Perceptions from a Pewboy

In the animated Christmas classic, “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the viewing audience is introduced to the Island of Misfit Toys. The toys living on this island are ostracized from the other toys in the world because they are functionally or cosmetically flawed. On this island, for example, there lives a squirt gun that only shoots jelly; a toy train with square wheels; a stuffed elephant with spots; even a Charlie in the Box who laments that he was not given the name “Jack.”

The mood on the Island of Misfit toys is understandably somber. The misfit toys long to be played with, but no one ever comes to the island to claim them. Each Christmas Eve brings about a particular sadness on the island as the inhabitants realize that other “normal” toys will be joyfully embraced by eager children the next morning. The misfit toys, on the other hand, can only dream of such an embrace. After all, in the words of one of the misfit toys, “no one wants to play with a Charlie in the Box!”

As a child, when I watched Rudolph for the first time, the Island of Misfit Toys inspired me to believe that all of my toys were imbued with a personality and a network of emotions. As soon as the show was over, I literally ran to my toy box and pulled out some of the toys with which I had not played for months—the Magic 8 Ball; the Weebles; the Etch a Sketch; the Rock’em Sock’em Robots; the G.I. Joe doll (who was missing an arm due to a grueling struggle with the family dog). When all of these toys were scattered before me, I proceeded to whisper to all of them the sentiments that were emerging from my 5-year-old heart. My whispers that evening sounded something like this: “None of you are misfit toys! I promise! You’re still special, even though you might not be as new as my other toys! Don’t be sad, ’cause you are the toys that came first!”

It was a memorable manifestation of the beautiful innocence of childhood.

It occurs to me that the birth of Jesus some two-thousand years ago was God’s mysterious and glorious way of whispering precisely that same message to all of humankind: “None of you are misfit toys, I promise! All of you are precious! All of you are worth ‘playing with’! I’ll never throw you away!”

Part of the good news of Christmas, in other words, is that each one of us matters to the One who created us, regardless of our size, shape, history, temperament, or situation in life. In fact, we matter to God so deeply that God would settle for nothing less than pouring the very best of divinity into a Bethlehem feeding trough for the sake of our salvation and redemption.

It comes down to this, I suppose: Christ came even for the Charlies in the Box and the spotted elephants. Because, in the Kingdom of God, there is no such thing as a misfit toy. I am deeply grateful for a place in that kind of toy box.

Not long ago, I visited a funeral home in order to pay my respects to the family of a nineteen-year-old young man who had been killed in an automobile accident that had been caused by a drunk driver. While I waited in line at the funeral home to see the family, I struck up a conversation with the man who was standing behind me in the line. When he discovered that I was a pastor, the conversation turned in a decidedly theological direction. “You know,” he said to me, “I don’t have much use for God.”

I found that to be an interesting phrase. He did not say that he had no belief in God. He said that he had no use for God, as though he found God to be perfectly disagreeable.

“May I ask why you have no use for God?”

“Because,” he answered, “God doesn’t seem to care that people in the world are suffering. He doesn’t seem to care that people are dying of hunger. He doesn’t seem to care that people are dying of cancer. He doesn’t seem to care that nineteen-year-old boys are being killed by drunk drivers.”

“I don’t have much use,” he said, “for a God that seems to get his jollies from sitting back and watching people suffer.”

Although this man’s words no doubt emerged from the profundity of his emotional pain, I cannot help but think that, in that moment, he was giving expression to a conceptualization of God that is frighteningly common, even among those who have not just experienced a tragic loss. The conceptualization of God to which I am making reference paints a portrait of a God who is unwaveringly remote, exasperatingly distant, and callously detached from the daily affairs of the world; a God who can never be reached or embraced but who demands to be appeased and satisfied by violent human suffering; a God who might have set things in motion, but who seemingly lacks either the ability or the desire to be in relationship with human souls; a divine but unsympathetic spectator who is unmoved by human suffering and who is far too blasé to act intentionally and redemptively on our behalf.

How honest will you permit me to be? Do I dare to tell you how frequently I have found myself harboring at least a shade of this very conceptualization in my deepest thoughts? Will you still permit me to minister alongside you if I confess to you that, more than once, I have found myself wondering out loud if God really cares about my little nook in the world?

