What Do You Really Want for Christmas?
Revelation 21:2, 4a 2“And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. 4a…and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be mourning or crying or pain.”
II Corinthians 11:2-3 2For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. 3But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
Paul says to the church at Corinth, “I betrothed you to one husband, that to Christ, that I might present you as a pure virgin.” In the here and now we are betrothed to God in Christ. The day will come when our knowledge of Him and our relationship to Him will be complete, but until then we may be left with a sense of longing that we can better understand by looking at the Hebrew customs of betrothal and marriage.
When a man and woman were betrothed to each other, they made a public commitment to marry, usually within a year. Betrothal was not a time of trying out the relationship. It was a time for building it. The couple spent lots of time with each other. They shared their possessions and chores. They learned about one another, they grew closer, got to learn each other’s quirks and habits. The man and woman had a commitment to one another that was binding, but they still lived in separate homes, and they did not consummate the commitment until after the marriage ceremony. Betrothal described a relationship where there was commitment but not completion.
Similarly, we are left with a longing for more than we have presently received from our relationship to God. Though this longing can be a friend to our faith, it can become a foe if we grow dissatisfied with our lack of fulfillment and seek our satisfaction elsewhere.
Our longing for God is not to be played down or solved. Our longing need not make us uncomfortable. If anything, our longing is the mark of God’s touch. We long to know Him completely because we have known Him in part. We have been betrothed and we know that nothing will satisfy us except for the final completion that our marriage to Him will one day bring. Our longing for God can be the fuel for staying true to the simplicity and purity of our devotion to Christ, provided we remember the simplicity and purity of God’s devotion to us. That is the message of Christmas. We cannot have completion in our relationship to God, but we do have God’s complete commitment to us.
Christmas is the visible expression of God’s invisible commitment to you and me. If we look around us, at the injustices and tragedies of life, if we look within us at the weaknesses that undermine us and the self-destructive habits that bind us, we may wonder about God’s commitment to us, or be tempted to dismiss God altogether.
But when we look in the manger, at that small vulnerable baby, the life of His Son, given to our world, there can be no doubt of God’s commitment – a commitment that literally made the heavens sing and humans bow in awe. He placed His life in our hands, even as He calls us to place our life in His hands.
In Jesus, God is with us in our living, and God is with us in our dying, not only in physical death but the dying that comes with any broken relationship, or disappointment of defeat. And, in Jesus, God is with us beyond our death in the life and completion that awaits us. “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. …and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be mourning or crying or pain.” There shall be only the marriage feast prepared for you and me from the beginning of time.
Christmas celebrates God’s commitment to us in Jesus Christ, even as it calls us to look with longing for that day when our relationship to God will be complete. The word became flesh and lived among us. May Jesus be alive in your life, guiding your way, enlightening your mind and working miracles in your soul.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell
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