Better News Than Silent Night: The Goodness of Christmas in Real Life

(Post adapted from a sermon at The Village Church you can watch here.)

Here is my confession: I like a clean Christmas. Throughout my life, I’ve been shaped to want a Christmas that looks like every Hallmark card I see on the store shelves and sounds like the Christmas songs I’ve sung since childhood. These days, my desire is manifesting as the longing for an Instagram-worthy holiday, where nothing is out of place and everything looks flawless.

Somewhere along the way, I think that I’ve come to associate Christmas with a time when hard stuff is supposed to stop, or at least can be ignored for a few days. That way, nothing intrudes on a picture-perfect holiday, and peace arrives because of a lack of disruption. I’ve been wondering, though, if those expectations and hopes I have for Christmas have muted the goodness of the news that arrives in Christmas.

Here's how Luke tells it:

Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger (Luke 2:8-12).

Part of my problem is that I can’t read this passage without the Charlie Brown music playing in my imagination, yet another mark of my desire for a ‘clean’ Christmas. The reality of this passage is grittier, even than Pigpen’s personal hygiene. The announcement of good news came to the shepherds right where they were, in the middle of the realities of life among sheep. It’s surprising in at least a couple ways:

1)    This wasn’t the kind of good news they were used to receiving. In the ancient world, especially in the Roman Empire (which controlled Bethlehem in those days), bits of good news would often be announced, primarily regarding military victories that were expanding the Empire. The technical term for those announcements were ‘gospels,’ and they were meant to bring gladness to the people who heard them. But for these shepherds, that news was a long way off, likely from places they’d never been before. How could that be good news for them, in the middle of their situations? The announcement of good news on the first Christmas was right in the middle of their situations, not some distant reality.

2)    Other announcements of good news were related to the birth of an emperor. The birth of Augustus, for example, was presented in the Roman world as good news for all people because he was a savior, a god among the people who would bring peace. Luke is clearly playing the announcement of Jesus’s birth off the notion that Caesar Augustus was a savior who would bring peace to all humanity. But the additional difference is that Luke is emphasizing the entrance of Jesus right into the middle of shepherd realities. Jesus won’t be a god from a distance, but God-with-us, who enters into the middle of hard, gritty reality.

This is why I’m challenged this year to let go of some of my hopes for a clean, perfect Christmas. The good news of Christmas isn’t that Jesus comes to insulate us for a few days from the hard stuff we’re enduring; it’s that Jesus has entered into the middle of gritty reality and is redeeming it.

One more note of some theological importance is needed: I’m not suggesting that Jesus enters into the middle of hard realities simply to make them disappear. That would be pressing us back into the ‘gospel’ of clean Christmas. The kind of good news that comes as part of Christ’s incarnation is that he has entered most fully into even the death-dealing realities of human life, it did its worst to him in his death, and he came out on the other side in his resurrection. The hope isn’t that we won’t endure hardship or death; the hope is that we are following Jesus through it toward resurrection. That is better news than a clean, Instagram-perfect Christmas can deliver.

If I haven’t lost you so far, I fear I may here: I’m not a huge fan of the song “Silent Night.” It’s certainly nostalgic for me, and I adore the melody, but its opening lyrics are part of the reason I think I’ve come to equate Christmas with a pause from life’s hardships, rather than the gritty redemption of them. “All is calm, all is bright…” sometimes forms in my imagination a bit of a Hallmark card. In fact, the subtle critique of Silent Night is one of the reasons I have come to love Andrew Peterson’s musical telling of the birth of Jesus in his song, “Labor of Love.” “It was not a silent night,” the song opens, “there was blood on the ground…And the stable was not clean; And the cobblestones were cold…” Maybe that’s not the image that we want hanging around our quest for a clean Christmas, but it surely offers better news than the gospel of ‘Christmas is a few days where I can act like the world isn’t broken.’ The power of the gospel of Jesus entering right into the middle of a world groaning for redemption as a woman in labor has got to be better news than, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” (Yes, I’ve also got some theological hang-ups with “Away in a Manger.” 19^th-century Christmas carols tended to carry some odd theological baggage.)

