide season began weeks in advance. The forty days before Christmas were called Advent, which was a season of expectation and atonement. Because of Advent, tradition demanded that houses were not decorated for the festive season until Christmas Eve.

As for Christmas decorations, evergreens had long been deemed miraculous for staying alive while other plants died so they were seen to symbolise eternal life. Carrying evergreens into the house was held to bring good fortune but not before Christmas Eve as it was a superstition since the ancient Druids. Holly, ivy and mistletoe had been used since pre-Christian times to celebrate the winter solstice. Although there was a medieval tradition that Christ's cross had been formed from the wood of the mystical mistletoe tree and the claim that holly symbolises Christ's crown of thorns, these decorations are part of distorted rites and rituals. As for the custom of decorating a Christmas tree, well, it did not become popular in England until the 19th century.

The list goes on. From the pagan tradition of yule log since Viking times to the Tudor feasting after Advent fasting, you have turkey's rise to popularity as a Christmas dish by the end of Elizabeth's reign, Christmas pudding's evolution from a kind of suet pudding in Tudor times and mince pies made with shredded leftover meats in commemoration of the shepherds (there were supposed to be 13 ingredients in honour of Christ and His Apostles!). Add Lindt chocolate from modern day commercialisation and prawns for an Aussie Christmas, just to name a few, it's become a concoction and cacophony of whatever we make of Christmas.

There is none of these in Bethlehem this Christmas. The sombre city marks Christmas with a powerful and poignant message - solidarity with Palestine - as the Holy Family Cave depicts a harrowing tableau of a bombed out version of the traditional nativity cave. Surrounded by rubble and barbed wire, the Virgin Mary embraces the baby Jesus, while Joseph embraces her, offering solace. On one side of the family, the Magi holds out a white shroud. On the other side, the fourth shepherd carries a bag as a symbol of Palestinian displacement. We cannot help but wonder what have we done?

Bethlehem is Bet Leḥem in Hebrew (בֵּית לֶחֶם) that means "house of bread". As the Gospel stated in the New Testament that "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." (Matthew 4:4), are we lost in the materialistic manna of this broken world? Have we forgotten God's divine providence and provision to feed the Israelites and to give us the living water? Did we completely miss the meaning of an extraordinary thing that is the birth of a God that came into our world through Christ as an imprint of His character so that we can see what God is like?

We were made in the image of God in creation, tasked with representing God to the world and the world to God - of doing what God would have done and liked us to do. Yet, how miserably did we fail and fall when we were supposed to be what Christ is like but in the end, God had to send his only son who is more truly human than anyone before or since as he has fulfilled the calling we had in representing the heart of God to the world in human form. He is the firstborn over all creation and it is in Christ, we see Adam's original role over creation fulfilled and our sins atoned on the cross. If we want to see what God is like, we can look to Christ and if we want to understand what human beings ought to be like, we can see it from Christ as he fulfilled the original calling despite the fall of Adam and Eve that broke a created world into a broken world of today.

So have a turkey or don't have a turkey, celebrate or don't celebrate Christmas. 

But have God, the Son and the Holy Spirit firmly in your heart for Christ in Christmas is what it calls for.

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ChatGPT Version (by feeding the blog "On Pain and Suffering")

In homage to the divine occasion of Christmas, a celebration anchored in the Christian faith, where the joyous carols and festive lights echo the profound story of the birth of Jesus Christ—a narrative that transcends the glitter and glow.

In a world where the true essence of Christmas often contends with the commercial glitter, this festive season holds a sacred place. A realm where the sociocultural tapestry may sometimes overshadow the spiritual significance of Christ’s birth. Amidst the exchanging of gifts and the merry gatherings, the true Christian meaning beckons believers to reflect on the miraculous story that unfolded in Bethlehem.

Just as a great man faced suffering with silent dignity, Christmas brings forth the story of a humble virgin, Mary, who brought forth the Son of God. The narrative is not merely about a manger but the divine purpose it signifies—the incarnation of God to reconcile humanity with Himself. It’s an invitation to ponder the profound message of love, redemption, and hope that emanates from the nativity narrative.

Much like the Hindu view of karma, Christmas calls for acceptance and detachment—acknowledging the divine plan unfolding through the birth of Jesus. The celebration aligns with the Christian understanding that suffering is not eradicated but redeemed through Christ’s sacrifice. It echoes the sentiment that in Christ’s birth, God intervened to share in the human experience and to provide a path to salvation.

For Christians, Christmas is not just a commemoration but an acknowledgment that God cares about the human experience. The narrative unfolds in a world where, like the Garden of Eden, suffering is woven into the fabric of human existence. Yet, in the Christmas story, believers find solace, seeing in the birth of Christ evidence that God embraces humanity’s joys and sorrows.

