Christ is Born Holding All Things Together.
Christ is Born Holding All Things Together.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together…For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1.15-23)
How do you trim the tree? Chances are there are tree ornaments in your house that tell the story of the people you are and have been, and the places you've gone on one vacation or another. Hand-prints in plaster with the year of some child’s birth or the photo of an old dog or cat who took the tree down in the middle of the night, the first year you were married. The story of your life hangs on that tree. We like the trees even when we call them Holiday Trees and plant them in city squares, big and grand enough that even atheists and agnostics alongside the devout gather to see them. In Rockefeller or in front of the Whitehouse or in Huntington with Ralph Macchio flipping the switch, the bigger the tree the more light it can bring and the more ornaments it can bear. The fuller the tree the more life we can hang on it, the more hopes and dreams and longings we can hang on it. How do you know if something’s strong unless you hang your life on it, unless you bet your life on it?
Christmas is a good time to aim big. Although it isn’t a traditional advent scripture this one brings two things together: the fullness of God in Christ and the fact that all the cosmos, including everything we experience and all that we see and think must turn toward the Christ who was born. It means that in Him all those things hold together. It also means that the degree to which we do not have Christ is the degree to which we will spend our lives looking for Him in all things, whether we realize it or not.
The Christmas season can be the hardest to endure. The world takes inventory and reminds us of what we are missing: where’s your family, your loved one, your health or your wealth? It’s one of the only times a year, except perhaps birthdays—another high-emotional stress moment—where we ask the question of whether all things, namely my things, are “held together.” It’s when we assess whether the things we hang our lives on are load-bearing. The failure of those things can be a quiet and lonely place even in the midst of a happy season.
Try to hang all things on your health or wealth, on your own truth, on your children and their respect or love for you or on their safety and thriving—or on anything else—and those good things will fail to deliver and become bitter to you. You will hollow-out the world. That realization can leave a person lonely in a full house as surely as an empty one. Seeing a glorious work of art can leave you feeling alone. Reaching the pinnacle of your career can do it too. Any moment where you assess whether the tree can hold the ornaments. The more load-bearing we attempt to make things the more quickly we hollow them out. But we aren’t alone: this is the season of shopping, and Madison Avenue has never stopped selling the idea that the happiest place to hang your life is on something you can buy with real money.
When I came to the north shore of Long Island, it was the first time I experienced volunteer fire departments and the ability to ignore the public alarm siren a handful of times every day. Every once in a while, if I’m on a call, or preaching a sermon, it’s too intrusive to ignore. If Christmas accomplishes something at all it is the intrusive suggestion, at the top of its lungs, that there is something better to hang our lives on. That like love, as said in another part of the Bible, the Incarnation can bear all things. Even you and even me if we are willing to trust its branches, or behold its fingers and toes and the stable that housed them.
If the Incarnation is God's fullness given to us then He is the presence for every absence. He is preeminent, first, most and last. In all things becomes no longer a threat but a great comfort: the fuller the tree the more of your life you can hang on its branches. All things hold together in him. That “preeminence” is either a dream come true or a waking nightmare—it depends on which side of belief you happen to be on: is the story all really true, or is it as life-changing as Mariah Carey blaring from twenty-seven rickshaws barging down midtown on the 20th of December? There is really only one way to decide, I would suggest to you. One need only look at what the Bible suggests happens with that fullness born into the world. To where is it delivered and to whom.
It’s amazing that we can sentimentalize the manger. In truth it might as well be plutonium at the core of the Christmas message. Of all the things the gods we fashion do: they create, destroy, they answer requests, they hate all the same people we do, amazingly, and love all the same people we love. You know what they don't do? They don't put themselves in feed boxes. They don't take the lowest place. The gods we ourselves create don't give themselves to the hunger of their followers. If all things is hard to believe on its own well that only makes sense, but a God capable of all things who makes himself nothing? It’s a story so unlikely to tell that it’s madder to disbelieve it. I don't blame the atheists for going after Advent with both barrels; the Incarnation is truly dangerous to a life you attempt to hang on anything else. But of all the things you'll see mocked about Christianity: the virgin birth, the exclusivity of the Christian faith, or how it's been taken over by politics and can't be believed anymore—one thing you won't find mocked is Christianity's belief in a God who feeds the world from the bread of his own suffering presence.
In Him all things hold together. It’s madness but the the world stops and listens once a year to its echoes. What will they hear? What will we hear? Nostalgia? A jingle or a distraction? Or all things cracked open on the side of the manger, like an egg.