Lest you think I’m a grinch in theological garb, come to ruin the perfect Christmas by critiquing our culture’s most beloved traditions, let me offer a closing story about my friend Jeff. He died yesterday after a battle with ALS, and I already miss him. Most of Jeff’s life was a gritty reality. Addiction led him to homelessness, and his body bore the brunt of all of it. Jeff experienced what I can only describe as grace-filled, even miraculous redemption, and he was never quiet about it. I still smile when I think about how wonderfully disruptive he could be when he wanted to tell people about how much Jesus had changed him. Jeff is who comes to mind when I think of the shepherds. Jesus was born into the gritty reality of their circumstances, and he entered right into the middle of the brutally difficult situation Jeff was in.

Our church meets on a university campus in a building adorned with a steeple and stained glass, so when people would come to visit, I think they’d bring with them expectations of a “Silent Night” experience. What they got was Jeff the shepherd, often proclaiming aloud the good news of a God who enters into the middle of gritty reality. That’s why I think the incarnation is better news than a Hallmark movie could ever deliver. This Christmas Eve, we’ll gather and light candles and, yes, we’ll sing Silent Night. But I’m really going to miss Jeff, a shepherd who constantly reminded me just how good the news really is.

Are our gospels too small? (Or, Why Cracker Barrel is not our home)

Are our gospels too small?

I’ve been thinking a lot these days about the notion of home. A couple of well-crafted sermons and a series of encounters with the idea over the summer have had me inquiring about home as a place of nurture and belonging. The flip side of that is when we feel like we don’t have a home or our home is being taken away, we get anxious and do whatever we can to preserve our notion of home.

The fierce reaction I see around me to bits of change makes me wonder what’s really motivating us deep down. Then it hits me: we feel like we are losing our home, and who wouldn’t fight to hold on to home?

Culturally, we are in a perpetual cycle of feeling like our home is being taken away from us. There are the ubiquitous and odd cultural touchpoints, like a restaurant chain changing its logo, or shifting social roles, but there’s also a distinct sense of losing home around the church, a place that many people associate with a sense of home. “I didn’t leave the church,” I’ve heard several friends say recently, “but I do feel like the church has left me.” I can’t help but hear that statement in terms of loss, and a sense of compassion wells up when I hear it.

For millions of people, the church has represented the place of cultural and moral stability; ‘The world may be shifting all around us, but we still have this.’ That’s probably why I’ve heard so many people use the term, ‘church home’ to describe their faith community. When even that feels like it shifts, then, no wonder we fight. For every time I’ve seen someone get irrationally upset at some change to the music or carpet or service times, I’ve tried to receive that with a touch of compassion. That person feels like they are losing a bit of home.

In our anxious search for home, then, we’ll do just about anything to regain what we crave: stability, belonging, inclusion. The trouble here, as anyone who has ever moved to a new place can verify, is that when we are longing for home, we’ll do just about anything we can to find the feeling of home. We’ll even sometimes be willing to set ourselves in a place that isn’t really home, just to regain the feeling of nurture and stability.

As a theologian, I can’t help but ponder what allows a people to ‘come home’ theologically. What makes it possible for a people who might be settling, grasping, or even fighting for false homes to find their nurture and rest in their true home: the gospel of Jesus Christ?

The people of God are at home in the good news of Jesus Christ. It’s not a set of national borders or cultural trappings that give the people of God a home; it is the reality of new creation, inaugurated in Christ’s death and resurrection. Simply, our home is the reality that Christ’s death and resurrection has opened for us, a reality where death and sin have been defeated. That, as we often say, is the Gospel.

The word ‘gospel’ simply means good news. It was a word that was common in the ancient world, especially when a bit of favorable information was delivered from a far-flung part of the kingdom you might live in. A military commander, for example, might win a faraway victory and send a gospel back to a major city, proclaiming that they’ve expanded the kingdom a bit more. Sometimes, those gospels had the impact of making the lives of the people who received them materially better in some small way. They may see a few more coins in their pocket or eventually be a bit more competitive in the market. The ‘home team’ won.