The words of the Old Testament prophet Zephaniah spoke to my heart this morning during a few moments of prayerful meditation. Zephaniah’s prophetic ministry unfolded at least 630 (and perhaps over 700) years before the birth of Jesus against the backdrop of excruciatingly difficult days in Judah. Conquests and threats of conquest by surrounding powers. Political uncertainty. Fear of God’s judgment and wrath. A nagging penchant for bowing down before other gods. An impending time of exile that Zephaniah could see on the horizon. Dread concerning the future of Judah. These were the days in which Zephaniah and his people found themselves living.

Zephaniah does not sugarcoat his assessment of the situation:

You are a soiled and defiled city,” Zephaniah says to the people of Jerusalem. “You have not trusted in the Lord, you have not drawn near to your God. Your politicians are roaring lions, your judges are hungry wolves; your prophets are faithless; your priests have profaned that which is holy; your people have done violence to the law. (Zephaniah 3:1-4)

And yet, although Zephaniah speaks unsettlingly and trenchantly about the reality of the nation’s sin and God’s righteous judgment, he concludes his prophecy with a word of hope and restoration—a word that has been resonating in my heart since I read it this morning:

Sing aloud, O Jerusalem; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart! The Lord has taken away the judgments against you and has turned away your enemies. For the King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst. (Zephaniah 3:15)

Zephaniah felt so strongly about that last sentiment that he decided to repeat it two verses later, as though he desperately wanted people to remember it:

“The Lord, your God, is in your midst.”

Did you hear it? Zephaniah stubbornly refuses to allow his people to nurture a conceptualization of a distant and unfeeling God who has no emotional investment in the human pilgrimage. “No,” Zephaniah says, “our God is not like the expressionless and inanimate idols that our neighbors seem so eager to worship. Rather, our God is unsettlingly, passionately, personally, transformationally, and relentlessly IN OUR MIDST.”

Out of the bleakness of Judah’s ancient circumstances comes the redemptive truth about the steadfast “in the midst-ness” of our God—a truth that would not reach its complete fulfillment for another six centuries, when, in the fullness of time, the God of the universe stepped out of the landscape of eternity and came to us in swaddling clothes, so that God’s “in the midst-ness” might have some flesh and blood on it.

In a way, then, Zephaniah proclaimed the Christmas Good News centuries before Christmas. In a world that is so often eager to conceptualize God as being distant and remote, Zephaniah has the audacity to proclaim that God is in our midst. When we experience tragedy and suffering, when 19-year-old boys are killed by drunk drivers, when people we love are taken from us, when cancer seems to be having its way with someone about whom we care deeply, even then, the Lord is in our midst—not far off, but in our midst, hurting with us, weeping with us, experiencing our pain with us, but then restoring us to a condition of hope and strength and vision beyond our present circumstances. When we are discouraged with the state of the world, when we are heartbroken over human poverty and hunger and warfare, even then, the Lord is in our midst—not far off, but in our midst, aligning himself with those who are suffering and daring us to see his face in the disenfranchised and the marginalized. When we feel that we are without purpose and direction, even then, the Lord is in our midst—not far off, but in our midst, taking hold of our broken spirit and restoring it to a condition of wholeness.

Where is God? Zephaniah would have us to believe that we do not have to look very far. Because, according to Zephaniah, God stubbornly refuses to maintain a safe distance from us. In fact, God’s desire for relationship with human souls has inspired God to dwell in our very midst, closer to us than our own breathing, more intimately connected to us than our own private thoughts. I don’t know what you call that. I call it Christmas Good News.

Several years ago, I happened to be visiting a patient at St. Clair Hospital moments after he had received the results of a recent biopsy. The results indicated that he had a cancerous tumor on his kidney. His heart was heavy with that news. “Eric,” he said, “I need you to help me to sing something.”

“Uh, OK. Well…uh…hmmmm…what do you want to sing?”

“It’s one of my favorite choruses,” he said.

“Fine. Just tell me what it is and we’ll sing it.”

A moment later, the two of us joined together in singing these words:

Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place
I can feel his mighty power and his grace
I can hear the brush of angels wings, I see glory on each face
Surely the presence of the Lord is in this place

After we were finished singing, I could not prevent myself from asking a question: “Roger, why was it so important to you that we sing that particular song?”

“Because,” he said, “I needed to sing something that would remind me that the presence of God is a whole lot closer to my soul than those cancer cells are.”

What was it that that man was calling for? He was calling for a reminder of Zephaniah’s prophecy. He was calling for a reiteration of the Christmas Good News that the Lord is in our midst, even in the aftermath of a cancer diagnosis.

He was calling, in other words, for the truth about God.

