Content warning: Long, rambly, and heavy. There are Bible verses used unironically to argue about the world.
Allow me, if you will, to get religious with you for a few minutes. It’s a cliche that Jesus is the “reason for the season,” but I’m not sure that people – especially those of you who are not religious – can fully appreciate the power of Christmas. Christmas is far, far more than Jesus’s birthday (I mean, he was actually born roundabouts September, so yeah). Christmas, I think, is not just a celebration, or an occasion for gift-giving, or an excuse for lights and decorations and parties and frivolity. No, Christmas is more than an anything an occasion for joy.
Because Christmas is a glimpse of what the Kingdom of Heaven is like.
Let me explain.
Most people – most Christians, even – don’t really study the teachings of Jesus. In a technical sense, I mean. They know all the stuff about “love thy neighbor” and “turn the other cheek,” but there’s lots of parts of his message that are often lost. I don’t intend this as a criticism! There’s nothing at all wrong with just picking up the general moral thrust of Christ’s message from the church and just going with that. But to fully appreciate Christmas, we need to dive in a little.
Fundamental to Jesus’s message is the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. He mentions it over 100 times in the Gospels. At heart, the Kingdom of God is the moral and social re-ordering that Jesus brings: the fallen world will be overthrown and replaced with a new order, one of peace, righteousness, and justice at its heart.
But this is not a sudden event. This is not Christ come again in Glory to destroy the princes of the world and proclaim His divine reign in fiery letters writ across the sky. No, the Kingdom of God is a process – it is a gradual transformation. And it’s one that’s already ongoing. It’s a process that started more than two thousand years ago, in Galilee:
And He said, “How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? “It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR can NEST UNDER ITS SHADE.”
Mark 4:30-32
You see? It grows. The Kingdom of God starts small – it did start small – but from there it will grow, until ultimately it is so large that it dominates everything around it. The tree does not appear out of nowhere fully formed – neither does the kingdom. It begins from a tiny seed, and spreads.
It isn’t something Christians wait for, but something Christians must work for.
Consider another:
And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.
And:
“And as you go, preach, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
And
“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.
Various chapters of Matthew and Luke. Look ’em up if you want.
In short, the Kingdom is something that you have to work in order to bring about. It’s not something that just happens, but is instead something that we have in our power to create. We – you, me, all of us – have the power to bring this world a little bit more into line with the will of the Almighty, that is, to make it a bit more joyful, a bit more peaceful, a bit more just, a bit better – to make it a little more like Heaven. It’s something we’ve been working on for 2,000 years at this point.
Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Matthew 3:1
Note that John preached that it was at hand, imminent, two millennia ago – the Kingdom is not the end of the world. It’s part of the world already. It is here.
What am I driving at, with this? And what does it have to do with Christmas?
In short, the Christmas season is this time, above all others, when I think that the Kingdom is made most obvious in the world, the most manifest. Why?
Because Christmas is the time when we feel most comfortable loving our neighbors. And at heart, that is all the kingdom is: a place where we dwell in love with everyone around us.
We’re not comfortable talking about love, I think. Or maybe it’s just me. I’m not. I tend to be a somewhat private person, unless I’m talking to a computer screen and pretending that this is basically just a diary. But love has connotations of romantic love, the attraction between a man and a woman*, which is an artifact of the limited nature of the English language. Love, though, is more than just an erotic connection between two people – love is any connection between people. It’s a force that calls on us and demands that we place the needs of others above our own desires – that we do everything we can to help our brother. But love is so much more than an action:
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4:7-12
Whoever loves knows God.
Whoever does not love does not know God.
God is love.
In my opinion, that passage of 1 John – is the greatest insight of Christianity, and the rock-solid foundation of the entire faith. Love is divine. When you work for the good of another, when you sacrifice for them, protect them, help them, you are touching the divine. You experience the presence of God.
Consider, then, what happens: the more you love, the more you experience God. It needn’t be radical love for people you have never and will never meet. The love of parents for children, of siblings for each other, love between friends – this all is love, and this all connects us to God.
What does love look like? If we love someone, how should we act? I’ve got one more passage I’d like to share.
But now I will show you a more excellent way.
– 1 Corinthians, chapter 13
If I speak in the tongues of men and angels – but have not love – I am only a resounding cymbal or a clanging gong.
If I have the gift of prophecy – and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains – but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames – but have not love, I gain…nothing.
Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast – it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily-angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perserveres.
Love never fails.
God is love. When we love, we are in the presence of God. The kingdom of God, then, is the kingdom of love. And what is love?** Patience. Kindness. Humility. All the characteristics Paul listed – that is how we should live with our fellow man at all times. The more we can do this, the more the mustard seed grows, drawing closer to the day when its shady branches shall shelter us all.
You know that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you help someone? That little inner glow that fills you and warms you and gives you contentment that here, now, at least for this little moment, in this little corner all is right with the world? That’s divinity. The Holy Spirit – whatever you want to call it, you are touching God. It’s one of the best feelings in the world – like summer, in the midst of winter. It’s our soul shining the way it was meant to – hence, the summer of the soul in December.
So let me bring it back to Christmas, one last time. I’ve gone on long enough. At Christmas time, we most allow ourselves to feel love.
It is this time, above all others, when we give most to charity. When we throw the change into the Salvation Army’s bucket. It is this time when we’re most patient with each other – or when we should be, at least. Insults and slights that might ruffle our feathers at other times we let fade, because hey, it’s Christmas, right? We forgive ongoing feuds with each other. We catch up with old friends. And, of course, we give gifts.
Everywhere you go at Christmastime, you see people affirming their dedication to each other. It’s not about the gifts. It’s about the thinking of others, and trying to find ways to make them happy, to show them you care. It’s about reflecting on our common humanity, and the fact that really we’re all trapped here together, and we can make our time together light and easy, or we can make it miserable and burdensome. Imagine everyone making one choice and sticking to it!
In short, then, Christmas is the one time of year when everyone at least pays lip service to the idea of putting others’ needs before their own, when we all allow ourselves to feel and to express our love for each other. So, this Christmas, just be kind to one another. Find someone in need – there are many, I assure you – and reach out.
And that’s what the Kingdom of God is. Christmas, then, is a glimpse of the kingdom. A time for us to see what awaits us once we get that mustard seed all nice and grown up over the whole world. And that’s why Jesus really is the reason for the season.
Christmas is so much more than a birthday.
** Or whoever. I’m not here to judge.
** Baby, don’t hurt me…
Gwangju Dreaming 