The Wonderful, Burdensome Message of Christmas

Jesus seems to be especially popular this time of year. Ordinarily secular spaces are unusually full of various songs, displays, and merchandise that seem to directly or indirectly celebrate Him. Frankly, such often-reflexive celebrations of Jesus Christ are not that difficult in our culture.

Of course, the Kingship of Jesus Christ (which we can hear proclaimed this month on even secular music radio stations) and the other great truths of the faith are absolutely essential to Christianity. We must seek to accurately understand and reflect upon them regularly. Without a basic orthodox, biblical belief system, we will have no solid foundation.

But the New Testament teaches that the life of Christian discipleship must include proper belief and also so much more. Jesus calls those who would be His true disciples to not only believe the truth but to make a radical, complete life commitment, of dying to ourselves, taking up our crosses daily, and following Him in ALL areas of our lives.

Galatians 6:2 teaches us to “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ” (ESV).

To be fair to the biblical text, we should acknowledge the context of how this verse come immediately after Paul’s urging Galatian Christians to help each other avoid sin, seeking to “restore gently” those caught in sin. But it is fair to see the “burdens” of others as encompassing far more than only personal struggles with sin. In his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, John Wesley interprets this verse as a broad command to “Sympathize with, and assist, each other, in all your weaknesses, grievances, trials,” a radical ethos of communal self-sacrifice that Christ “makes the distinguishing mark of his disciples.” The others who have burdens in this passage are fellow members of that very counter-cultural community the church is called to be.

One very practical opportunity came some time ago when my wife and I knew a young, unmarried woman who became unexpectedly pregnant. This young lady’s support system was far from ideal, and she was facing pressure to abort this child, who I will call “Matthew.”

With my strong pro-life convictions, it was relatively easy for me to say I did not want little Matthew to be killed. But this poor, church-going friend of ours was facing a VERY difficult situation.

Worldly responses would be to either see an abortion appointment as the best way to “take care of the problem” or to wash our hands of responsibility and tell this friend that this was her long-term burden to bear alone.

We must never lose sight of the fact that the way of Christian love sometimes must be very personally COSTLY. My wife and I had serious discussions about how, if it really came down to the alternative being the abortion of Matthew, we would be willing to adopt him into our home upon his birth, despite our own very limited resources. In the end, it did not come down to that. Our friend gave birth to and kept her beloved little Matthew.

Lest anyone misunderstand me, let me say that the church needs to continue clearly upholding God’s biblical standards for sexual self-control for all people. Even when this is very counter-cultural for my “Millennial” generation of American young adults who increasingly see premarital sex as a normal expectation.

But the church of Jesus Christ is called to maintain its holiness while also reaching out in love to hurting people in our fallen sinful world as they are. Whether people’s sin includes pride, dishonesty, sexual immorality, greed, racism, elective abortion, obnoxious driving, or anything else.

Because that is exactly what Jesus did for us.

Can any of us really wrap our minds around what an incredible act of humility it was for our Lord to become fully human?

Other religions have had myths of their gods temporarily taking on human appearance in the form of fully-grown adults.

But Jesus Christ actually began His life on Earth as physically weak and unimpressive as the rest of us, as a microscopic embryo in the womb of a young woman.

As an unborn, unseen, and undervalued little fetus.

Even in our allegedly more enlightened twenty-first century, a great many people – including some denominational agencies of my United Methodist Church – are sometimes rather emphatic that preborn babies, human beings who are at the same stage of life in which Jesus first came to us, do not have any absolute moral value, or are not included within the bounds of the sort of individuals to whom compassion should be extended.

Yet the God of the universe made such an incredible, self-sacrificial commitment to become as absolutely vulnerable as a human being can be.

All to reach out in love to miserable sinners like me, and like you, when we utterly did not deserve it.

In this season set apart for special reflection on our Lord’s incarnation, may we ask God to show up opportunities to make ourselves more vulnerable by bearing burdens of others. May we thus show to a watching world the new way of Christ’s Kingdom, which is far more loving than anything that can be found outside of His church. And may the Holy Spirit strengthen and sustain us in living out this “distinguishing mark of Christ’s disciples.”