Aren’t we all?

Christmas morning of 1974 holds a special place in my memory. On that morning, as a seven-year-old boy, I received a Christmas present that signified an advancement in toy-making about which I was very excited. It was a Christmas present that I was convinced would change the landscape of my personal playtime.

The Christmas present to which I am making reference is G.I. Joe with Kung Fu grip.

If you were born after 1980, my reference to “Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joe” will probably not mean anything to you. But if you lived through the mystical and whimsical decade of the 1970’s, then perhaps you recall the evolution that I am describing. Back in the 1970’s, long before the movement toward the miniaturization of children’s action figures, G.I. Joe was a hard plastic doll, about 12 inches tall—sort of like Barbie but with a beard and military equipment.

Although fierce looking and fun to play with, G.I. Joe was plagued by severe functional limitations. The hard plastic of which he was made was not at all pliable, which made it impossible for him to hold on to anything with any degree of security (which, as you might imagine, significantly hindered his tactical ability). But in 1974, the problem was creatively rectified. All the commercials talked about it. G.I. Joe was now equipped with a Kung Fu grip—large, pliable rubber hands attached to his hard plastic body. Did it look unrealistic in the commercial? Of course it did. But the cosmetic issues were far outweighed by the prospect of G.I. Joe being able to grab hold of the clothesline in the back yard!

On Christmas morning 1974, “Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joe” found his way to that very special place beneath my family Christmas tree. When I opened the present and saw those plastic blue eyes looking back at me, and when I glanced downward to verify the existence of his disproportionate kung fu grip hands, I was instantaneously brought into a condition of Christmas morning euphoria. I played with “Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joe” all morning long.

Utilizing his kung fu grip that morning, G.I. Joe found himself suspended from Christmas tree branches and extension cords and even the belt of my father’s bathrobe. It was a great day of kung fu grip playtime! Then, playtime came to an end with my mother’s announcement: “Eric, time to get a shower and get dressed. We’re going to travel to Pittsburgh so that we can have Christmas dinner with your Aunt Mary Jane and the rest of the family.”

“OK, Mom.”

I laid “Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joe” under the Christmas tree, proceeded to get ready, and then off we went for the family Christmas celebration. What we didn’t know at the time was that our relatively new family dog, whose name was Jiggers, had a fondness for mischief. More specifically, Jiggers was a chewer, and, as we would soon discover, he seemed to enjoy sinking his teeth into anything made of wood, plastic, or rubber.

Well, to make a long story short (as if that’s even possible at this point!), when we arrived back home on Christmas night, all that was left of “Kung Fu Grip G.I. Joe” was a plastic torso, riddled with doggie teeth marks. In fact, we didn’t find some of his plastic body parts until the next day in the back yard (if you know what I mean!). Suffice it to say that the newly developed kung fu grip didn’t help G.I. Joe one bit in his fight with Jiggers.

When I saw the freshly devoured G.I. Joe doll on the living room floor, I was furious. I stormed up to my bedroom and cried. To this day, I remember the angry and bitter lament that I whispered through my tears. “I am never traveling on Christmas day again! I don’t care where our family lives! Bad things happen when we leave the toys alone in the house! I mean it—I am NEVER traveling on Christmas day again!” It was a moment of childhood angst and revelation—a moment in which I learned that traveling on Christmas day is not without its logistical challenges and pitfalls.

But I don’t really have to tell that to any of you, do I? You are already well aware of the logistical challenges of traveling around Christmas time. In fact, one of the most important organizational questions that families and friends contemplate each and every Christmas is precisely this: Who’s going to do the traveling? Are we going to Mom and Dad’s house, or are they coming here? Are we going to grandma’s in the afternoon, or is someone going to pick grandma up so that she can come here? Are we staying overnight, or is it just a day trip? When do we leave? When do we come back? What do we have to pack? Do we have all the Christmas gifts?

Who’s going to do the traveling?

Much of the rhythm and content of our Christmas celebration is dictated by our response to that question. There are cooking and cleaning implications. There are issues of travel time to be contemplated. There are delicate family politics to be pondered (i.e., if I go to spend time with this family member on Christmas, will this other family member be offended that we didn’t travel to his house or her house?).

In the midst of these complex logistical questions, there have probably been times when all of us have articulated a viewpoint that was something like the viewpoint I articulated back in 1974, when my devoured G.I. Joe doll inspired me to mutter these words: “I am NEVER traveling on Christmas day again!”

