A crucial question that we keep trying to avoid...
God loved the world enough to send Jesus into it as its savior, and Jesus participated fully in its everyday life. He attended parties, traveled, and went where ordinary people lived and worked.
But Jesus rejected some of the world's customs and rules. He disobeyed religious laws and traditions. He associated with outcasts. He didn't become a husband or father.
When can we go along with the world's ways, and when must we say no, if we want to be Jesus' disciples?
A hard time to say no
Christmas is a hard time to say no to the world. We're so accustomed to its ways of celebrating Christmas.
At Christmas we tend to assume that receiving and giving luxurious gifts, stuffing ourselves with food, and putting up elaborate decorations are essential. We blame the merchants, TV, business competitors, and party givers who bombard us with these superficial ways of celebrating Christmas, but I'm afraid we're the real culprits. We don't say no when we need to.
One small change
In recent years I've cut back on one of the world's ways of celebrating Christmas, but even that tiny change wasn't easy.
For years I made decorations and filled my house with them at Christmas. One year I made a giant felt tablecloth, with appliqué trees, hand-sewn sequins, and lights poking through from underneath. I was big on making Christmas cookies, too, and we always had a tall tree loaded with ornaments.
Then a mouse in the attic ate holes in the felt tablecloth. And Christmas decorating began to feel like a huge burden. I realized that like many other jobs that the world expects women to do, Christmas decorating and other such Christmas jobs took more time and effort than their results merited, and they kept me from having time to do other things that I felt God considered more important. I cut back on decorating and began using more time for writing and other jobs that I felt God was calling me to do.
How should we be different?
How does God want the church to be different from the world? Not by using archaic words that are like a foreign language today. Not by refusing to associate with people who disagree with us. Not by ignoring valid and useful information just because it isn't explicitly mentioned in the Bible. We need to avoid being different in ways like these that needlessly isolate us from the world, turn its people off, and keep us from seeing how to reach them.
We need to be different instead by demonstrating God's love, justice, healing, and forgiveness-by being recognizable samples of the way God wants people to live.
A time for evaluation and recommitment
In the church year, Advent has traditionally been a time for being reminded of that responsibility. We recall God's coming into the world, not only in the form of a baby's birth but also in that baby's adult ministry in the world and in our continuation of it as his earthly body in today's world.
Advent is a time for reconsidering what God considers most important and how God evaluates our lives. This is why scriptures read during Advent include apocalyptic imagery and Old Testament prophecies that speak of God's promises, God's purpose, and God's judgment.
Advent is a time for seeing how we need to live in order to get to where we want to be when life ends.
Advent is a time for turning in a new direction. Advent scripture readings therefore include accounts of John the Baptist's call for repentance.
A good time for change
The Advent season is an ideal time for making some needed changes. We might decide to start spending more of our money on people who need help, instead of on so many gifts for ourselves and our family. We might decide to spend time with someone who is alone and in need of Christian ministry, instead of just our family and friends.
If the hymns and scriptures in our Advent worship follow the church's historic pattern, they lead us through this valuable self-examination and recommitment process. If instead we sing only the few most popular carols and hear only about baby Jesus, we miss that God-given opportunity.
At Christmas God again asks us, as individuals and as congregations, a crucial question that we keep trying to avoid: is our own comfort or God's will our top priority? Advent is a good time for a new answer.
Conformists and nonconformists
Christians need to be both conformists and nonconformists. We need to say no to some of the world's ways, and to make clear why we're saying no. But we can't afford to be so unattractive, unavailable, invisible, or incomprehensible that the world overlooks us or dismisses our beliefs without even considering them seriously. And we can't afford to stay comfortably holed-up inside our church buildings and among our Christian friends.
The main non-conforming thing we need to do instead is to communicate the Gospel out in the world. We need to speak it convincingly in today's language and demonstrate it through behavior that is loving and just. That's being different from the world in the way that really matters.