Welcome to our World

Today I practiced a Christian song with a member of the youth group, and one from the college group.  We'll be singing it next Sunday on Christmas as a special song.  As per my usual habit, I had the music printed out with chords and all.  When I gave a copy to the youth group member, she responded, "Aw... this is a sad song!" She's right - this is a rather melancholy song, and it runs quite counter to the normal way we celebrate Christmas.  Normally, what we'd like to think of are jingling bells, a reindeer with a red nose, and maybe a quiet and quiescent Jesus lying in a feeding trough, with Mary, Joseph, and the animals looking.


The song is Chris Rice's Welcome to our World.  I've loved this Christmas song since I first heard it in 11th grade.  Since then, I've always maintained that Jesus' birth cannot be celebrated separately from Jesus' death.  His birth, death, and resurrection form some trinity that forms a bedrock of our Christology. It's quite ironic that Christmas season often begins after Thanksgiving, but Good Friday lasts only 2 days maximum.  People just don't want to dwell on the "negative", "sad" parts of Jesus' life.  We just want to dwell on what we like about Jesus.


In all truth, there's nothing glamorous about Jesus' birth.  Joseph and Mary were turned down by the innkeeper - they had no choice but to sleep out in the manger.  In a sense, they were homeless for the night.  Yes, his birth was accompanied by a supernova (i.e. a star in the sky), but who paid attention?  Three wise men from Iraq (NOT China, as some have maintained... we're too busy making money, are you kidding?), a few shepherds, and a king that's out to kill the baby.  When I was born, according to my mom, one of the first people to hug me was my grandfather.  It's not as sentimental as I'm making it out to be - like a traditional Chinese grandfather, a grandson is auspicious.  He paraded me in front of everyone he knew... look!  I have a grandson!  But no, that was not Jesus' story.

On the way back from church today I was reading Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon's The Truth About God, a nice 100-page and very accessible treatise on the theology and ethics of the Ten Commandments.  I highly commend it to you.  But in any case, when I was reading the commandment on honoring our parents, I found amusing his note that there is nothing more ontologically revealing than our bellybuttons.  The bellybutton reminds us that we are created beings.  We came from somewhere.  In fact, we came from the union of our parents, at least biologically speaking.  Thus, the commandment to honor our parents is important because we came from them.  But Jesus was very different.  In John 1, in the beginning (ἀρχῇ, from which we get our term archae-ology) was the λόγος, logos.  Of course, one translation of λόγος is "word", but that's not accurate.  The problem is there is no English word that matches it.  

In Chinese, λόγος is almost perfectly translated as 道 (dao).  In Chinese philosophy, 道 underpins all reason, sensibility, and existence. To have reason is to have an rational understanding of 道 (thus, 道理, which means logic or reason).  To be virtuous is to have the moral understanding of 道 (thus, 道德, which means propriety).  The statement John makes in the beginning was that Jesus is 道.  In the beginning, 道 was there.  The 道 was with God, and the 道 was God.  Jesus underpins all understanding, all existence, all sense of anything came from God.  To the world, especially in our post-enlightenment world where we're trying to find God-particles from ginormous multi-gajillion-dollar accelerators in Switzerland, it seems ludicrous and irrational to think that Jesus underpins all human knowledge, existence, and sensibility. 

Right here is the genesis of a Chinese-American theology.  Who is this 道 whom we worship at church? This is not the Daoist 道.  Daoism is a quest for balance between two metaphysical extremes.  But we live in a world where it is impossible to achieve such balance because the 21st century world is moving so fast!  Kim Jong Il just died a few minutes ago, for crying out loud!  And what exactly constitutes harmony and perfect balance is, of course, relative to the individual.  My idea of a balanced life involves applied ethics books, but to others, that might be a waste of life.  But when Christians side with St. John and understate their thesis as: 道 is Jesus, harmony and ethics become relative to Jesus.  