Today, on Christmas Eve, the vocabulary of Christmas traveling is very much on my heart. I find it to be a vocabulary that illuminates some of the mystery and majesty of what transpired on that first Christmas night, 2000 years ago.

In the Gospel of Matthew, an angel tells Joseph that the name of the child born to Mary shall be Jesus, and that he shall be called EMMANUEL which is a word that means, “God with us,” or, perhaps more specifically, “a God who has traveled to be with us.”

Then, in the Gospel of Luke, an angel appears to the shepherds on that first Christmas night. “Do not be afraid,” the angel says to the shepherds, “for I bring to you good news of great joy to all the people. To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” The angel’s message to the shepherds, essentially, is that God has done some significant traveling. God has made the journey into human skin and can be found in Bethlehem as a vulnerable baby in swaddling clothes.

The Christmas message, you see, delivered initially by the angels, is a message about traveling. It is a message about God’s merciful itinerary. It is a message about a heavenly Father who recognizes our inability to reach him and who, therefore, made the decision to travel for the purpose of reaching us. “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. His name shall be Jesus, and he shall be called EMMANUEL, which is a word that means, ‘God has done the traveling.’”

Today, I ask you not to burden yourself with the task of attempting to comprehend all of the scientific specifics of how it is that a sovereign God travels into human skin. Resist the temptation to lose yourself in the kind of analytical mindset that would reduce the mystery and profundity of the birth of Jesus Christ to nothing more than a theological equation or a spiritual formula. Instead, make peace with the fact—and beyond that, CELEBRATE the fact—that something occurred on that first Christmas that is well beyond the boundaries of human comprehension. Somehow, in the mystery of gracious divinity, the God of the Ages traveled from eternity to the present moment; traveled from a heavenly throne to a Bethlehem manger; traveled from heavenly adornment to human skin.

Why would God make that kind of trip? Scripture would have us to believe that God made the trip simply because God loves us that much. “In fact,” God proclaims “I love you so much that I am willing to do the traveling. I am willing to come to you in Christ, because I know that you cannot come to me. And I refuse to allow your sin to keep us apart. I refuse to allow the alienation of your disobedience to prevent us from being in right relationship. Therefore, I will do the traveling, thereby bridging the chasm between us that you on your own are not able to bridge.”

Many if not all of the other world religions place the emphasis upon the kind of spiritual traveling that WE might do to reach GOD. Christianity is unique in that regard. Christianity places the emphasis upon the traveling that GOD has done to reach US.

Ponder for just a moment what it meant for God to make the trip into human skin. It meant that God in Christ willingly entered into the messiness and the fragileness of the human condition, with all of its cuts and its bruises, with all of its aches and pains, with all of its sins and its blemishes. “You cannot come to me,” God essentially said to us, “and so I will come to you. I will do the traveling. I will experience childhood with you and the mishaps that can occur in the experience of growing toward adulthood. I will break with you and bleed with you and breathe your air and experience your journey. And, when the time comes, I will die on the cross for you, thereby taking into myself the sins of the world.”

Such is the language and the imagery of a God who is willing to do the traveling for our sake. I don’t know how you feel about that kind of God, a God who traveled from eternal glory to the crude tangibility of a Bethlehem feeding trough.

Personally, I’m grateful that he saved us the trip.

This was the title of my Christmas Eve sermon this year: “Bing, Bowie, and a Baby in a Manger.” Allow me to explain.

Back in the 1970’s, I spent a good portion of my December watching all of the Christmas specials that the three major networks televised throughout the season. There were the children’s Christmas specials: Rudolph, Frosty, the Grinch, and Charlie Brown. Everyone knows about those. But there were also the family Christmas specials that were hosted by a variety of celebrities.

If you are not old enough to have experienced the 1970’s, this may be a bit difficult for you to understand. But the cultural and social climate of the 1970s created an environment that made it possible for nearly half of the celebrities in Hollywood to host a televised Christmas special. For example, on December 8th, NBC might televise the “Dean Martin Christmas Special,” featuring special guests Sammy Davis Jr. and Raquel Welch. On December 12th, ABC might televise the “Perry Como Christmas Special,” featuring special guests Jim Nabors and Rosemary Clooney. On December 16th, CBS might televise the “Andy Williams Christmas Special,” featuring special guests Lena Horne and the Osmond Brothers.