This piece is not a scholarly exposition but a fictional exploration, a reflection on the enduring spirit of Christmas that transcends the tinsel and lights, revealing the transformative power of the divine love manifested in the birth of Jesus Christ.

God the Genie?

Extol the Lord, O Jerusaleum;
praise your God, O Zion,
for he strengthens the bars of your gates
and blesses your people within you.
He grants peace to your borders 
and satisfies you with the finest of wheat.
Psalm 147:12-14.
 

I have been praying since 603 days ago when Russia annexed parts of Ukraine. Praying for an end to the latest episode of wars in this world, yet it has not stopped. Nor have my prayers.

It is an eve of silent prayers as I turn to God when Gaza has the world on edge. We fear for conflict in the Middle-East that may spiral into unceasing suffering which in turn fuels our own worry of war in another continent.

People ponder why we pray if what we pray for won't come true. God is not a genie. He is not conveniently compact in a bottle. Nor should we wager with God. I mean, have we reduced God and our faith to a point where our belief is based, conditionally, upon His answer to our prayers? How many times had Jesus performed miracles and how many more miracles will we demand from God?

Prayers are often considered as talking to God the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit, as we wait for His glory. It should not surprise us that prayer to the biblical God is speech as he is a personal and relational God. Speech is how we relate to one another. God for his part has spoken to us at many times and in various ways. Through his Word preserved in the scripture over centuries of oral traditions and translation of historical texts, through the prophets and messianic psalms of poetry and by his Son who came into this world to suffer what we suffered since Adam's fall broke His creation. A world created by words of God in the beginning.

Religion is not a lifestyle choice and Christianity bears the cross of following Christ in ways harder than many. Someone dear told me that the children of God do not and will not lose faith when they have been subjected to sufferings and antisematic atrocities throughout centuries. It's not how religion works. So in the war of terror waged against Israel by Hamas, we are reminded of David's public prayers even when we fall. Praise be to you, O Lord, God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. (1 Chronicles 29:10).

So let us pray (in acknowledgement of authorship by St Andrew's Cathedral):

God of the nations,  
whose kingdom rules over all,  
have mercy on our broken and divided world. 
In the land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, 
Bring peace in our time, O Lord. 
In the land of our Saviour’s birth,
banish the spirit that makes for war.
Please give wisdom to those you have placed in authority.
Rescue the captives, shield those in danger, and bind up the broken hearted. 
For those fighting for justice, may they be strengthened by your grace. 
For those walking in darkness, may the light of your face shine upon them.  
Above all, we pray that the peoples of Israel and the Middle East will find everlasting hope in you. 
And in the land of your Son’s redeeming death and resurrection, 
turn hearts to look to the Saviour and live. 
Bring peace, Lord, while we wait for Christ's coming and rule, 
When all people will beat their swords into ploughshares, 
When nation will not take up sword against nation, 
And when every tear will be wiped away 
by the Prince of Peace and Lord of Lords, 
Amen. 
 

On pain, peace and promise

One of the most agonising problems within our human experience is that few, if any, of us live to see our fondest hopes fulfilled. The hopes of our childhood and the promises of our mature years are unfinished symphonies. In a famous painting, George Frederic Watts portrays Hope as a tranquil figure who, seated atop our planet, her head sadly bowed, plucks a single unbroken harpstring. Is there any one of us who has not faced the agony of blasted hopes and shattered dreams? - Shattered Dreams by Martin Luther King 

We are fickle in this fleeting world of change. 

At times in our lives, the tail winds of joy, triumph, and fulfillment favour us, and at times the head winds of disappointment, sorrow, and tragedy beat against us. 

I often wonder without an unfailing faith, that is an inner spiritual engine which sustains many Christians in spite of the winds, how can one navigate the mishaps and misfortunes of this world? 

The expression that people make ‘peace’ with their circumstances - be it adversity or calamity - is somewhat misleading. Does it mean to live with frustration tinted with bitter resentment? A fatalistic acceptance of the will and whims of this imperfect universe? A libertarian and materialistic mind to do what one pleases in pursuit of happiness that provides temporary relief in taking one's mind off root causes but could never meet our insatiable wishes?

Martin Luther once said that ‘peace’ as the world commonly understands it, comes when the summer sky is clear and the sun shines in scintillating beauty, when the pocketbook is full, when the mind and body are free of ache and pain. But this is not true peace. 

The peace of which Apostle Paul instilled and spoke of is a calmness of soul amid terrors of trouble, inner tranquility amid the howl and rage of outer storm, the serene quiet at the center of a hurricane amid the howling winds. We readily understand the meaning of peace when everything is going right and when one is “up and in,” but we are baffled when Paul spoke of that true peace which comes when a man is “down and out,” when burdens lie heavy upon his shoulders, when pain throbs in his body, when he is confined by the stone walls of a prison cell, and when disappointment is daily reality. True peace is calm amidst storm and tranquility amidst disaster. 

