The Scandal of Christmas

GENESIS 3:1-10: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat from any tree in the garden'?" The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden; but God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" But the serpent said to the woman, "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves.

They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. But the LORD God called to the man, and said to him, "Where are you?" He said, "I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself."

I'm quite sure my title has offended you. Believe me, I mean no offense nor do I intend to shock. I suppose that sometimes the preacher in me has used a title to shock, but not this time. In truth, my only aim is to give you an honest title. I'm about to say something that needs to be said at Christmastime, something that is not often mentioned.

Christmas began with a scandal. It's easy to avoid this scandal, because the occasion of Christmas itself is bathed in so much loveliness. Think of the pictures, whether graphic or verbal. There's a Baby; what could be lovelier? And a star; of course, that has a heavenward pull. And there are angels singing, and wise men on a quest. The manger itself, if truth be told, was not a pretty place, but our artists through the ages have kindly hidden its distasteful elements in mystical shadows. And besides, in our increasingly urban age, a manger speaks of a simpler, quieter world, so that even its crudeness adds to the mystique of loveliness.

But the church calendar has prepared us for the Christmas scandal, and as a result, so has some of the music related to that calendar. I'm speaking of Advent, the season celebrated in the church since the sixth century. In liturgical churches, the color of Advent is purple, symbolic of repentance. It is in that mood of repentance that earnest Christians over scores of generations have prepared themselves for the celebration of our Lord's coming by reminding themselves of our great need for a Savior. We modern and postmodern Christians don't easily get into that mood. At Christmas, we're planning festivities, and the music around us encourages it. Not just "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and "Jingle Bell Rock," but the festive church music. You may hear "Joy to the World" and "Silent Night" in a shopping mall, but you'll probably not hear "Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus," or "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel."

That's because we don't face up to the Christmas scandal. And if we don't comprehend the scandal, we're not likely to get the full, magnificent impact of Christmas. It may well be that one of the reasons so many people have to deal with depression at the Christmas season is because in our cultural patterns, Christmas is so tied to fun, celebration, childhood memories, and a sense of belonging; and because we have so little grounding in the theology of Christmas, we can be quite bereft when these elements are missing. As a result, we're easily susceptible in the Christmas season to feelings of melancholy, loneliness, or depression.

So here's the hard fact. There wouldn't be a Christmas, wouldn't be a need for Christmas, if it weren't for our scandal. Note that I said our scandal. Stay with me, and I'll try to tell you what I mean. And if you'll stay with me, I promise to bring you out to a Christmas that has very substantial foundations—the kind of foundations, that is, upon which we can build a thoroughly celebrative Christmas.

There are many ways to tell the story, but the book of Genesis tells it best. In a peculiar, painful sense, it is the Christmas story, though you may be offended to hear me say so.

Genesis tells us that once there was this couple—let's call them Adam and Eve, since that's what the Bible calls them. In truth, we could just as well call them John and Mary, or Lance and Amber, because we know them well. Anyway, they had everything going for them, living as they were in a garden of exquisite beauty and perfection. But they turned their lives into a shambles by disobeying God.

There's a word for what happened to them, and for what they did. It's called sin, and that's where the scandal comes in. The human race became a race of sinners.

Now, let me be very clear about this, because most postmodern folks aren't very good at understanding sin; but for that matter, we humans never have been. If we think of sin (and a great many don't; they find the word distasteful and therefore judge it to be outmoded and inappropriate), we generally think of rather lurid, back-street matters. "Sin" brings to mind pictures of drug addiction, pornography shops, criminal conduct, or cheap adulteries. There's some truth in these images, but just enough truth to distract us from the larger, more compelling facts.

This is because sin is a problem all of us have to deal with. It's a fact of life for all of our lives. You see, the basic sin is disobeying God. The ways in which we disobey God may be crude or sophisticated, naive or knowing, but the root issue is the same. To be specific, it's the issue of self; and the reason it's so complicated is that we have to live with self, and self is so familiar that it doesn't really frighten us. Self is also complicated because we need a right view of self in order to survive. But if that view becomes distorted, or all-consuming, it destroys us. I think only the saints know how to live effectively with this issue called self, and I suspect they'd tell you that they have to keep alert to the issue every hour, else they'll be seduced into troublesome ways.

So there we have it. Sin is our problem, and it's related to that human essential called self. Every generation has found ways to excuse its sins, but our generation has raised this skill to a particularly high level. We have euphemisms for sin that take away its sting. We identify sin as a personality disorder, a genetic predisposition, a problem in our genetic code, a pattern of antisocial conduct. Or, at a simpler,...