Bob Hope hosted a Christmas special. So did Johnny Cash. So did John Denver. So did Sonny and Cher. My goodness, back in 1978, even R2D2 and C3P0 hosted their very own Christmas special! These Christmas specials were all about the same. There were Christmas songs, performed amidst holiday settings, that were as colorful as they were cheesy. There were holiday skits that were maudlin enough to tug at the audience’s vulnerable heartstrings. And normally, every special concluded with the host and all of the guests singing one of the “night songs”—either “Silent Night,” or “O Holy Night,” thereby bringing the entire production to a poignant closure.

The king of the celebrity Christmas specials was none other than Bing Crosby. In the 1960’s and 70’s, Bing Crosby hosted 15 Christmas specials, the last of which was televised in 1977, shortly after Bing’s death. The most noteworthy thing about Bing Crosby’s final Christmas special is that it featured a guest appearance by David Bowie, the eccentric and somewhat androgynous rock star who was at the height of his popularity in 1977. Bowie’s appearance on Bing’s Christmas special was no doubt an intentional effort on the part of network executives to bridge the cultural and generational gaps that were developing between older and younger members of the television audience.

The most remembered segment of that 1977 Christmas special was a duet between Bing Crosby and David Bowie. The duet was preceded by a carefully choreographed skit that went something like this: The doorbell rings. Bing Crosby answers it, only to find David Bowie at his door. David Bowie explains that he’s a neighbor living down the road and that he needs a piano so that he can practice his music. Bing Crosby invites David Bowie into the house, they exchange pleasant conversation about their families and the celebration of Christmas, then they make their way over to the piano, upon which happens to be a lovely Christmas duet: Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth. They sing it together.

It was a significant moment of television history that many people continue to describe as the bridging of a chasm that had never before been bridged—specifically, the chasm between the world of the classic crooners and the world of rock and roll. Bing represented the big band era. Bowie represented loud guitars, crashing drums, and cryptic lyrics. Bing represented cardigan sweaters. Bowie represented tight pants and make-up. Bing represented “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas.” Bowie represented “Ground Control to Major Tom.” Bing and Bowie, in other words, represented two entirely different worlds that were so different from one another and so often alienated from one another that it had come to be believed that there could be no common ground between them.

And yet, in a simple moment of Christmas music, the worlds of Bing and Bowie intersected in a way that was as significant as it was poignant. A simple Christmas duet became a cultural bridge between two worlds that were thought to be irreconcilable.

Perhaps part of the reason why Bing and Bowie’s duet is on my heart at Christmastime is that I find it to be a good metaphor for the kind of bridge-building that took place on that first Christmas night, 2000 years ago. I say that because, when we dare to look beneath all of the romanticized notions that we might have of the Christmas event, when we dare to travel beyond our sanitized nativity sets and our comfortable Christmas carols, what we find in the Christmas story is a God who brought together two worlds that were thought to be irreconcilable. Think about it this way: Bing and Bowie bridged the alienated worlds of crooners and rock and roll stars with a single duet. Far more impressive, however, is the way in which the God of the Ages bridged the alienated worlds of divinity and humanity with the birth of a single child.

That, after all, is the mind-boggling good news of the Christmas story, isn’t it? Somehow—and that word “somehow” is the right vocabulary to employ here, if we are going to maintain an appropriate sense of wonderment—somehow, in the mystery of gracious divinity, the God of the Ages traveled from eternity to the present moment; somehow, the God of the ages traveled from a heavenly throne to a Bethlehem manger; somehow, the God of the Ages traveled from divine accoutrements to human skin.

Why? Why would God make that kind of trip? Well, that question is answered in a single verse of Scripture, a verse that many Christians memorize when they are very young: “For God so LOVED the world, that he gave his only Son.”

Why would God make the trip from divine accoutrements to human skin? Scripture would have us to believe that God made the trip Because God loves us that much. “In fact,” God proclaims “I love you so much that I am willing to become the bridge. I am willing to come to you in Christ, because I know that you cannot come to me. And I refuse to allow your sin to keep us apart. I refuse to allow the alienation of your disobedience to prevent us from being in right relationship. Therefore, I will become flesh, thereby bridging the chasm between us that you on your own are not able to bridge.”

Back in 1977, Bing and Bowie built a bridge between alienated musical worlds by singing an unexpected duet. 2000 years ago, the God of the Ages built an infinitely more significant bridge between divinity and humanity by wrapping himself up in human flesh, thereby making possible a redemptive duet of salvation, sung by both the angels of heaven and the children of earth. I’m still celebrating that good news as I make ready to enter into a new calendar year.