So the day has come, and nearly gone, and though you had dreams of picture perfect scenes of warmth and gentleness, once again, things haven’t quite panned out that way.
Tonight, instead of resting in the peace you incessantly hear this season is supposed to bring, you’re neck-deep in conflict and anxiety, stuck in a suffocating sadness that has shown up again like an unwelcome visitor, barging in at a bad time and staying for way too long.
The spaces in your heart and your home on this day, are not the stuff of Norman Rockwell paintings or Jimmy Stewart movies or Charlie Brown cartoons.
Things in your world are a flat-out, Jerry Springer Show mess… You’re a mess.
But that’s OK.
You’re in some really good company in the MESS.
you see, the story of Christmas; that it is, THE STORY, has never been the sugar-coated, sanitized, Hallmark card one that the consumer culture has sold you since you could remember. That one moves lots of knick-knacks and needle-points and blow-up Nativity scenes. That one tricks you into believing that love is most clearly expressed through shopping mall gift cards and mail order cheese logs. That one bombards you every 20 minutes, dressed-up as TV commercial families with perfect teeth, great hair, and ribbon-wrapped cars in the driveway.
That is not this story.
No, the Christmas Story is far grittier than that. It is the story of an illegitimate baby, born in the straw and the mud of a stranger’s dog house. It is the true tale of Divinity, not coming with power or fanfare or privilege, but spit out into a cold, damp night, thick with the smell of animal dung and lamp oil.
The MESSiah.
You see, God could have come anyway He pleased, and frankly, deserved. He could have descended on clouds or stepped from spectacular starbursts or thundered from the night sky upon angels’ shoulders, but He chose to enter instead through the birth canal of a scared teenager, into the wooden trough where farm animals had breakfast.
Jesus enters into the MESS.
And for his entire life and ministry, he would remain there in the mess; touching the sore-covered hands of lepers, eating with outcast sinners and prostitutes, mixing spit and dirt, washing filthy feet, and bringing healing to the most broken and grieving people on the planet. With the diseased and the demon-possessed and the poor and the lost, he lived and he lingered.
Wherever MESS was, so was Jesus.
And when his life would end, (at his own consent), it would end so very messy; not quietly and clean, like a Broadway show death. Jesus would leave battered and bloodied, nailed to a tree, body riddled with thorns and spears and the taunts of the crowd.
Jesus would die in the MESS.
So many holidays, but particularly Christmas, have been hijacked by Hollywood; made into some pristine image of family perfection and personal well-being, setting-up for us all, some ideal, unattainable Instagram of who we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to feel. For most of us, it seems we never even get close to it.
Tonight, you may be mired in MESS; divorce, grief, illness, addiction, fractured relationships, bitterness, depression, and all kinds of junk that simply doesn’t feel like Christmas, but don’t believe it. It, or rather, He, is closer than you think.
Into those places of hurt and dysfunction and damage, are exactly where Jesus steps and works miracles. It is the canvas upon which he paints masterpieces.
Have hope.
Be encouraged.
MESSiah is here.
Merry ChristMESS.