For that reason, we need to view everything in this world relative to Jesus.  What is good in business to the Christian is relative to Jesus, not relative to profit.  What constitutes "family values" is relative to Jesus.  Cultural values need to be interpreted relative to Jesus.  That is why I agree with Hauerwas and Willimon when they say that what we conceive of as "family values" in the USA is not even biblical.  We think of the family as my business, my own, and my precious.  Indeed, family is precious.  But this family is not mom, dad, me, and sister.  No.  This family is the Church.  We know how to be a nuclear family (i.e. mom, dad, me, sister) only because the Church knows how to be the Family of faith.  Is that not why churches are sometimes so dysfunctional?  We have mixed up the order!  We begin with the nuclear family as my business, and church as a democratic federation of mutually autonomous nuclear families.  And when we have mutually autonomous democratic units in a church with no central authority figure, guess what?  The church becomes an arena for power struggle.  This person asserts power over another and denies that person something.  In the end, the church will split, and will continue splitting until the church is the nuclear family (i.e. church = mom, dad, me and my sister). 


 That is also why, by the way, the Chinese church is often neurotic about marriage.  We have no faith, that's why!  Because if we truly have Jesus as 道, we would realize that marriage is a calling, not a requirement.  We would realize that in the Church, we all are called to be fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers.  In truth, the notion of "brothers and sisters in Christ" is misleading.  It is almost as if we don't want to take them as seriously as our biological brothers and sisters.  In reality, we all are fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers to each other.  Of course, you can respond, "Henry, this ain't the real world."  You're right, but you're defining reality according to the world.  For Christians, reality is not defined that way.  Reality must be defined according to Jesus.  This, by the way, is from the blessed Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics.  This is not the "family values" that most Americans have in mind which, in reality, is more based on worldly considerations than Christian ones.  I sure don't hear of any politicians championing this sort of family values.

This all has to do with Christmas, by the way (it's not an errant rant).  In retrospect perhaps we should cut ourselves some slack.  The thesis that Jesus is 道 is ludicrous.  That's why the world did not recognize Jesus.  The Jesus the Jews wanted was a Jesus with American military might.  He came to those he created, and they didn't want him.  Why?  Because we have our stuff to do, thank you very much.  We have our system, we have our way of doing things.  No need for Jesus to throw a curve ball into it.  

That is why Christmas is a solemn occasion... at least it should be.  It is a joyous reminder of Jesus' birth, but it is also a sober reminder of our depravity.  That Christmas has been bastardized into a materialist bonanza by corporate America has been unfortunate, to say the least, because it presents an easy way to forget Christmas.  The original intention of gift-giving was sacrifice: the poor gave something to the rich, the rich gave something to the poor.  Now, it's just a materialist paradise.  Is there any wonder the world did not, and never has really received Jesus?  It makes sense, actually.  Jesus was never found in the suburbs.  He was in the South Side, East St. Louis, Camden.  He was not born in the Peninsula Hotel in downtown Jerusalem.  He was born in the alleyways of Bethlehem.  What a far cry from Fifth or Michigan Avenues.

Instead of exchanging presents at home, buying bigger and more expensive "stuff", why don't we reflect on who we are in Christ?  Who are we in this world?  Why are we in this world?  The last three stanzas of the song, I think, help.

Bring Your peace into our violence.  Bid our hungry souls be filled!Word now breaking Heaven's silence, welcome to our world!Welcome to our world!

Fragile finger sent to heal us, tender brow prepared for thorn,Tiny heart whose blood will save us, unto us is born!Unto us is born! 

So wrap our injured flesh around You.  Breathe our air and walk our sod.Rob our sin and make us holy, perfect Son of God!Perfect Son of God, welcome to our world!

In this Christmas season, may Jesus be the peace in our hearts.  May we truly see an inbreaking, a rude interruption of Jesus into the humdrum boredom that constitutes our lives.  And may we truly take seriously the fact that by virtue of us being Christians, all our lives, our constitutions, what we think is good or bad, all of this needs to be relative to Jesus.