Words'nTone

We underestimate our unbelieving neighbors and friends.  We dismiss the possibility that, in their own way, they might actually be seriously seeking answers—ultimate answers about life, faith, and death.  Often, it is our particular version of Christianity that is rejected or held in suspicion.

Christian sociologist Os Guinness writes that to the believer Christianity “was once life’s central mystery, its worship life’s most awesome experience, its faith life’s broadest canopy of meaning...” But, today, he laments, no matter how passionate or committed an individual believer may be, Christianity often amounts to little more than a private preference, a spare time hobby.

This modern version of Christianity is significant when we consider how non-believers view Christianity.  For serious seekers, such spare-time faith is not a solution to their deepest needs.  Christianity must be more than a cozy warm blanket, something more ultimate to raise one up above one’s needs.

Amid the glad tidings often associated with the Christmas story is an oft-missed dose of “reality” etched into biblical scene.  Along with shouts of exultation from shepherds, homage from wise men, angels praising God, there is another voice:

“a voice heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children…refusing to be consoled, because [her children] were no more” (Matt 2:18).

These are strange words coming in the midst of this joyous occasion.  Yet, they are a reminder that lament and despair grip the human experience.

The first time we meet Rachel is that delightful moment when she thought she would be marrying the love of her life, the OT patriarch Jacob.  But the story turns quickly to despair: Her father tricks Jacob into marrying Leah, her older sister, first.  Then to make matters worse, Leah has eight sons as Rachel remained childless and we hear her weigh the depths of her barrenness.  God eventually takes Rachel’s reproach away by giving her a son, Joseph, Israel’s future deliverer.  But, while giving birth to her second son she hears news that Joseph, her first-born, had been murdered.  Then we learn that “Rachel began to give birth and had great difficulty” and reflecting on her anguish, she names her new son “trouble” (Benjamin) and dies and is buried by the roadside on the way to Bethlehem.  The roots, as well as the original Christmas story, is surrounded by the swing between gladness and suffering, between hope and despair.  The realities of life.

The original Christmas narrative—the one that is inspired and finds a place in Scriptures—forces the reader back to the Rachel story, compelling us to include lament in the Christmas story.  Certainly the Gospel writer wants us to know that God has sent his Son to be the deliverer of all mankind, the ultimate Jospeh.  Yet, Rachel and her cry seep into the first Christmas story.  We need to know that despite joyous strains elsewhere, some refuse to be comforted except by God’s own intervention.

The Gospel story is pictured in Rachel’s cry, that is, of God’s Son ending up on a cross, rejected, and dying the cruelest of deaths.  The reality of life, its pain and often unfairness, demand that one must turn to the God of Golgotha, who alone can provide the relief, the comfort, not simply mere sentimentalism or a “spare-time” religious experiences.  No other hope other than God’s work in Christ can penetrate our deepest hurts or pierce our loneliest moments, or lift us above our needs.  Amid the tinsel and cheerfully wrapped presents, let us remember Christ’s birth wasn’t to increase retail, but to bring good news that would meet the deepest needs of the human experience.  Our unbelieving, skeptical friends and neighbors deserve no less.  And in this, they might find the real Christianity, and the hope they long for.

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