Across the Pastor’s Desk by Don Rose

Don Rose is the pastor of Mansfield and United Lutheran churches.

Advent waiting, watching and hope are nearly ended as the anticipated celebration of Christmas is at hand. Now the question that might need to be asked is what will be celebrated? Western culture has become consumed with things and acquisitions. Worth is measured by how much a person has or the position that has been achieved, according to the standards of this world. As a result, the separation of haves and have-nots becomes even more apparent. The message of the world that the haves rule becomes reinforced.

All of this is in clear opposition to the message of the Gospel writer known as St. Luke, perhaps the most often read Gospel for the holiday. Luke goes to great lengths to point out the humility of the Savior’s birth and the lowliness of his mother according to the way this world judged even then. Even those to whom the Savior’s birth was first announced in this Gospel were considered suspect by the culture simply because of their occupations as shepherds. The majority of what Luke records goes against the standards of this world. Rather than in the center of the powers of this world, the Messiah arrives on the fringes in a small, backwater community. Nothing of this Messiah will be as the world expects whether then or now, and as a result many like the sentimentality of the season but have no interest in the message of the one whose birth is celebrated. 

The song of Mary, commonly known as the Magnificat, is subversive from the very start at least by the world’s standards. The lowly will be lifted up. The mighty will be cast done. The rich will go away empty. Challenging words in a world that continues to be afflicted with the disease of affluenza. The song affirms that it is not Mary’s doing but it is the worth given to her by God. God is the arbiter of of the standards of the new age and it will not simply be this world revisited.

Christmas announces the new thing that God has done and continues to do to work out the salvation of the world. Christmas is an opportunity to declare God’s love revealed in fullness and abundance beyond any human measure. This is the time for the faithful to share God’s never-ending love with a world in need, starting with the very ones whom the world rejects and discounts and pushes to the margins of life. Despite the ways of the world and despite the cold and darkness that are often a part of this season, Christmas is a time of new birth and new life as God enters the world for good and for all time in ways unknown and unheard of before.

May this spirit of Christmas be yours, not only for this season but for the new day and new life that are yours as God would lift you up and bless you for eternity.