“No More Normal: Which Spirit?”
Reading: Joel 2:1-2, 12-18, 28-32; Isaiah 11:1-10
Written and preached by Luke Richards
I think it can safely be said that our nativity is missing one of its most important characters, and actually I could say the same thing about every nativity I’ve seen. It’s nobody’s fault, though, because this character would be very difficult to model in ceramic or plastic. And yet He really is one of the most important characters in this whole Christmas story: I’m talking about the Holy Spirit. This is certainly in keeping with our theme for this Advent, since focusing on God the Holy Spirit is definitely not normal for Christmas. Normally we spend more time on the Spirit around Pentecost, but now, of course, we should be spending more time on Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. Christmas is the time to talk about the angels and shepherds and wise men, time to talk about Joseph and Mary making a long journey and there being no room at the inn and the baby in the manger. Even if we could make a ceramic model of the Holy Spirit, He doesn’t really fit in our nativity scene because He isn’t really in our Christmas story. Or is He?
As a matter of fact, He’s all over the Christmas story. He’s the one who gets things moving, in a sense. The writers of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, from which we get most of our nativity scene, both state very clearly that the baby Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb: the angel tells Mary that “the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” What’s more, Luke’s gospel in particular gives us a cast of characters surrounding the events of the birth of Jesus, and what’s striking as you read through that story is how many times the Holy Spirit is mentioned in connection with those characters. John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus, is said to be filled with the Spirit even from birth. Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s mother and Mary’s relative, is filled with the Spirit when Mary, pregnant with Jesus, greets her. Zechariah, John’s father, was filled with the Spirit and began to prophesy when John was born. And Simeon, the old man in the temple waiting to see the Lord’s Messiah, was filled with the Spirit when Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple courts. And so from the very beginning of the Christmas story all the way through it, the Holy Spirit is present in an unusual way. It’s almost like we’re supposed to come to the point where we expect to see an extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the people who get too close to this baby Jesus.
In fact, that’s exactly what I think we should expect, that people who get too close to this baby wrapped in swaddling clothes are in serious danger of having a life-changing experience with God the Holy Spirit. Obviously there are plenty of good reasons for focusing on Jesus at Christmas and then focusing on the Holy Spirit around Pentecost, but from another perspective it’s unfortunate that we put so much distance between Jesus and the Spirit in our celebrations. In some ways it really would be more appropriate to have the Holy Spirit represented in our nativity scenes.
But let’s stop and think: is He the Spirit we really want for Christmas? When we talk about the “Spirit of Christmas,” are we talking about the Holy Spirit or would we rather settle for something a little more predictable and a lot less threatening?
I’m sure it would be fascinating to do a survey and ask people to define the “spirit of Christmas,” and maybe someone has already done so, but I’d bet we could all guess with reasonable accuracy what sorts of answers that survey would get. Just watch TV sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas and you’ll see what sorts of things people think they’re supposed to associate with Christmas. The Christmas spirit is the spirit of giving, right? Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? God’s Christmas present to humanity, a cute little baby? Or maybe the Christmas spirit is a spirit of togetherness, brotherhood, and family. That’s why we don’t like seeing people who are alone on Christmas, because Christmas is all about spending time with the people you love. Or maybe some people would say that the spirit of Christmas is a spirit of peace on earth, though of course they’re probably unlikely to spend much time reflecting on the fact that peace on earth is much harder to accomplish than simply thinking nice thoughts for one evening out of the year. Other people might even mention the spirits who appeared to Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and yet to come. The Christmas spirit is a spirit of gratitude, remembering the ways we’ve been blessed, and being a blessing to others. Or maybe the Christmas spirit is that spirit of excitement that grabs hold of some people during the Christmas season, and so when you see someone wearing a Santa hat and singing Christmas songs everywhere they go, you can tell that they’re in the Christmas spirit.
Now those are certainly not bad things to include in our celebration of Christmas, don’t get me wrong. Who could argue with things like generosity, togetherness, and gratitude? But really, that’s kind of the problem. There’s nothing very controversial in those warm, fuzzy feelings we associate with Christmas, especially since most people probably only think about them once a year. There’s nothing challenging in that sort of Christmas spirit. Everyone can agree on that sort of a Christmas spirit; it’s nice and nonthreatening and inclusive. It’s normal. It doesn’t rock the boat. It lets us stay comfortable in the rut. And that should probably leave us wondering what it was about this adorable little Christmas baby that got Him executed as a criminal.