Those gospels, however, are much smaller and far less consequential than the Gospel, which is the good news of Christ’s victory over sin and death, eschatologically transforming the world in which we live and opening a space for believers to live now in the future that God is bringing to fullness. The Gospel of a world being transformed through the defeat of sin and death is what the biblical writers were delivering, along with this underlying caution: don’t settle for gospels that are too small!

I do get the sense that in our longing for home, we church folk are quick to settle for gospels that are too small. When we feel like we are losing all we’ve known as home, we’ll take a culture war victory here or there and pick up the fight on the next issue, as ultimately inconsequential as it may be (I’m looking at you, Cracker Barrel controversy!). We might settle for the feeling of moral certainty, even if the moral position isn’t entirely faithful to the new creation that began in Christ’s resurrection. If we were to be honest, though, we probably know this down deep, and we know that every little victory we might celebrate around a little gospel isn’t ever going to provide the sense of home our hearts long for.

And so, a hope-filled invitation: let’s come home to the Gospel. The good news we receive in Jesus probably isn’t going to prop up every cultural hallmark of our childhood, nor does it traffic in nostalgia as a virtue. It is new creation, and new creation has a way of disrupting old creation in redemptive ways, especially when we’ve mistaken some negligible piece of old creation for home.

But there is also this: we don’t have to fear the Gospel’s disruption, because the things it will displace were never our home to begin with. Christian faith is something like looking at the disruption Christ brings and saying, ‘I trust that. I’m going to give myself to this new thing that looks like death and resurrection.’

Coming home to the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be a different kind of homecoming, to be sure, because it calls us to put to death the hope of every false home that we might be raised to new life in the true home that is ever-expanding and yet unchanging, a new creation reality where the gates are scandalously open while the crucified and resurrected Christ is on the throne I the middle of it all (Rev. 21-22). That kind of Gospel is big enough to give our lives to.

So You Want to Pursue Graduate Study...

I have a lot of discernment conversations with people who are wondering whether graduate theological study is for them. Whether they are seeking to gain additional skills for their current assignment, considering pursuing a degree that allows them to teach, or they simply want to grow, they have questions about which path to pursue. As someone who has walked that path and asked those questions, I’ll simply share what I’ve learned along the way in hopes that it might help others who are discerning now. Of course, this won’t replace the discernment that comes with these kinds of decisions, and my insights aren’t the only ideas, but I do hope they’ll be helpful to those who are seeking to discern well and be faithful to your calling.

Overall, a decision to pursue a graduate degree involves discernment and calling. I hope you’ve got a trusted and wise discernment community or partner who can help you listen well and ask insightful questions about your desires and point you toward a path of faithfulness. Sometimes, we think that we need a specific command to pursue graduate study connected to our occupation, but I am finding these days that many students in the graduate program I direct are sensing a calling to further development, even if it’s not necessarily connected to their job. Maybe pursuing a graduate degree is a form of further discipleship and development!

I’m thinking about a graduate degree in general. What should I be looking for?

• Look at your motivations! I hope you’ll be honest with yourself about why you want to pursue a graduate degree, and I hope you will trust that the Spirit of God may be prompting you. Earning a title or getting letters behind your name won’t be enough to sustain you through the rigors of a graduate program, but a Spirit-fueled passion for further study will probably keep you going.

• Look for opportunities for growth. If you approach any graduate program with a desire to learn and grow, it's going to set you up well. A colleague of mine tells her graduate students, "Don't ask whether this is too hard or not, ask what you want to learn."

• Look at your posture! I don’t mean your physical posture, necessarily, but your openness to learn about new things, even if you ultimately don’t adopt those positions. Graduate study will introduce you to lots of new things. If you go in with the idea that the goodness of the program will be measured according to how much the content conforms to the ideas you already hold, you’ll likely experience some frustration. Entering with a posture of curiosity, though, will open you to a world of discovery.

