So Christ has come. That’s what Christmas is all about, right? What happens after he comes, though? How are we supposed to respond?
The magi responded by going to find him. If you haven’t read T. S. Eliot’s “Journey of the Magi,” go read it. It’s short and highly accessible on a first read. (For those interested in poetry, this is a dramatic monologue. Robert Browning has many poems like this and they are great for studying voice. You can read more analysis here.)
Christians believe that seeking Christ is the journey of our lives. I’m a Christian, and I believe this. Like the Magi say, it is a hard journey. It is a journey of birth, but also a journey of death.
People like to read the Bible as a book of freedom. Slaves set free from Egypt. God’s people set free from the law. The oppressed set free from the oppressors. All of these images suggest that God wants his people to prosper. And he does want this.
Matt 23:11-12 The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Acts 13:17 The God of the people of Israel chose our fathers; he made the people prosper during their stay in Egypt, with mighty power he led them out of that country . . .
James 4:10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
1 Peter 5:6-7 Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
We hear God’s promise to exalt the humble, and we look for him to lift us up. We hear God’s desire to see the weak prosper, and we look for him to send us prosperity.
I don’t know about you, but in my mind I too often desire physical comfort, leisure, pleasure, entertainment, power, and lots of stuff like that. I expect God to lift me up. I expect God to lift up my family, my ambitions, my business goals, my career aspirations, my political party. I treat God like he is my personal genie, my fairy Godmother. I expect him to set me free from my life of labor in the cinders. He’ll send me to the ball and get me the prince and sing a song that makes me a fancy dress—or whatever the male version of all that is. I’ll beat the dragon and win the kingdom and get the girl.
But I forget that God lifts up the humble. He desires to prosper the humble.
What happens to those who lift up themselves? What happens to people with desires like mine?
It’s there in Matthew 23. I will be humbled.
Darn it.
I will be sent on the long hard journey. It will be a journey to birth, yes, but it will feel at times like death.
I get a false picture of my own relationship to God when I think of myself as humble. Because I’m not. When my picture of God, my theology, comes from the perspective of someone who is oppressed, I look to God to set me free. But I’m not oppressed or enslaved—except in some metaphoric sense, perhaps. Enslaved to sin, I guess. Oppressed by own selfishness.
But too often I’m the oppressor. And not in any metaphoric sense. Too often I’m the one forcing others to do my will. It’s a scary thought.
My picture of God, my theology, instead needs to come from the perspective of someone who is not oppressed. Someone who is already lifted up.
How does God relate to those people who are kings of the world? He calls them to his son. And the journey is hard. It is humbling. It feels at times like death.
And I should be glad of this. God’s call makes me “no longer at ease in the old dispensation.” I’m surrounded by alien people who are clutching their American idols, and I am no longer at ease clutching at the same idols myself. I still turn to them for comfort more often than I want to admit.
I should be glad of another death.
I should be.
God help me.
{ 6 comments }
Is that Eliot at the end? Or a play on him? I vaguely remember a line like that.
Very thoughtful post. This Christian life of ours is no simple life, but it reaches towards what is good… for us and the world.
That is Eliot at the end, and a play on him. “I should be glad of another death” is the last line of “Journey of the Magi.” The paragraph before has a lot of Eliot too–more play than quotes.
The Christian life reaches toward what is good–but too often I have forgotten what true goodness is. I mistakenly seek my own comfort or the comfort of the one’s I love.
Ahhh. I just noticed that my links disappeared somehow. I added the links to the poem back in.
I’m about to teach this blog as a Bible study this morning. Here’s hoping it goes well.
Hope the Bible study went well this morning.
Good points, all. Perhaps the physical life — the constant march toward death (even in growth) — is an apt metaphor here. Taking up our crosses and dying to ourselves every day is painful.
Praise God for the promise of resurrection — both physically and spiritually we will be lifted up.
I’m told it went well, but it felt flat to me. It is a bit of a downer lesson, I admit.
I love that you used the phrase “taking up our crosses.” In the verses I listed at least, the Greek word, hupsoo, for being exalted or prospered literally means “to lift up.” Jesus uses the same word twice in John 3:14. Moses lifted up the snake in the same way that the Son of Man will be lifted up. Here the word that often means magnify or grow or prosper–takes on connotations of death and sacrifice.
The difference between taking up your cross and being lifted up on a cross might be something to think about. One is our choice, the other is God’s.
My picture of God, my theology, instead needs to come from the perspective of someone who is not oppressed. Someone who is already lifted up.
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