Filled with Joy

As we finish talking about anticipation and the characters in the Gospel story whose lives were changed by news of the coming Christ and their earnest belief thereof, we have to talk about John, the Baptist (although at that point, he was merely known as the-baby-to-be-named-John). 

It seems a little strange, talking about what a baby in a womb knew about another baby in a womb, as if there was any way to know or anything to be known, but there is a captivating exchange between these two unborn babes, and once again, it is Luke who gives us the details.

When Elizabeth was pretty far along in her pregnancy and Mary, only barely, the younger woman came to visit the older woman for awhile. Upon coming into one another's presence, Elizabeth let out a delighted start. She turns to Mary and tells her, "How blessed are you! When you and your blessed womb came into this room, my own little bundle leapt for joy within me." 

You can probably imagine, there's not a lot of room in the womb for leaping. 

But John did it anyway. He leapt with joy when the spirit of the Lord drew close in human form, although neither had a visible human form at the time and neither could have actually touched the other's flesh. 

I picture a cat trying to get out of a paper bag, except his movements are elicited by sheer joy. John is absolutely bursting with joy, and the space that he is in can hardly contain him. He leaps with such force of elation that Elizabeth's entire body moves, and that delighted start that she let out? Well, she can't help it - his joy is contagious. 

We get so wrapped up in Christmas, so busy tending to boxes and bows and cards and cookies and ornaments hanging on the tree that we don't leave a lot of room for the joy of the season. How could we? We're too busy to be joyful. We're too worried about pulling it all together to truly enjoy it. We're too into bringing Christmas into the world that we don't let Christmas any more bring us out of it, even for a season.

And it's become such a physical thing. Such a tangible thing, this Christmas. It's all the things we can see and smell and touch and hold and taste and give and take and share in selfies and posts on Instagram. Christmas is trees and presents and mistletoe and wreaths and toys and puppies and, if we're lucky, a few quiet seconds where we can hear the yule log crackling. 

John didn't have any of this. He couldn't have seen Christmas if he tried. There was no room for him to set up a tree or even hang a stocking, no toys for him to unwrap, no fruit cake for him to eat. John had none of it, absolutely none of it. All he had was the spirit - the spirit of Christ, yet unborn, coming into the room. The spirit of Christ pulling on his own soul while his flesh, too, still formed. 

Yet he leapt for joy, in a space too small even for leaping. He filled that womb, already brimming with life, with joy. So much joy that even his mother felt it. And she didn't tell Mary, "I just felt my baby move." No, she declared, "I have felt my baby's joy!" What an overflow!

As we embrace our anticipation for Christmas this Advent, let us be like John. Let us not neglect, as we set up our trees and hang our stockings and bake our cookies, to fill our little spaces with overwhelming joy, so much joy that our little homes cannot contain it. 

And let us remember, as well, that although it comes with plenty to look at, plenty to listen to, plenty to taste and touch and hold and experience, that Christmas is not a physical season, though it comes to us in the flesh; Christmas is a spiritual reality. What we are waiting on is not a baby, but a Spirit, that is coming to us in swaddling clothes. Let us sense the spirit of Jesus around us. 

Let us leap for joy. 

Whispers of Something Bigger

One of the biblical couples that we often overlook, particularly in their own season because they get lost in the coming Christ, is Zacharias and Elizabeth. But this faithful couple understood something about Christmas that we too often forget. 

Zacharias was a priest serving in the Temple, and Luke tells us that somewhere roughly a year before the birth of Christ, his lot was chosen to serve in the innermost place of the Temple, to light the most special candles in the Most Holy Place. While there, the angel Gabriel came to him and told him about the son, John (the Baptist), that his wife would bear for him. And soon. Zacharias is so stunned that he has a few questions, and his questions render him mute for the duration of his wife's pregnancy, leaving him to hold inside of him all of the secret things that he knows.

Like, for example, that something big is about to happen. And we're not talking about an old couple having a child (God's done that so often by this point that it's old hat). Zacharias understands that his son is just the beginning of it all; something greater is afoot. 

And although he doesn't know exactly what that looks like, except to say that the angel told him it has to do with the Messiah, he knows it's something. 

His wife, Elizabeth, becomes pregnant with a son. She knows that in her womb, she is carrying a real miracle, a child long after her years of conception have come and gone. She knows that this is a gift of God, though we know not how much of what Zacharias knew that Elizabeth knew, as well. 

Then, when she is well along in her own pregnancy, her relative, Mary, arrives in the early days of her own, and the baby in Elizabeth's womb leaps for joy. He starts doing flip-flops. He's dancing around in there, and she can feel every tiny little bit of it. 