• There may be a professional component to graduate study, but this isn’t all about what kind of a job it will get you. I often tell people that studying theology is an act of love first. It’s an act of love for God and neighbor. If that connects with you, this could be a delightful journey. I hear a lot from graduates of the program I direct, expressing how they loved the program and communicating their joy and growth. These programs will be a challenge, but if you approach it with a hope to grow, it’s a joyful thing.

I’m considering a master’s degree. What should I be looking for?

• Look for how connected you want to be to your professors. Master's programs offer the opportunity to study at places that are sometimes associated with well-known professors. Keep in mind, however, that those professors are usually publishing and speaking widely because they have arrangements that reduce their teaching load, and if you do take a course from a well-known professor, be prepared to be in a large room with many students who are going to be taught by a doctoral student because the professor is writing or traveling. That may not be the case every time, but it's something to be aware of. If you want to have connections with your professors, look into whether the professor is teaching courses regularly.

• Look toward the kind of community you'll join. There are lots of good options for graduate theological study, and each will open opportunities for you in the community of that school. When I was doing my M.Div., lots of connections and possibilities arose from that community. I forged lifelong friendships and connections within the denominational network. When I started my doctoral work, it was at a school connected to a different denomination, and possibilities opened there, too. In other words, there are lots of good options for a master's degree, but what kind of community do you want to connect with? If it's important to you to stay with a particular community, consider this piece.

• If you’re looking to serve in something like pastoral ministry, the ‘standard’ has tended to be the Master of Divinity (M.Div.), which is designed to equip you for most of the skills you’d need in ministry. It tends to be a large degree, taking 3-5 years to complete, but it is for pastors what medical school is for doctors.

• There are also lots of Master of Arts (M.A.) degrees, designed for those who won’t complete the full M.Div., but want to gain insight and skill at the graduate level. Many are creative and designed to give you additional insight and skills. Some people do this for professional reasons and others take it to grow personally. For example, in the MA program I direct, about half of the students are in ministry as an occupation, and the rest are in fields like healthcare, education, and business. The MA is also a small degree. It takes 18-24 months to complete but offers fewer courses than an M.Div.

• Most theological master’s degrees are online now, but there are still some that are residential. Do you want a residential program, or do you want to complete it mostly online? The program I direct is offered online with live Zoom sessions each week to have conversations with professors and students, but we also have optional summer travel courses to places like Rome, London, and Los Angeles.

• Usually, there’s some financial aid and scholarship help available in master’s degree programs.

I’m considering a doctoral degree. What should I be looking for?

• Generally, we think of doctoral programs in two categories: vocational degrees and research degrees. A vocational doctoral degree is something like a Doctor of Ministry (D.Min.), which is designed to help you acquire additional skills for your current ministry role. Often, your research in these programs would be centered in your local ministry setting. Research degrees like the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) or Doctor of Theology (Th.D.) are designed to help you research, write, make contributions to the scholarly field, and teach at the college or seminary level. Most faculty at universities hold a Ph.D. or its equivalent, so if your calling is teaching, this is probably the pathway.

• The Ph.D. and Th.D. often have more rigorous admissions requirements and carry requirements for research languages. My Ph.D. required me to have a working knowledge of German and French, oo la la!

I’m drawn to a vocational degree like the D.Min. What should I be looking for?

• As with any degree program, make sure that there is a good cultural fit. You may be working with a primary project advisor, so make sure you connect well with that person and have a good working relationship.

• Most D.Min. programs are not residential; you stay where you are, but you go to campus for coursework for a week at a time or so, usually twice per year.

• Be prepared to be challenged to do research and gain research skills. Though you probably won’t be required to learn languages, it’s still a doctoral degree, so get ready to be challenged.

• If you’re in ministry, make sure that your church or ministry setting is supportive. A doctoral program will make demands on your time and energy. It will benefit the people in the long run, but I recommend them being bought in before you enroll. It also helps to share insights along the way. Often, the people in your ministry will love to know what you’re learning.

• These days, it’s technically permissible to start some D.Min. programs without a master’s degree in theology or ministry, but I don’t recommend it. If you want a D.Min., an MA in theology or ministry will give you what you need to be successful in a D.Min. and not be frustrated. It’ll give you basic knowledge of the field, graduate-level writing skills, and research capacities.

