Redeeming Grace Dawns

I wrote this a long time ago. Sitting here early on Christmas morning, thinking similar thoughs, I remembered it and thought I would try recycling it.

The Church Road Journal
Redeeming Grace Dawns

What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we
have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the
Word of Life — I John 1:1,

...You were not redeemed with perishable things...but with
precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. — I Peter 1:18-19

The little boy held an ice cream cone as long as his forearm, a waffle cone filled liberally with what appeared to be orange sherbet. He was done waiting and, with an air of self-confidence incongruent with his five or so years, he left the large table strewn with the paper remnants of a Burger King supper and scurried off through a maze of other tables to hunt down the rest of his party somewhere out there in the far reaches of the shopping mall. Dad was less confident, and quickly caught up with him, snagged his empty hand, and returned him to the table where his sister nursed her ice cream dessert. The tall man, looking perhaps not quite so outdoor-athletic as he once was, with once-blonde hair both vanishing and fading to gray, scrambled to clean up the half-dozen or more paper bags and all the other sediment of what must have been a large dinner, while his eyes monitored the whereabouts of his son.

At a nearby table in the somewhat crowded post-dinner-time food court an attractive young woman sat alone, waiting and still, unoccupied except, apparently, in her mind. She seemed tired, an expressionless look on her face, showing no interest in the goings-on about her. She was dressed in blue-jeans with a navy blue wool jacket, her long brown hair pulled up in back and three loop rings adorning the lobe of her right ear. Hanging on the back of the institutional, aqua-colored metal chair beside her was a man’s brown, nylon outdoor vest, evidence that she was not shopping alone, and on the seat was a single small plastic bag. In a few minutes he arrived and sat opposite her, carrying the orange BK tray, a couple of sandwiches, and a single drink with one straw, which they shared between them. They also shared quiet conversation, broken by periods of silence, during their meal.

Each of these was and still is a complete stranger to me. I can only guess at their stories from the small signs apparent to me as I sat and observed. The size of the mess at the table and the words of the man to his son implied he was not there alone with the children, that there was additional family in near proximity. The shared drink made it obvious the young man and woman were not siblings or mere classmates or business partners, though the bare ring finger of her left hand hinted at the incompleteness of their commitment to one another. Were they from around here? Did they have other family nearby? What was their heritage; what forces of environment and genetics shaped them and made them who they are? What are their dreams and hopes? What are they afraid of, and what are the points of conflict in their relationships? I could answer none of these questions as a mere observer seated in the food court.

Still, there are things I can know about them, things I can understand with certainty about their stories, because they are things that I share with them, even though they are complete strangers. I can know that their stories are written in flesh and blood and spirit, that like me they are people who live and breathe in the flesh, who crave meaning and intimacy, who experience the world, interact with others, and so are shaped and formed through the sensual mystery of touch, sight, sound, smell and taste. I can also know without doubt that they are broken people. I know that they carry in them the burden of willful rebellion against the One who made them and that they bear the spiritual scars of that rebellion. Like me, they are people deeply and helplessly in need of redeeming grace.

The miracle of the manger is that God could not and did not stand aloof from our common story and simply dismiss us as damaged goods. Instead, he entered into that story as living, breathing flesh and blood and spirit. He became helpless with the helplessness of an infant, and answered Job’s probing question: "Hast Thou eyes of flesh? Or dost Thou see as man sees?" He experienced the world just as we do.

But if we stop there, if we content ourselves with God’s empathetic appearance in flesh and blood and wrap our Christmas in gifts and family and good feelings about angels and shepherds and cute little babies, we miss the whole point, because his coming in the flesh by itself can’t take away the burden of our rebellion. He didn’t come to the manger to give us warm fuzzies. He came to die, to shed his blood. His coming was, in the words of the most famous Christmas hymn, merely the DAWN of redeeming grace, not it’s completion. Over the baby in that humble, dirty stable, looms the cross. The old man Simeon, waiting patiently for years and years in the temple until he should see God’s suffering servant, understood that. He understood that this child was appointed to die a bloody death to redeem his people, that Mary herself would experience the piercing of the sword even in her own soul.

As you go about the celebration of this holiday, I pray you remember that it is only the beginning of the story. The burden of our sin isn’t lifted and the scars of rebellion aren’t healed in a Bethlehem stable, but on a hill outside Jerusalem.

Copyright 1999 by Mark LaCore