When Jesus said to his disciplines that "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you" (John 14:27), peace or shalom, is not simply the state of not being at war with oneself. Rather, it is the state of being right with God, the creator, and His world, the creation. Shalom is what God's kingdom will be like. For Jesus to give it to his disciples is for them to have the deepest security as they dwell in the protection of God, even in the midst of trouble. Thus, Jesus said "do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid." As a ruler who ruled by dying on the cross to set us free from sin, the extraordinary blessing by him is a promise of peace that we can know in our life despite all its troubles - ironically, without brute force, mighty strength or skilled swordsmanship that conquers all.

People often look at our Christian conviction and consider it a human folly.  Yet, genuine faith imbues us with the conviction that beyond time is a divine Spirit and beyond life is Life External. However dismal may be the present circumstances, we know we are not alone, for God dwells with us in life’s most confining cells and defining moments as well as prepares us for beyond this life as Christ has conquered death. 

So God's creative power is never constrained by this earthly life, nor is His majestic love locked within the limited walls of time and space as we know it. Our earthly life is a prelude to a new awakening, and death is an open door that leads us into life eternal. So the Christian faith makes it possible for us to accept that which cannot be changed, to meet disappointments and sorrow with an inner poise, and to absorb the pain of this world without abandoning our sense of hope.

For “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to His purpose" (Romans 8:28). 

Whatever it may be.

Themed with a song: https://youtu.be/qv-SXz_exKE?si=RO8ft2XHQ9L2f790

On love and longing

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 1 Corinthian 13:1-8

For the last three years around Easter, I have blogged about the profound passion of Christ. Drawn to the cataclysmic complexity of a compelling message behind the Son of Man's mission that weaves to complete God's tapestry of grace with such grief and gravity, it is a time of the year that calls for contemplation to consider our own existence in the speck of human history and divine intervention.

Yet, I have not ruminated on the message of love that Easter resonates, as reflected in the new command that Christ left us. Just before passover, "Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave his world...Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end" (John 13:1). He poignantly reminded his disciples of what it means to love, during his final hours leading up to the pivotal point of his mission that would be marked by pain and suffering coupled with humiliation and utter abandonement on earth as it was in heaven during his dying moment alone on the cross. In John's gospel, Jesus said to his disciples "my children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come" yet, "a new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples" (John 13:34). 

We may often forget that in the tragedy and cruelty of the crucification, it is the humility and humanity of Christ that we saw on the cross. When his own people tore him apart both bodily and in spirit, and some casted lots to divide his clothing, Jesus still spoke from the cross with compassion to plead that "Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). As Michael Jensen has put it, ultimately, "motivated by love, Jesus accepts the mission of attoning for our sins, accepting in his own body the consequences of sin and evil, the whole volumne of our rage against God for daring to be God". His humble bearing of our sins on the cross is also the humility of God that we see. So as Jesus asked his disciples to take up the cross and follow him, Jesus calls us to follow behind him in a life of sacrificial love for the sake of others. 

To be his disciple, one cannot avoid the cross or fail to accept what Jesus offered us there. Rather, we are called to seek in our heart the strength and steadfast faith to live a life that stands as a visible imprint of his sacrifice. So in following after Jesus, we do so by forgetting oursleves as the centrepiece in our own lives as well as perhaps even those of others in our lives and by truly giving oneself to deeds of sacrifical love.  What sounds harsh to our modern day ears and seems heretic to the utilitarian rationality of our thinking in this day and age, is actually a divine way to live. It is a hard way to live. Yet, the contradictions of the cross which, like many parables of Jesus' ministry, through paradoxes show "what looks like weakness turns out to be the power of God. What looks like foolishness turns out to be wisdom. What looks like loss is actually gain."

Just as the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone through the cross and resurrection of Christ (Psalm 118:22), the cornerstone of the Christian message is also one of love as is the meaning of Easter. God has loved and longed for us since time immemorial when after genesis of the once perfect world, He created man in His image and woman for man as it is not good for man to be alone (Genesis 2:18). Then, throughout the old testament and despite death, sickness and suffering in a world that is not meant to be as it once was, the Lord looks down from heaven on the children of man to see if there are any who understand, who seek after God (Psalm 14:2). "...the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore he will rise up to show mercy to you, for the Lord is a God of justice and blessed are all those who wait for him" (Isaiah 30:18). 

So as Christ has risen and is resurrected, God has reached out to us through His only son and revealed the abounding love, grace and mercy that He has for us. 

And this is the love we ought to long for and try to live out in our humble lives.

With tribute to Good Friday Service at St Mark's DP, 27:22 - 41:45 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cfEH-mai4E&t=1395s and Christ, the Conspiracy Theory at St Mark's DP, 22:47 - 39:05 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q82lzwAmPtM&t=2353s