I’m drawn to a research degree like the Ph.D. What should I be looking for?

• Look for a good advisor! Your advisor will make or break your journey. When you apply for a Ph.D., you’re applying to a program, but really, you are applying to study with a particular professor who will guide your research. I recommend finding a person you want to study with. Read what they’ve written. Try to meet them to see if you are a good fit. My Ph.D. advisor was fantastic and made a challenging process a delight.

• I recommend visiting the various campuses that house the program you’re interested in applying to. It will give you a good idea of what the place is like. For me, visiting campuses completely shifted which schools I wanted to attend.

• Look for a good library. This is connected to a controversial point: If I am recommending a Ph.D. program, I recommend a residential program on a campus that has a strong library. Some folks may disagree with me on this, but if you aren’t close to a library, even in the digital age, it’s going to be a challenge. If you absolutely can’t live near the campus, get access to a good theological library wherever you may live.

• Look for a good cultural fit. Graduate study will put you in close quarters with professors and students who think differently from you, which isn’t a problem, but whether there’s an openness to the exchange of ideas is a different question. Is this the kind of place that encourages learning and ‘iron sharpening iron,’ or is the culture more of competition? What are the theological commitments of the school? Are you alright with working alongside professors and students who think very differently than you do? Can you still learn from them?

• You should also look for a sense of joy in the learning, not just the outcome. Most folks entering a Ph.D. program are looking for academic opportunities and a job that involves research and teaching. If that’s the only reason for pursuing the degree, I caution you to beware of anxiety about whether you’ll get the job or not. If you go in knowing that this may not ever result in a full-time job, it will likely reduce your anxiousness.

What would be best for me to do to be a good applicant to a Ph.D. program?

• Tend to your spirit. You’ll encounter competition, doubt, and fear. Without a sustained practice of being in God’s presence, you may start to think that this whole thing is about competition, doubt, and fear (and it’s not).

• There is no one ‘correct’ pathway! Applying to Ph.D. programs is a dynamic process; it shifts each year based on how many openings they have, how many applicants are applying for those spots, and your research interests being a good fit. Even with the same qualifications on your application, you may get in one year and not another, simply based on the number of openings that year.

• Read enough in your area of interest to get a basic idea of what kind of thing you want to work on in your dissertation. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but a general research question is a must. To find that, tap into your curiosity as you read. The phrase, “I wonder why…” can be helpful in pointing you toward an interest! For example, I have a friend who found a Ph.D. topic by discovering a little-known saint in some reading and started asking, “I wonder why he is presented the way he is now.”

• Most of these programs are going to want you to have a rigorous graduate degree already. If it’s not an M.Div., select an MA that challenges you. In the theology and biblical studies program I direct, I coach those who want to move on to doctoral studies to write papers that can be published or presented at conferences.

• Ph.D. programs have different admission philosophies. Some will only admit the number of students who they can fund fully. Others will admit more students but offer less financial support. For full-aid places, remember that they may have more openings in some years and fewer openings in other years. Again, there is no ‘right’ path.

• Study for the GRE. If the program you’re applying to requires the GRE, you’ll need to study for that exam. Get a good study guide and make it a matter of discipline for a while.

• Ph.D. programs are also going to look at your promise as a scholar. I recommend publishing a scholarly paper or two and presenting at conferences. That will show that you know the field and have the capacity to write for publication.

• If you want to apply to a Ph.D. program in biblical studies, you really should have had previous courses in biblical languages. If you don’t have that, I recommend looking for a master’s program with those courses, or taking those courses at a graduate school that offers them.

Certainly, these aren’t the only things to consider, but I do hope they help you as you discern. And if you’d like someone to pray for you as you discern, feel free to drop me a line. We need people who care deeply enough about our theological heritage enough to devote their time to it. The doctors of the church were trusted to pass along to the next generation the treasures of the faith, and we need those voices. If this is part of your calling, I’m happy to encourage you and pray for you as you go.