The Scandal of Christmas

Everything upside down
In our Western world we prize the following:

• high education
• rich people
• large numbers of people
• letters-after-their-names folk
• famous folk, or folk with famous folks in their ancestry
• good looking people 
• people with "fit bodies"

To put it another way, we look, our world looks, on the outward appearance.

We who are evangelicals are little different. The people we look up to in the Evangelical world, fall roughly in the categories above. 

The Scandal of Christmas
Both Christmas and Easter turn the world's values on their head. At Christmas, the baby born to us is so so ordinary. Born supernaturally to an inconsequential mother, and her inconsequential shortly-to-be-married to husband, Joseph. Born in backwater Bethlehem, but coming from no-where Nazareth.

No trumpets blow at his birth, no royal photographers, just a few smelly animals welcome him, and a few nobody shepherds.

In life no home, no powerful friends, no money. Just lots of jealous enemies and a few ordinary disciple-friends. 

Same too at the end. A brutal death, friends all scatter fearful. Buried by the kindess of virtual strangers.

Saying something?
Do we hear? Do we not hear? Do we not want to hear? That the world is upside down and Jesus alone is the right way up? That the truly great in this world are not the proud and rich and educated, but - didn't Paul have something to say 'bout this?

"Brothers, consider the time of your calling: Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were powerful; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly and despised things of the world, and the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast in His presence. "

Humbleness Applied
The Lord is pleased to use the "great", don't get me wrong. But only after like Paul they have been flattened and humbled. Until they no longer mention the things that once made them great in the eyes of the world. Until they no longer regard them things as anything other than "dung."

His more general way is to start with nobodies, so that through them he might display his awesome power and people might say things like "these unschooled geezers have turned the world upside down."

Repentance
How repentant we should be! Whenever we find ourselves glorying in numbers, education, secular standing, riches. Whenever we despise a poor man or exalt a rich man.

Lord forgive us and help us to look at the world and the church, from now on, through the lens of the manger and the cross.