I Like To Think of Jesus

As the holiday season rolls around, I know we all have special thoughts and memories that we call to mind each year.  Many are probably the traditional practices and messages of Christmas, or the family experiences and personal memories that each of us holds individually dear.  But for me at Christmastime, each year as the season approaches, my mind becomes occupied with one simple, obvious thing.  That's right, you guessed it--it's Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. 

While I'm aware that Talladega Nights is not specifically a Christmas movie, I can't go through a Christmas season without thinking of it constantly, and for very good reason.  If you've seen the movie, you know that one of the funniest themes throughout (especially in the end credits) is a bit where the characters all talk about how they think of Jesus.  Some are really ridiculous ("I like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger."), some actually more philosophical ("I like to think of Jesus as a dirty old bum...but then I say, wait a minute, there's something--I don't know--special about this guy."), but the one most present in the movie itself is Ricky's insistence on thinking of Jesus as a tiny baby in the manger.  While other characters and family members try to point out that Jesus actually didn't remain a baby forever--"Jesus was a man!  He had a beard!"--Ricky insists that he likes the tiny baby Jesus best.  Friends and family can pray to whatever Jesus they like, he informs them, but he will stick with the cute little baby Jesus in the manger--"little 8-pound 6-ounce baby Jesus, don't even know a word yet."

And as all the world around us celebrates this season of Christ's birth, how true, I think.  Everyone loves that tiny little baby Jesus in the manger, the one who can't even speak a word yet.  That little baby Jesus is so easy to love, to celebrate, sort of like a precious little Christmas mascot.  A Christmas tradition of childhood.  What a great team he and Santa make, that cute little baby Jesus.

The inconvenient truth, of course, is that the little baby did grow up.  He learned some words.  He said some things.  They were not as warm and fuzzy.  They required something of us, something more than feeling good and buying ourselves a bunch more stuff.  He asked us to do the unthinkable.  To love others in a way that denies ourselves.  To love him above all else.  To put aside everything and follow him only, fully, truly.  Turns out we would rather he hadn't learned to talk.  And so, we have followed in Ricky Bobby's footsteps, celebrating him only at Christmastime.  Pray to whatever Jesus you want, worship whatever Jesus you like, the rest of the time.  We like the tiny little baby Jesus best.

But ignoring the grown-up Jesus, unfortunately, while it may keep us more comfortable in the short term, also means missing out on anything that little baby in the manger might have to offer.  Because the coming of that tiny baby Jesus is worthless, meaningless, hopeless, without the mission of his adulthood, the reason that he came.  All the joy, peace, and love that the baby Jesus has come to signify in the Christmas season are only possible because of the acts of sacrifice and redemption that are to follow.  I wrote in my earlier post about God's Plan B that Christmas was always coming, but it was so much more than Christmas--the manger has always existed in the shadow of the cross.  That is the only place it makes sense.  The coming of that tiny baby was not simply to give us God's message of love and peace on earth--we already had that memo.  That's why those who see him as a prophet or teacher or some other kind of heavenly messenger have missed the mark.  We cannot help ourselves by simply receiving the message.  This fallen people will never follow the instructions well enough to piece together the shattered fragments of our broken world.  Messiah, not messenger, was the only solution.

In his letter to the Corinthians, Paul tells us that if that grown-up Jesus did not die, was not raised from the dead, that our faith is worthless; "if we have hoped in Christ in this life only," he says, "we are of all men most to be pitied."  Only through death and resurrection can this Jesus become our sacrificial substitute, can he redeem his own creation, can he defeat all that works against our good, even that last enemy, the enemy death itself.  And when this happens, says Paul, just as we have all been asked to die to ourselves, we will all be made alive in Christ.  "O Death, where is thy victory?  O Death, where is thy sting?"  This is not the work of a tiny baby, no matter how special.  This is the work of a knowing, willing, and loving Jesus, the man Jesus, the one with a beard.

So think of Jesus, if you like, as that tiny baby.  Cute little baby Jesus, there in the manger, "in his little golden diaper."  Heck, think of him as a figure skater in a white jumpsuit, who does interpretive ice dances of your life story.  If you stop at the manger, it really makes no difference--the figure skater is just as meaningful.  But I like to think of Jesus as a man.  A man who bears the image of heaven, who abolishes every evil and enemy, a man with all rule and authority and power, a man who sacrifices all to bring redemption and resurrection.  A man who is the very God of heaven.  That's my Jesus.  Take your pick.

Top 10 Things It Turns Out You CAN Learn To Do Without A Man At Christmastime

1.  Find, cut down, haul home, and set up a Christmas tree.  Actually, there is even much less cursing in the man-free version.

2.  Put lights on the aforementioned tree.  There is less cursing for this part also, unless you count the things you say under your breath when the kids mention for the 800th time how Dad does it.

3.  Budget for all the holiday expenses.  Oh, wait.  You were already doing that yourself anyway.

4.  Plan and shop for all the gifts......no, that's another one you were already doing....hmmm.

5.  Christmas cards--no....bake cookies--don't be ridiculous.....kid's school parties--as if!  Every single other holiday activity--

Oh, for Pete's sake.  Never mind.