MERRY (ILLEGITIMATE) CHRISTMAS
Christmas reminds us that often the Kingdom of God breaks into our world in seeming illegitimacy.
What the culture deems as legitimate, and we unwittingly breathe in and affirm, becomes a worldview that must sometimes be utterly subverted, affronted, and offended by God. Doing things in a way with which everyone irenically agrees does not always seem to be the way God brings about his greatest works of truth-telling or peace-making. The Incarnation and the Resurrection are evidence enough of this.
The laughable is often God’s chosen instrument to spark a remarkable Symphony of Joy.
Sometimes, we are simply living in the blind and wrong. Sometimes what we see as “illegitimate” is a function of our broken hearts. Sometimes our perception of what is legitimate and appropriate is illegitimate to God.
The Spirit-conceived baby born in a manger was most probably labeled an illegitimate child by most of the politicians, academics, celebrities, and spiritual power-brokers of the time. But to a smelly shepherd, he was humanity regained.
Our eyes determine our reality, powered by the engine of the heart. This must be why God is always about the unseen work of changing the heart, and a more “legitimate,” expected, revolutionary Christ-Entrance would have had no impact on the hearts of billions for generations to come.
If Christmas reminds us of anything, let it remind us that Enduring Peace is the result of a unique, subversive spiritual math:
Truth, held in God’s heart and offered to us in the whispers and shouts of Scripture, offers us a transcendent understanding of who and why we are. Truth births rightly oriented, imaged, and empowered Love. Love, shaped from, modeled after, and orchestrated by the Life of Christ – is the music that can order the chaos of our world to Peace.
Merry (Crazy, Illegitimate, Of-And-Not-Of-This-World-At-The-Same-Time) Christmas,
Dan