Christmas and Family

Family is a big part of this season. We take off work to spend time with family. We travel to be with family—sometimes across the state, across the country, even across the ocean. We may get together several times during these holidays. We exchange gifts and just sit around and talk or play games or go hunting. Lots of food gets prepared and enjoyed—all in the family setting. It is bonding time.

The coming of Messiah was in a family, not in a solitary public demonstration. This feature of his advent is so enmeshed in the story we probably do not even notice it. But the coming of the Savior of the world, the Ruler of the universe, the One that angels bow to, could have happened some other way. One way the people of his own day expected Messiah to appear came from the Old Testament passage, “The Lord will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). During the temptation, Satan evidently played on this popular expectancy by taking Jesus to the top of the temple and telling him to jump off if he was the Messiah. What an impression that would have made on the worshipers milling around below! But that was not the way Messiah came.

At his second coming we await the trumpet sound, the host of angels, his sudden appearance like lightning flashing across the whole sky; “every eye will see him.” But tonight, we think about his first coming—that it was not with glory, but in a humble home, family, the holy family, as we say. In so doing, he sanctified and honored our humble estate, exalted family relations, and blessed normal down-to-earth living, where love, not fanfare, holds sway.

Eight miles up the road from his birthplace was his death place. In the first location, he honored family; in the last place he made provision for removing what tears families apart. That is hard to do. If you have had any experience with such a thing, you know how hard it is to put family back together again—how hard it is to create the family of God. That calls for his last measure of devotion, which provides the basis for removing those barriers and restoring family and what family is for. Repentance-forgiveness in light of his cross is the only way back. In these emblems, we honor together what he died doing and pledge to unite as one body of Christ.