Prepare ye the way of the Lord

I don't like to be too negative about the way our society observes holidays, but it is very concerning that the Season of Christmas, which was invented by the Church centuries ago to honor the coming of the Christ Child, acknowledging the divine fift of the Savior, now seems to be a holiday season massively and majorly influenced by the commercial world. Rather than being a holy season focused on transforming lives and hearts in the spirit of Jesus, Christmas time to a great extent has fallen into a materialistic frenzy of buying and selling goods, driven by economic interests, festive entertainment interests and widespread cultivation of greed.

One of the differences between the church's Christmas and the world's commercially driven "Christmas" is in the handling of the calendar. I had been saying that the commercial Christmas begins on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when the serious shopping for the great deals is supposed to begin. But my friends have pointed out that the commercial season begins just after Halloween, providing the full month of November and three weeks of December for the buying sprees. The church's traditional seasonal calendar begins with Advent, a four-week season of preparation before Christmas, focusing on the anticipated coming of Jesus Christ. This year, the advent season opened on Nov. 29, and continues to Dec. 24. Then, Christmas Day, Dec. 25, begins the 12-day Christmas Festival, the Church's celebration of God's gift to the world through his divine Son, Jesus Christ, a festival of celebration which continues until Jan. 6.

Gift giving, as a Christmastime practice, can be said to hark back to the visit to the family of Jesus by the Wise Men from the eastern country, who are described in Matthew 2 as bringing gifts for the Christ Child, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Gift giving is also associated with Christ's blessing toward those who help the poor, and with his teaching that "To give is more blessed than to receive." With Jesus, the focus is more on the value of being a giver.

One aspect of the church's Advent season preparations for Christmas is to consider again the forerunner ministry of John the Baptist, as described in Matthew 3 and other New Testament passages. Jesus saw the work of his cousin John the Baptist as preparing the way for his own ministry in the world, and as fulfilling the Isaiah 40:3-5 prophesy of "a voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together...." This prophecy is lifted up in a great section of Handel's Messiah, one of the greatest of musical tributes to the grace of God and God's gift of redemption through Jesus Christ.

John's preaching and baptising didn't accomplish the removal of all the obstacles to the coming of Jesus into the lives of the people. The obstacles to Jesus's message were still many in the society to which he first addressed the gospel. This could suggest to us that the work of preparing a highway for the coming of the Lord into our lives is an always continuing task. In our society, as in all societies, ancient and contemporary, there are still hills and mountains and valleys of a spiritual nature which obstruct the progress of the gospel and impede people's hearts from opening to the presence of the Lord.

Some commercial advertising seems to promise that if you buy from this store or website you can enjoy the "best Christmas ever!" Having the best Christmas ever seems to picture a celebration in which everybody gets the perfect gift, all the festive meals turn out great, nothing burns in the oven, everybody gets along, nobody's temper or gross behavior spoils Christmas for the rest of the family, and our athletic team wins. There may be snow on the ground for a white Christmas, but the weather will be clear, the wind will be calm, and the news will not be filled with all the bad things in the world.

How different is that concept of the "best Christmas" compared to the first Christmas, when the Savior entered a cold and hard world, a world not very welcoming, being initially crowded out from shelter for the family, but for a little stable. Could it be that one of the continuing impediments to our truly opening our hearts to Jesus and appreciating his message for our world is this our misleading concept of what would be "the best Christmas ever?!

Maybe we could "Prepare the Way" by making our Christmas time more about giving, not so much about getting -- more about sharing blessings with others -- not so much about enjoying more and more "perfect" blessings for ourselves.

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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols can be contacted by email at [email protected] or by phone at 479-621-1621.

Religion on 12/23/2015