And she knows that something big is about to happen. The miracle in her womb is enough, but that the miracle in her womb recognizes something bigger in its presence? Stunning. Truly, God is about to do something greater even than this. 

Although she doesn't know exactly what that looks like, she knows it's huge. 

I think we could all use a good dose of the kind of anticipation that Zacharias and Elizabeth lived with. It's far too easy for us to think that we know the Christmas story. We know what happens. We know what's going to happen. There's going to be a manger because the inn is too full. There's going to be a star. There's going to be shepherds and wise men and, of course, a baby boy, who will grow up to be crucified, the Savior of the world. 

After all, it is Christmas and that's how it happens. Right? 

But I think what we've lost is our sense of just how big this is. Just how grand it is. Just how much greater Christmas is than a mere baby in a barn. This is the Son of God, the Light of the World, the Promised King, Love personified. This is God, come down to dwell among us for the first time since we walked in the cool of the Garden, and let's face it, the Garden ain't so cool any more; it's burning with sin and faithlessness. It's covered in dust and dirt. And He comes anyway. 

Not just to die for us, but to live with us. It's something bigger than we could ever imagine, and it's happening. Right now. 

This Advent, let us live in expectation of something bigger than we can understand, something greater than we can fathom. We have but whispers of it, even in a story that we think we know so well, and when we understand what truly happens on that blessed Christmas morn', it will blow us all away. 

Of Spirit and Flesh

Luke tells us of another in Jerusalem who anticipated the coming of the Christ child, one named Simeon. 

Simeon was a faithful man, a man who lived his life looking toward Heaven, if he had known of such a thing before atonement or not. He was devout, living in faithfulness and righteousness, the kind of man that anyone aspiring to be a good Jew would attempt to emulate. The Gospel tells us that he lived by the Spirit, and as such, the Spirit revealed many things to him.

Most notably, it revealed that he would not die before he saw the promise come to life. And Simeon took the Spirit at His word. 

So when the Spirit led him to go to the Temple, Simeon went. There, he found Jesus on the day of His consecration, on the day of His dedication, on the day of His circumcision. Simeon, like Anna, was witness to the giving of the Christ child back to the Lord who had given Him to Mary in the first place. 

And he picked the babe up and held Him. 

This is worth our attention. So often, we think of Jesus lying in a manger, with wise men and shepherds gathered around Him and weary travelers asleep in the inn, completely oblivious to what's happening in the barn. We think about Him in swaddling clothes, but we do not think about Him having been swaddled by human hands. And we don't think about Him at all being, well, a baby.

Babies get passed around. They get picked up and held and handled. They get poked and tickled and squeezed. Worn-out mothers relish any opportunity for someone else to take over, even for just a few minutes, to give them just a bit of rest. In Temple culture, which is highly communal, we can imagine that babies got passed around much the way they do in churches, where it's not uncommon to see someone carrying a baby that is not his or her own. In the way that we do life together, the baby has become very much ours.

Simeon was not, at least Luke doesn't tell us that he is, a priest. He wasn't even, as far as we know, a Levite. That means that Simeon likely had no official role at all in the Temple. He's just a man, just a Jew, just a faithful guy. He's got no position that would entitle him to pick up a baby as part of a blessing, but he does. He picks up the Christ child, holds Him high, and declares Him a blessing.

By the Spirit of God that is in him and that has guided him to this very place, he recognizes that this baby is not Mary's, not Joseph's, not Nazareth's; this baby is just as much his as it is theirs. This Baby is ours.

May we, this Advent, take ownership of the newborn babe in swaddling clothes. May we not be afraid to step forward and take Him in our arms, coddling and cooing and swaying and treasuring every bit of this tiny miracle that is more than we could ever have imagined being born in a manger. 

May we, by the Spirit, live faithful for to see Him, and may we know that this baby is not Mary's, not Joseph's, not Nazareth's...but that He is ours. 

Positioned to See

Luke gives us tremendous context for the birth and dedication of the Christ child, telling us more about His first days than any other Gospel writer. And one of the characters we come to meet in Luke's story is Anna, a prophetess who lived in the Temple and looked forward to the coming of the promised Messiah.

Anna was, by this point, a very old woman, even by the standards of that day. She had been married for seven years, but her husband died, and then she came to live in the Temple for eighty-four years to prophesy and prepare for God's next move into the world. That puts her, conservatively, at just over 100 years old at the time that Jesus is presented at the Temple, but He is all that she's ever wanted to see. 

