Christmas and Stuff
As Christians, Christmas can be contradictory for us. A better word may be paradoxical. We are taught not to focus on the material things at Christmas. However, can we be more worshipful in our attitude towards things, stuff, and material and still not deviate from the real meaning of Christmas?
God uses and used the material things to bring his purpose to this world. God is a lot about the physical. He can use the physical material things to give him glory. Here are some examples:
At Christmastime God became material. He became stuff – he became flesh. He dwelt among us. God uses his physical Creation to bring him glory and to advance his kingdom.
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” (Romans 1:20)
His creation shouts it out. If you would unravel the DNA in the human body and put it end to end, it would go back and forth from the moon a thousand times. God used only four different molecules to make 7 billion different-looking people. The sun is a great power plant. If you were to mark off one square yard on the sun, you would find that it is giving off 70,000 horsepower of energy continuously. There are a tremendous number of square yards on the sun’s surface: more than 10,000 times the number of square yards on the surface of the Earth. Suppose that we decide to buy the energy that the sun gives off for a period of twenty-four hours. Suppose we can buy this energy for one-fourth cent per kilowatt-hour. To pay for this energy in silver dollars would require enough money to cover the United States four miles deep. This represents a tremendous amount of energy. Yet when God created the sun, He had to put into that act of creation all of the energy that has come from the sun and all that which is yet to come from the sun. There is still enough energy in the sun to last for some thirty billion years.
God was specific in the way he told the Israelites to build the tabernacle and temple. He told them to use golden lamp-stands, acacia tables, and robes woven from blue and purple yarns. In Revelation we read about the New Earth where we walk streets of gold, gates of jasper, and trees with leaves of healing next to rivers.
So materials aren’t bad! In God’s created order, things are the stuff through which we experience, understand and come to know Him in His fullness. Not in spite of them, but through them!
Of course that doesn’t mean we should worship stuff. But another way of worship is simply by enjoying stuff unto Him. The point? God loves stuff. He made it, He sent His Son in the form of it, and the New Heavens and the New Earth are filled with it.
Justin Whitmel Earley says we ought not be limited to worshiping God at Christmas through prayer, songs and Scripture reading – but also through enjoyment of His earthly gifts. At Christmas, for example: the lights on a Christmas tree, the curious texture of eggnog, the refracted light on tinsel, the warmth of slippers. It’s worship just to engage with this stuff and call it good like God called it.
Begin practicing that now by proclaiming the incarnation of Jesus in all its implications – material ones included. What’s Christmas all about? That Jesus came as the salvation of our souls and our bodies – and proper celebration of the Incarnation will require both. Enjoy, celebrate, and worship all that is His as we reflect on this Christmas Holiday.
Dan Kuiper
VCHS Principal