But our theme for Advent is “No More Normal.” Even though there’s not necessarily anything wrong with normal, I’m not sure we should be comfortable with normal if we’re going to be faithful to the sorts of things the Bible calls us to. I’m not sure we should be satisfied with the same old same old this Christmas, even though it’s comforting and familiar and warm and fuzzy; I’m not sure we can be healthy Christians if we’re living in the rut. We have to face the fact that there is nothing normal about Christmas, and we should be pretty abnormal as a response to Christmas if we’re celebrating it well. In fact, we’re taking some time this Advent to focus on how God made promises prior to the birth of Christ, promises about the birth of Christ, promises that promised to change the definition of normal. And so if you are, like me, no longer satisfied with normal and are really struggling with how to be faithful to Christ this Christmas, maybe we can start by asking what God expected to change at Christmas. Last week we started by remembering what the angels said to those shepherds, that the birth of Jesus is good news, and we asked whether we really live like we have news that is actually good. Today, we can’t get away from the Spirit of Christmas, and we need to ask ourselves which spirit we really want.
You see, people were beginning to make connections between the birth of this Messiah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit long before Jesus was born. We read some of the highlights from Joel 2, a prophecy that begins by talking about a plague of locusts they were dealing with in those days, but from there Joel moves much deeper. There will be judgment and then restoration on this matter of locusts, Joel promises them, but then those locusts become an example of a much deeper issue of judgment and restoration that will come later: the Day of the Lord. It’s a very common theme in the Old Testament prophets, this future event that will take place when the wicked are judged and the righteous are rewarded. It was a promise that even though the world was messed up, God was going to make things right one day. And their understanding of this Day of the Lord often included an outpouring of God’s Spirit: though they didn’t think of the Holy Spirit in the same terms that we do today, they understood that it was like they were living in a period of drought, and one day God’s Spirit would be poured out like rain in a thunderstorm.
But there was also the expectation of a Messiah. They were also waiting for that day when God would send someone special to accomplish His will and save His people in a way unlike anything they had seen before. “Messiah” means “anointed one,” and this person would be anointed by God in a uniquely powerful way. It was often said of powerful figures in Old Testament history that the Spirit of the Lord or the Hand of the Lord was upon them, and as we read in Isaiah 11, it was also expected that the Spirit of the Lord would rest on the Messiah. What wasn’t always clear in the Old Testament was how all these things would come together. That’s part of why everyone was so surprised by Jesus when He came. He wasn’t what they were expecting. But what was clear in the promise was that you can’t separate the Anointed One from the One who is the Anointing. If you try to focus on the Messiah without the Holy Spirit, you’re not focused on the Messiah.
Everything Jesus did, He did in the Spirit. He was led by the Spirit, talked about the Spirit constantly, strengthened by the Spirit, and one of the most critical parts of His mission was that He would leave so that the Spirit might come and take His place. He breathed out His Holy Spirit upon His church. His ministry among us was an example of what happens when a person lives, moves, and breathes in the Holy Spirit, completely surrendered to Him. Part of what complicates things is that Jesus, who is God the Son incarnate in human flesh, is humble, and so He’s always pointing away from Himself: He’s always more concerned about bringing glory to God the Father and God the Holy Spirit than He is to Himself. And it’s the same with the Spirit: He’s not interested in glorifying Himself, He’s always pointing us to the Father through the Son. And so their missions are completely intertwined. The work of Jesus cannot be separated from the work of the Spirit. It doesn’t make sense to talk about the one without the other.
And this is definitely not normal. Joel’s prophecy of the coming of the Day of the Lord is full of traumatic, earth-shaking events because it means God is doing a big work; remaking the world is no small, simple task. Obviously not all those things happened when Jesus was born, but the time of God making things right certainly began with Jesus. Or when Isaiah spoke of this hopeful time when the promise of a Messiah would be fulfilled, he talked about some things that are really strange when you stop to think about it: wolves and lambs getting along, little children leading ferocious carnivores, lions eating straw like the ox, and infants playing among snakes’ nests. He’s painting an image of the earth restored to paradise, chaos brought back into order, evil healed into beauty, and that’s anything but normal. The birth of this baby Jesus at Christmas involves the action of the Holy Spirit who is not, frankly, safe. He is the presence of God in us, He is the Gift of God who is eager to enter into the repentant heart and replace a broken spirit with Himself, He is the Comforter, the Encourager, and the Advocate, but He is also a fire, burning and cleansing from within, He is an overwhelming flood, and He is a dynamo, charging us, shocking us, and moving us. It’s unwise to chase after the warm fuzzies of the cute little baby in the manger and not realize that if you get too close, you might get burned by the refining fire of the Holy Spirit. Whatever He does, you won’t be the same afterwards.
He is the real Spirit of Christmas, properly speaking, but He’s a lot more controversial than a spirit of giving, or a spirit of togetherness, or a spirit of peace on earth. He is the Spirit we need, though, if we want to escape the rut of normal. He must move us. He must guide us. But is He the Spirit you want this Christmas?
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