It was a week after the birth of Jesus, that Mary and Joseph took their infant son to the temple to be circumcised. There they met Simeon, an old man who had waited years to see God's Messiah. With the aching and longing in his heart now relieved, Simeon exclaimed, "Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace." That word peace was significant. Did Simeon mean that at last he had peace in his heart, and peace of mind? I have no doubt he meant that. But, that wasn't all he meant when he spoke of peace. In the Hebrew language "peace" is a synonym for "salvation". And, Simeon goes on to say, “For my eyes have seen Your salvation.”
“Peace” means God's reversal of the distress which this world is cursed with because of sin and disobedience. “Peace” is the answer that no human action could achieve. This “Peace” could only be given to us by an Almighty Creator who loves us so much that His gift to us would be His only Son as our sin substitute. It is this fact, this gift that made Simeon's heart sing. It is because of this gift that mankind doesn't have to remain Godless, or our predicament hopeless! What we must crave to do, however, is simply to receive the gift. So often we waste our efforts intellectualizing that no such gift is needed, even though the historical and Scriptural evidence is this gift is our only hope.
I rejoice that this gift from God does not come with an impersonal label marked "mankind" on it, as if it were for no one in particular. I am thankful that it comes with my name on it. And, I am thankful that the gift has come to me in such a manner as to compel me to own the gift, and cherish this wonderful gift from God. And now, in gratitude to my God, I also can say along with Simeon, "Lord, now You are letting your servant depart in peace. For my eyes have seen Your salvation.”
Christmas also helps me reflect on what receiving God’s gift means to me. It means that the saved life I have been given in Christ I must now live in Christ. And God has given the empowerment for me to live that life through the Holy Spirit’s presence. When I received the gift, I wasn’t picked up from the salvage yard of life, cleaned up, given a makeover, and sent on my way. In 2 Corinthians 5:17 the Apostle Paul says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old thing have passed away, behold, all thing have become new.” So, I am not just a repaired, repolished; and recycled old John…I am a completely new creation. I am no longer shackled to my old habits and old sins, but I have been forgiven and freed from the bondage of sin. As Christians, we are to be the living sign that God has not abandoned His creation and will not abandon it. Impossible? Some might think so, except for the little fact that our Lord has pioneered this sin free life for us already. We need only follow Him on the path He has cleared for us.
Christmas means one thing more to me. It means that the ordinary is filled with eternal significance. The apostle John speaks of the Incarnation as the Word becoming flesh. He means more than the fact that God clothed itself in a human body: bones, blood, skin, hair, and teeth. He is telling us that the Word immersed Himself in every aspect of our existence. Nothing of our lives is foreign to God. Our Lord was born to ordinary parents; He grew up in an ordinary town; He worked at an ordinary trade, and ate ordinary food. He was so ordinary that at the time, many did not even see Him as noteworthy. Yet he was also the Son of God. And, His coming at that first Christmas is the occasion of God's most intimate presence with mankind since He walked in the Garden of Eden with man in the cool of the day.
Since most of our life is ordinary, then it is in the most ordinary moments of life that we will serve God. Instead of looking for the extraordinary moments, or the dramatic moments, we should understand that we are salt and light not just when we try to be, or are challenged to be. Because if we are salt and light at all…then we are salt and light all the time. Christmas, reminds us that this world in which we are salt and light is where God lives, too. He lives inside us through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Life consists of the ordinary punctuated by what is sometimes extraordinary. As I sit and write this I notice how punctuation marks are found significantly less frequently than words. Punctuation marks may help us read a sentence, but they don't make up the sentence. In today’s world of texting and tweeting, punctuation marks are not even necessary. It is a sign of growing spiritually when we understand that even in the ordinary moments of life empty of the punctuation of the extraordinary, God’s grace abounds, and therefore, there is no ordinary moment that is insignificant to God.
Christmas is the celebration of the Incarnation….the Living Word, and will, and way. It is the Incarnation of God becoming flesh in our midst. Incarnation is the very foundation of everything pertaining to our Christian faith. Christmas began means a salvage operation that is nothing less than the salvation of God. This is what Christmas means to me.
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