Christmas Day
2016 –
What did Mary
see when she looked into the face of baby Jesus? In Mark Lowry’s song, What did Mary know, the line
goes this way:
And
when you kiss your little baby, you have kissed the face of God Mary did you
know?
Here
is the story behind the song in the words of the writer, Mark Lowry:
“Well,
my Pastor asked me to write the Christmas program for our church, called The
Living Christmas Tree, & I wrote some monologue to go in between the songs.
I started thinking & wondering if Mary realized the power, authority &
majesty that she cradled in her arms that first Christmas. I wondered if she
realized those little hands were the same hands that scooped out oceans &
formed rivers. I just tried to put into words the unfathomable. I started
thinking of the questions I would have for her if I were to sit down & have
coffee with Mary...you know, "What was it like raising God?"
"...What did you know?" "...What didn't you know?". Over
time, it (the song) just happened & I had the lyric.”
In
this Christmas season I have been thinking with Mark Lowry what it must have
been to be Mary looking into and kissing the face of God.
As
I meditated on this thought I came up with three thoughts for us to consider if
we were to kiss the face of God today.
When
you kiss the face of God you kiss the face of love.
When
you kiss the face of God you kiss the face of hope.
When
you kiss the face of God you kiss the face of grace.
I
know there are four themes during Advent: love, joy, hope and peace. I want to
focus on two of those: love and hope and introduce a new one: grace.
When
Hal David and Burt Bacharach wrote, What the world needs now is love, in 1965
the United States was just beginning to bet involved in what would be known as the
Vietnam War. If the world needed love in 1965, 41 years later the world still
needs a lot of love. Not Hollywood love but sacrificial, life-changing love.
The
power and magnitude of God’s love is summarized in this well-known scripture - John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he
gave his uniquely born son. The babe in the manger is the Father’s love gift.
I
read a story on Facebook that exemplifies the kind of love God unleashes when
we kiss the God of love and let God kiss us with love.
Mike Friesen, no relation to me, shared this story on Facebook.
I'm walking around the deli in Target when a woman walking
beside me on the phone says, "I feel horrible. Another year of not being
able to get my kids gifts. I'm tired of feeling like a failure in their eyes.
I'm tired of not feeling like I'm enough." I walk around looking for meat
and walk in front of her. While checking something on her phone, she slams her
cart into my Achilles. I turn around and she grunts into frustration, "I'm
so sorry. I can't do anything right right now." I told her it was
okay. I begin walking with her behind me again and hear a deep breath met with
a sad whimper, I stop, and she slams into my Achilles again. She said,
"UGH, I'm sorry." I laughed and told her it was my fault. I looked at
her and said,
"I overheard your conversation back there and I'm so sorry.
I've gotten so many gift cards from here this Christmas, can I give you
them?"
"What? Why would you do that? Why would you be so
generous?"
"Well, generosity is a trust that I have enough. It's easy
to become anxious when you feel like you don't have enough. I can do this
because someone has been generous too me. I feel like I have enough because
these don't represent monetary things but that I have succeeded in my work,
that I am valued and loved by the people who gave them to me."
I handed them to her and told her the amount. She started crying
and thanked me. She asked me if I would help her pick out gifts for her kids. I
told her that I would walk with her but would be of no help since my toy buying
stopped at video games in my adolescence (and still occurs today).
She told me about her kids. Her son, 10, who is obsessed with
Star Wars, so that's what she picked out for him. She told me that she feels
he'll be an artist of some sort someday and that he's really talented. She
hopes to find a way to get him classes to develop those skills. She also told
me about her daughter, 8, who is really into animals. She got her Secret Life
of Pets, with some coloring books and action figures. She hopes that she'll
someday be a vet or a vet tech.
We checked out together and she thanked and hugged me at the
door. She thanked me deeply saying that I alleviated that feeling of
humiliation. When I was walking out, Luke 16 popped into my head and that God's
economy is about friendship. A man gave work and money to accumulate friends. I
felt grateful, even as I felt a little poorer, because God has been generous
with me and God is inviting me into a less lonely world with friends surrounded
by me. I feel blessed that that's the world that God wants me in. A world where
we can love and be loved.
Have you let the God of love kiss your face?
When
Mary kissed the face of love, she also kissed the face of hope.
Long
before Mark Lowry wrote Mary did you know, Mary sang a song after she heard of
Elizabeth’s pregnancy, a song we often call The Magnificat:
“My soul glorifies the Lord
and my spirit rejoices
in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful
of the humble state of
his servant.
From now on all generations will call me
blessed,
for the Mighty One has
done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him,
from generation to
generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those
who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the
humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich
away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
remembering to be
merciful
to Abraham and his descendants forever,
just as he promised our
ancestors.”
Notice
Mary’s words are all in the past tense. Mary sings this song as if it has already
accomplished, yet, Jesus is barely a seed in her body.
We
usually think of hope as something that will happen. In the baby Jesus hope is
not something hoped for; in baby Jesus hope is fulfilled. Do you need a miracle
in your life? Come and kiss the face of hope and let hope kiss your face.
Not
only did Mary kiss the face of love and hope, she kissed the face of grace.
Listen
to the description of Jesus in the word of John the Evangelist:
The
Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the
glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and
truth. (John 1:14).
What
is grace? The gift of acceptance based not on what we do but purely on the
choice of the giver. Jesus accepts not because we are worthy of his acceptance.
He forgives not because we have so little to be forgiven. He wraps his arms
around us not because we are so loveable.
Being
kissed by grace is to be accepted as we are.
Listen to a more contemporary reflection of what we mean by
God’s grace in the words of Brennan Manning, a pastor who struggled for years
with alcoholism:
“Because salvation is by grace through faith, I believe that
among the countless number of people standing in front of the throne and in
front of the Lamb, dressed in white robes and holding palms in their hands (see
Revelation 7:9), I shall see the prostitute from the Kit-Kat Ranch in Carson
City, Nevada, who tearfully told me that she could find no other employment to
support her two-year-old son. I shall see the woman who had an abortion and is
haunted by guilt and remorse but did the best she could faced with grueling
alternatives; the businessman besieged with debt who sold his integrity in a
series of desperate transactions; the insecure clergyman addicted to being
liked, who never challenged his people from the pulpit and longed for
unconditional love; the sexually abused teen molested by his father and now
selling his body on the street, who, as he falls asleep each night after his
last 'trick', whispers the name of the unknown God he learned about in Sunday
school.
'But how?' we ask.
Then the voice says, 'They have washed their robes and have made
them white in the blood of the Lamb.'
There they are. There *we* are - the multitude who so wanted to
be faithful, who at times got defeated, soiled by life, and bested by trials,
wearing the bloodied garments of life's tribulations, but through it all clung
to faith.
My friends, if this is not good news to you, you have never
understood the gospel of grace.”
What
are you searching for this Christmas?
Love?
Let yourself be kissed by the God of love.
Hope?
Let yourself be kissed by the God of hope
Acceptance?
Let yourself be kissed by the God of Grace.
Ronald
Friesen © 2016
Shared
on Christmas Day 2016, Oasis for the Nations, Phoenix, AZ
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