Bing Crosby goes Rambo: Thoughts on Christmas and the Incarnation

Been thinking about Christmas. Right after Halloween, the music in Walmart turned Bing Crosby on me and the lights started to go up around town. Some parts of the holidays make my stomach churn: everything turns Hallmark and pristine. For a month (or several months in some stores) our whole society turns into "It's a Wonderful Life." At it's worse, it loosens our wallets and diets in the spirit of warm liberality. At it's best, it encourages "peace on earth, good will towards men" as a short respite from calamitous times. But the kitsch wears on me after a while. I get tired of the porcelain figurines, and the bigger versions in front of churches: a baby among barn animals with angels looking on adoringly. Awwww... cute. Sometimes I just can't take it seriously.

But what I do take seriously; What I love about Christmas is the Incarnation, the literal "enfleshment" of God. It's God's outrageous all-or-nothing effort to pursue the hearts of mankind and rescue them from death. Like Hannibal crossing the Alps to attack Rome from the north... It's so crazy, it just might work. For centuries, God had spoken to Israel through prophets, warning of imminent doom, yet hinting at a rescue plan, a renewal of David's royal line, bigger and broader than anyone imagined. And it starts in the Death Star's tiny access chute, a chink in Satan's cosmic armor: a baby in a barn. Perfect. Having no natural humility, the enemy would never think to look for the Messiah in the humblest place.

So Jesus is air-dropped under the radar deep behind enemy lines. In my imagination, the manger is cold and dark. Mary and Joseph are scared and exhausted. The angels are six-winged creatures, covered in sleepless eyes, terrifying yet awed by God's perfectly upside-down plan. The baby has this quiet about-to-kick-some-ass look about him. It looks more like "Lord of the Rings" and less like "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

To me, the incarnation is hopelessly beautiful. It's God stopping at nothing to change everything. Yearning for His creation to know and follow Him, he puts all His cards on the table and finds a way to inflict our punishment on Himself. Becoming one of us, God-in-flesh begins to whisper about a new revolution: a Kingdom that transcends national boundaries, an inside-out redemption of all things. Like the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, God has a plan to loot the enemy's  kingdom and leave it desolate and hollow through the ultimate espionage. It begins with God conquering death by dying. It moves forward into a new "race" of people, a race of the "living dead" (dead to the dreams of this world, alive in God's Spirit and Kingdom) sabotaging the enemy in his own territory by displaying other-woldly love, audacious humility, and radical justice. It culminates in a New Creation, a setting-right of all things, a final judgement, and the running-over of time into eternity.

I'd like to see that Christmas card.