2017 Worship Guide

2017 WORSHIP GUIDE Wednesday, December 6, 2017 LINCOLN DAILY NEWS PUBLICATION Page 5 Sometimes we sanitize Christmas We sanitize Christmas when we only present a picture-perfect, storybook rendition of what took place in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago. The straw in the manger is fresh and clean. There’s no umbilical cord to cut and no blood. It’s a “silent night.” The surroundings are strangely free from the pungent odor of manure. Joseph and Mary are calm, cool, and collected. Everyone gets a good night’s sleep. There’s no controversy or gossip surrounding the birth. It’s a pleasant, appealing way to think about Christmas, but obscures the foulness, uncertainty, and sin that Jesus was born into. We forget that rather than coming for the put- together, well-to-do, and self-sufficient, Jesus identified with the rejected, the slandered, the helpless, and the poor. Sometimes we spiritualize Christmas Spiritualizing Christmas is ignoring Christmas as earth-shattering history and using it simply to promote general virtues like brotherhood, peace, joy, generosity, and love. And tolerance, of course. Again, it’s evidence of God’s common grace and a reason to give thanks that our culture sets aside a time of year, however commercialized it might be, to celebrate and commend loving your neighbor. But the fruit of Christmas is impossible to achieve or sustain apart from the root. We understand what love is by looking not to ourselves and our good deeds, but by considering Jesus, who came into the world to lay down his life for us (1 John 3:16). Preaching or singing about peace without recognizing our need for the Prince of Peace is a shallow peace indeed. By this time, most of us have already made our choices about what Christmas means to us and how we’re going to present it to others. But Christmas comes every year. And it’s not too early to start thinking about next year. More importantly, the glory of God becoming man was never meant to be marginalized to a few weeks. It means something cataclysmic every day. • Jesus, the eternal Son of God who before time was worshiped by countless angels, set aside his glory and entered the world through the birth canal of a young woman he had created. CONTINUED ....