Beyond Understanding

Scripture: Isaiah 40:1-5, Mark 1:1-8


Bill Watterson, the author of the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip, once said: “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.” Indeed, I often wonder what a rational, clear-thinking alien would make of our countless peculiar behaviors. What would such a creature think of pumpkin carving, neckties, catch-and-release fishing, the seventh-inning stretch, riding stationary bicycles, running marathons for fun, or bringing cats and dogs into our homes so we can feed them and have them ruin our rugs and furniture? In fact, as I reflect on these things I have no idea what to make of them, either.

I found myself conducting this little thought experiment the other day when I was listening to a radio station that is currently devoting all of its air time to holiday music. I wondered: if an alien were sitting beside me and listening, what would he think Christmas is about? I imagined our visitor saying something like this:

“These songs appear to tell a story but its plot line is unclear to me. The principal player in the drama might be an infant, a boy who plays the drum, three kings, several singing chipmunks, a snowman who has eyes made of coal, a mutant reindeer, or a large bearded man who watches people when they’re sleeping and can read their minds. The story clearly revolves around gifts, although I cannot comprehend why anyone would want most of them, such as those lords who are leaping up and down. I cannot even tell where the tale takes place, at various times it appearing to occur in a little town in the desert, a toy factory in the arctic, decked halls, grandma’s house, or a city shaken by the cacophonous noise of silver bells. As far as I can discern, the story is completely incoherent and has no meaning whatsoever.”

We all recognize the problem I’m describing. And many of us try to counter these confounding cultural influences by making declarations about the true meaning of Christmas. Before this season is over, someone will tell you that the true meaning of Christmas can be found in children or family or tradition or generosity or helping those less fortunate. A real rabble-rouser might even suggest to you that Christmas is about celebrating the birth of Jesus. Of course, all of these have some kernel of truth in them. But I want to invite you to consider this possibility: if we’re after the true meaning of Christmas, then we have to think much, much bigger than these statements suggest. Indeed, we have to think so big that we will we encounter the limits of what we are capable of understanding.

In order to clarify what I’m getting at, I’d like to talk about just one of the characteristics shared by the various gospel renditions of the birth of Jesus. It is a characteristic that has immense theological importance, even though it tends to fall outside of our twenty-first-century conversations about Christmas, and certainly doesn’t make itself manifest in the lyrics of such seasonal classics as “Jingle Bell Rock” or “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause.” The aspect of these stories I will ask you to focus on is this: all of the gospel writers place considerable emphasis on the idea that the birth of Jesus fulfilled a prophecy—a very, very old prophecy. For example, parts of the book of Isaiah are dated to seven or eight hundred years before the birth of Christ.

Of course, the gospel most interested in connecting the birth of Jesus with the fulfillment of these ancient prophecies is that of Matthew, who in telling the story refers to passages from Isaiah, Micah, Hosea, and Jeremiah. Matthew also makes less explicit allusions to various Mosaic texts and even invokes a prophecy of uncertain origin: “He will be called a Nazarene.” The gospel of Luke includes some similar references, although here the notion that Jesus fulfills the messianic prophecy is conveyed through the voices of various players in the drama: Gabriel, Zechariah, the angel who appears to the shepherds, Simeon, and Anna. The gospel of John includes quotations from Isaiah that parallel those we find in Matthew. And similar allusions appear at the beginning of the gospel of Mark—even though that gospel includes no birth narrative but rather starts by moving swiftly from Jesus’ baptism to the inauguration of his ministry. What—first and foremost and perhaps above all other things—did the gospel writers want us to know about Jesus coming into this world? That it accomplished something that had been foretold for generations and generations and that had been in the making since the very beginning of time.

Now, this is the point in the sermon when most preachers would probably extol you to find a few minutes in the coming days to interrupt your busy Christmas preparations in order to ponder the dimensions of this idea. But, unfortunately for you, I am not most preachers. We’re therefore going to do it at this very moment. So fasten your seatbelt, take a deep breath, clear your mind, and try to get your head around the bigness of what the gospel writers are trying to tell you here.

Imagine a plan so vast, so intricate, and so complex that it requires all of time to unfold. Imagine an act of creation that carries with it such dazzling possibilities that we end up with Siberian tigers and the music of Bach, Mount Everest and the Pythagorean Theorem, the Amazon basin and the plays of Shakespeare, hummingbirds and calculus. Imagine that in the midst of all this richness there is a signal event of such transformative importance that God whispers of it to His chosen prophets—not because it is imminent, but because it is a wonder exceeding all other wonders. We might sometimes think to ourselves that God is pretty good at keeping secrets—perhaps even too good for our taste. But this was a secret of such surpassing significance that word got out early.

What an amazing, attention-grabbing, humbling word it is. It is the word of God made into—of all improbable things—the warm, soft flesh of a baby. It is the word that the God who created the universe itself loves you and chases you and calls you into the shelter underneath His wings. It is the word that you cannot have suffering, cannot have anxiety, cannot have disappointment, cannot have pain that is bigger than the one who made you and who will see you through it. It is a word that ushers us into a life that is grateful and faithful and forgiving and relentless in the granting of mercy and the demanding of justice. It is a word that can lead you into a courage that passes all understanding; a resolve that passes all understanding; a peace that passes all understanding; a joy that passes all understanding—a sweet, sweet joy, indeed.

Ah, joy to the world—the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king. Let every heart prepare him room, and heaven and nature sing. And heaven and nature sing. And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

And the people said: Amen.