One of the things we love about Christmas is the music. Phillips Brooks, who penned, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” once wrote, “The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, and its soul full of music breaks the air.”
What’s your favorite “fun” Christmas song? My wife Stacy’s favorite is Amy Grant’s rendition of “Jingle Bells” (you should listen to it and try to keep up with Amy as she sings!). What about a Christmas hymn or spiritual song? As a child, I loved “O Holy Night.” There are some beautiful modern ones, like Casting Crowns’ “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” or Lauren Daigle belting out “Noel”: “Noel, noel! Come and see what God has done!”
One of my favorite Christmas songs is one you won’t see on any Christmas playlist or hear on the radio. It doesn’t have a Christmas jingle, but I think it depicts so clearly what was happening in Bethlehem–why we celebrate Christmas. It is the Newsboys’ song Adoration, written by Newsboys founder Peter Fuller with Steve Taylor. It is written from the perspective of one of the shepherds who have been invited by angels to come see a newborn baby, whom the angels say is the Lord (God himself) and Savior (Rescuer) of all people. The angels tell the shepherd that the “sign” of this royal baby will be a manger–a feed trough for cows and sheep (Luke 2:12). In other words, the newborn King is born right into the muck and mess of life, in a place filled with dust, flies, and the stench of excrement. This “sign” of a manger is pointing to something, and the shepherds hurry to find out what.
Listen in to the words of the young shepherd:
I’m here with the others
Who saw the heavens testify
Now I hang back in the shadows
I want to come close
I want to know
She sees me shivering here
She smiles and with a nod
I walk through the mud and straw
To the newborn Son of God
Come, let us adore Him
He has come down to this barren land
Where we live and all I have to give Him is adoration.
WHAT IS THE SIGN POINTING TO?
The manger is the sign to interpret what is happening, but what is the manger pointing to? That this is what God is really like. If you want to really know the Creator God (and know yourself in the process), then look to this kind of God. This God comes right in the middle of the mess of humanity, stooping to be at the bottom so he can lift everyone up. As Max Lucado wrote, “The omnipotent made himself breakable. He who had been spirit became pierceable. He who sustains the world with a word chose to be dependent upon the nourishment of a young girl. God had come near. He came, not as a flash of light or as an unapproachable conqueror, but as one whose first cries were heard by a peasant girl and a sleepy carpenter.”[1]
And who gets invited to this party? Shepherds, outsiders, the different, those whom Luke will describe as the “poor, the disabled, the blind, the lame” (Luke 14:21), which is to say, all of us. Because all of us are fragile, insecure, and disabled in one way or another. We are all looking for hope in an anxious, competitive world where we are constantly told to brand ourselves and view life only through the prism of our desires.
The successful, rich, and powerful get invited to the party too, but will they come? This “manger-type” God relentlessly pursues them, too, trying to break through the security and pride that encases our hearts. Which is why Mary, the one who gives birth to the humble King, sang, “He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he sent away empty” (Luke 1:51-53).
And think about Mary for a moment. God became a human being as a man, but he would not have been born as a man without a woman. God created humankind “male and female,” and by taking on human flesh, He dignifies the dual nature of humans, and restores the equal partnership of women and men. As Carmen Joy Imes writes, “God dignified women’s bodies by being born of a woman. Her womb was his home. Her placenta nourished him. Her strong muscles pushed him through her birth canal (the birth canal he made!) into open air. God could have chosen another way. But he chose a woman. She willingly accepted her calling to bear the Messiah.”[2]
THIS IS HOW GOD LOVED US
The birth in the manger is just the beginning of what Jesus teaches us about God and about ourselves. What did Jesus come to do? “To seek and to save those who are lost,” and “Not to be served, but to serve and to give up everything to rescue humanity” (Luke 9:10; Mark 10:45). John 3:16 beautifully describes who God is and what he has done, but don’t miss why John uses that word “so.” When John says that “God so loved the world” what he means is: this is how God loved the world. God loved the world in this way: by sacrificing himself, by humbling himself, by taking on the very nature of a servant. Why? To rescue us from ourselves, from all the false “gods” we bowed to for security and meaning, only to be betrayed and imprisoned. He came in this way so that we may experience the Love that is at the center of the universe and His creative power to set us free. God came to die on a cross for you and me, and the manger is the first sign of this. When we come to that place where he stooped the lowest, his cross, he takes hold of our hand and won’t let go. As we are embraced by him, fear melts away, because he has overcome not only the fear of death but death itself. Gripped by him, he begins to disarm the hold of all the destructive powers that have trapped us.
Why did he come in this way? Because in Jesus we see the truest picture of who God is: “When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of the invisible God,’ the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in his self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in his helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity. Here he himself is love with all his being.”[3]
HE WON’T LET GO, HE WON’T LET GO
The Newsboys’ song ends with a beautiful picture of what Jesus does and why he came. Listen again:
He raises a wrinkled hand
Through the dust and the flies
Wrapped in rags like we are
And with barely open eyes
He takes my finger and He won’t let go
And He won’t let go
It’s nothing like I knew before
And it’s all I need to know
In writing about life with Jesus, the apostle Paul put it this way: “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me” (Phil. 3:12). This is what Christianity is all about: Jesus takes hold of us and will never, ever, ever let us go. His grace outlasts the worst of our addictions, fear, selfishness, and pride. He sticks with us no matter what, and daily and hourly walks along our road with us. He desires to go deeper, deeper into relationship with us, calling us into the fellowship and community of all the others he has rescued. By being with him and realizing he will never let you go, there is no doubt that over time, little by little, you too will become like him and learn to love and live like he does. The wounds that he still carries in his resurrected, ascended self guarantee it. As the Newsboys sing, “His Spirit’s here and he won’t let go.”
I pray your heart will be gripped with the love of God and filled with the songs of Christmas. Let us sing at the top of our lungs along with all the others who have felt the heavens testify:
God is with us here
Our Emmanuel
Come let us adore Him
He has come down to this barren land, the world we live in,
And all I have to give Him is adoration!
[1] Max Lucado, God Came Near (Multnomah, 1987), p. 25-26.
[2] Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (IVP: 2023), p. 111.
[3] Jurgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Fortress Press, 1993), p. 205.