We don't know what Anna's life looked like in her younger days. We don't know if she was always a prophetess or if God gave her a special ability to know the secret things of His glory after she moved into His holy place to dwell. We do know that she was a young woman when her husband died and for whatever reason, she probably did not have children (if she had had children, they would have been tasked with taking care of her after her husband's death, but we see no mention of this). Relatively speaking (pun intended), she could have attached herself to a kinsman redeemer and gone on living a life in the dust of this world, but she's apparently had enough of that. In the absence of the life that perhaps she had always planned (a husband, kids, a stable household, grandchildren, etc.), there was only one thing in the world she wanted - 

To see what God would do next. 

And in order to be in a place where she knew she wouldn't miss it, she moved her whole life into His holy place. When the movement of God came afoot, she'd have a front row seat. 

Eighty-four years later, her anticipation paid off and she saw the dedication of a bouncing baby boy who bore in His Spirit the very heartbeat of God.

Think about this for a minute. Anna moved into the Temple to see the greatest thing God would ever do, knowing and trusting that it was coming. She didn't know much, if anything, about a Christmas star. She didn't know about a manger. She'd heard whispers, perhaps, but whatever story was happening out there would have to pass through here, and if there was anything to it at all, she knew she was in the right place to see it. Finally. And so Anna, who invested the majority of her life in being a prophetess, in being one who saw beyond what average men and women see, was there to see the circumcision of Jesus and the dedication of Him as both a Jew and a firstborn Son. 

This Advent season, let us be like Anna. Let us be a people who anticipate that God is going to move in the world and who position ourselves to be there to see it. Let us know where God is going to pass through, and let us dwell there with eyes wide open and hearts set on hope. However long it takes. 

Let us be a people for whom this season does not pass by, but for whom it passes through, a people who come into close contact with the Christ child and see first-hand the glory of the Lord's First-born. 

Anticipation

As December dawns, so does the Christmas season, and Christians all over the world have begun celebrating Advent - a season of humble expectation and sacred hope as we look toward that glorious morn' when our Savior came to dwell among us. 

In the spirit of this season, then, I wanted us to take the next few weeks to immerse ourselves in the Christmas story, in the faces and places of the birth of Christ as we prepare our hearts and minds for Christmas and maybe, just maybe, not to get so lost in the hustle and bustle. (It's far too easy to do.) 

And this starts, as it must, with anticipation. 

Anticipation is something very different than expectation, although we might hear the words used interchangeably. Expectation is an attitude that knows that something is coming and just waits for it to happen, plans for it, plans on it. I expect that my utility bills will arrive in the mail every month, on or about the same day. I make notes in my financial ledger to account for them. I double-check my bank account to make sure I'm prepared. 

But that's about it. I don't have any anticipation for them. I do not run excitedly out to my mailbox every day to see if they've come yet. I do not take celebratory pictures and post them on social media when they get here. I do not spend my nights lying awake, thinking about what they're going to be like when they get here. I might, in a dry season, dread my utility bills, but I would still expect them. I would never, in a prosperous season, anticipate them, but I would still expect them.

See, anticipation requires two things that expectation does not: emotion and movement. 

Anticipation requires some measure of emotion, some investment of thought- and heart-energies into what's coming. When you anticipate something, you get excited about it. You get pumped. You're energized. You are eager. You can't wait. It dominates your thoughts and your heart and your experience of the world. You hold your breath waiting for it, and it's all you can do to keep yourself calmed down, reined in. It's almost impossible to go on with your regular life because the perceived amazingness that is coming is so all-consuming. It's the difference between being a kid who has to wake up on April 12 and go to school and being a kid who gets to wake up on Christmas morning. Expectation vs. anticipation. Anticipation is laden with emotion. 

It's also inspiring of movement, of action. Yes, you may plan for your bills to arrive and account for them, but that's not the kind of action we're talking about. We're talking about action that moves in a dance with the object of its anticipation. Think of boxers in the ring or players at a chess board - the anticipation of what an opponent might do changes the way that the boxer or the player makes his own move. It's a give-and-take, a planning for the motion of the other. 

In anticipation, you believe that movement is afoot. You believe that something is happening. It's not static; it's dynamic, and it requires your participation. 

It's this kind of anticipation that we're talking about this week. It's this kind of emotional, active belief that something incredible is coming that is the focus of this first week of Advent (not the official calendar, but the way I'm doing it in this space). Because it's far too easy for us to look at our calendars and say, "Christmas is coming," and then...and then what? Many of us just expect that it will, as it does every year. 

But what if we lived in anticipation of Christmas? What would that look like? What would happen if we let this season take hold of our hearts and our minds, change the way we live and love, force us into a dance with the coming Christ? What if...?