A
God of Surprises
Luke
2:1-7
The waiting is over.
The presents have been unwrapped.
The living room looks like a tornado zone. There are no more surprises—or are there?
For Christians, Christmas Day is just the beginning of
surprises. True, Elizabeth and
Zechariah, Mary and Joseph were surprised months before with birth
announcements from angels, but it’s really Christmas that begins the surprises—surprises
that continue down to this moment.
For Mary and Joseph there were surprises throughout
Jesus’ childhood. They began with the
visits of the shepherds and the wise men, continued with the pronouncements of
Simeon and Anna in the temple after Jesus’ birth, and, according to Luke’s
account, culminated with Jesus and the teachers of the law during the temple
visit when he was twelve.
Each
of these events—and, I’m sure, many others that were not recorded—must have
continually surprised the couple. What
kind of child was this, who so many people took notice of? Yes, they had been told—warned is perhaps a
better word—that this baby was different, special, blessed by God. Still, I’m sure they didn’t have any idea
that his birth and early life would result in so much attention from so many
quarters.
From
Luke’s narrative we might assume that, following the Passover temple visit,
Jesus settled down into a relatively normal teenage and young adult life—and it
might well be. Certainly nothing he did
between twelve and thirty caught the attention of anyone enough to remember and
write it down. We have many legends from
these years, but no corroboration of their truthfulness. Indeed, they sound outrageous enough to be easily
discredited. Also, we can be sure
someone somewhere would have taken notice of Jesus if he had done anything
worthy of notice. The Pharisees were
always looking for bright young recruits.
Remember Paul?
If
we look at Jesus’ adult life we’ll see that, again, this was just the beginning
of the surprises. From approximately age
thirty to age thirty-three, Jesus seems to have created one surprise after
another in Galilee and Judea. Healing
miracles, turning water into wine, calming storms, feeding multitudes using tiny
amounts of food—all these are recounted in the gospels. At the end of John’s gospel he says that what
we read is just a fraction of what Jesus did.
Overshadowing
the miracles was Jesus’ teaching. As
someone has said, those Jesus fed would have gotten hungry again. Those Jesus healed and raised from the dead
would have eventually sickened and died from some other cause. There would have been other storms. All these miracles were temporary. The teaching was eternal.
I
don’t believe Jesus was executed for performing miracles. It was his teaching that ran afoul of the
religious authorities. It was his
teaching that upset them, because it ran counter to what they had been saying—and
claiming to be the correct interpretation of God’s law. It was the surprises in his words that led to
his death.
But
all these surprises were, again, only the beginning. The resurrection began another round of
surprises—surprises which continue to confound us. Just when we think we have Jesus all figured
out, and believe we know how to interpret his life and his words, he confronts
us with another surprise. Whenever we
try to put him in one of our theological boxes he says, “No, that’s not
right. This is what I meant. Here’s what I want you to do.” And it’s always what we least expect. I’ve said (jokingly) how else would a guy who
grew up in Brooklyn, wind up preaching in a denomination he’d never heard of
through the first two-thirds of his life, in Southaven, Mississippi? God continues to be full of surprises.
