Tuesday, December 23

Scripture: For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed. (Galatians 3:9)

Observation: It all comes down to belief, doesn’t it? Without belief, Christmas is an excuse to wrap the Amazon boxes in wrapping paper. But with belief, Christmas is the eruption of God’s presence in a weary world. The difference between Christmas being yet another federal holiday and a life-changing holy day is how a person shows up to Christmas- with or without the belief that God is real, active, and working for good in the world.

It all came down to belief for Paul, too. Paul argues in his letter to the Galatians that a person is saved when a person believes God has already saved them. He’s offering the counterargument to rival preachers who said that a person is saved by and only by compliance with the Jewish law. It was good works as prescribed by religion, in this case, the law of Moses, that boosted a person’s approval rating in the eyes of God. “You do good, then you get good,” so the logic went. The good a person was supposed to do was works of religion, and as a result, the good a person could expect to get was righteousness, or right relationship with God. But Paul argues for the opposite logic, because the opposite is the gospel. 

We don’t do good, then get good; we get good, then we do good. We get good in the form of Jesus, who came to live, die, and live again for us. Then we do good in the form of a life devoted to good works in joyful response to what Jesus did for us. The thing that Paul’s opponents could not or would not understand is that salvation is grace: it’s a free gift, a good we’re simply given because God out of his bottomless mercy wants us to have it. The one and only thing a human being has to do, if we can call it “doing,” is accept this gift. This acceptance is what Paul calls “belief,” usually translated as “faith.” Belief is simply accepting your own acceptance. Belief is receiving what was freely given: God’s unconditional love for you, the love we see in Jesus, arms outstretched on the cross. Our “doing” has no effect on God’s acceptance of us whatsoever.

Paul’s Exhibit A is Abraham. According to the Book of Genesis, Abraham believed God, and Abraham’s belief was reckoned, or credited, to him as righteousness. Abraham believed God had made his relationship with God right for him, on Abraham’s behalf, independent of and separate from Abraham’s “doing.” Abraham predates Moses, the law of Moses, and the commandments in the Hebrew Bible. Therefore, it is Abraham, not Moses, who should serve as the model for a life of faith. Abraham knew God operates on a “you get good from me, you do good because of me” basis. 

The one thing necessary is belief. Like Abraham, a person must believe in God’s acceptance of them. It’s not that our believing changes God’s mind about us. Our believing or unbelieving doesn’t change God at all. Our believing changes us. The Jesus born at Christmas will die and rise for us whether we believe in him or not. Believing is the acceptance that God is real and not just a nice idea and came in Jesus to live, die, and rise for me. Those who believe this are, like Abraham, blessed to be a blessing.

Application: It’s up to me to believe. Most of my life is leaps of belief. I can’t be certain the traffic light will stay in the air when I drive under it; I choose to believe it. I can’t be certain the sun will rise in the morning; I choose to believe it. I can’t be certain my wife will answer me when I ask her for help. I can’t be certain I’ll be able to pay my bills, let alone my employees. I can’t be certain the coffeemaker will turn on in the morning. I choose to believe these things. The believing is a huge part of my identity. I am a person who chooses to believe in sunrises and the hard work of capable people. I am a person who chooses to believe there will always be enough, thanks to God; a person who chooses to place trust in caring people; a person who chooses to lean inward into possibility. This Christmas, I will harness the power of my believing: in God’s love for me, in Christ’s presence with me, in the “givenness” of my own acceptance, and in power of God to use my faith, feeble and frail as it is, to make the world brighter. Believing really is seeing.

Prayer:

Holy One, you know my personal preference for all things to be certain.

Had I been the Creator, I like to think I would have installed

   Certainty as a rule like gravity, and human minds with

   Telescopes for seeing far ahead what is certain to pass.

I would see and only then believe- which you know is actually me

   Wanting to make belief history, eliminate it entirely and

   Replace it with the cold steel of certainty,

   Maximized for efficiency,

   Minimized for joy.

But I look and see most my life is believing without seeing.

   The traffic light that stays up when I drive under it,

   The beloved who doesn’t have to answer when I call,

   The coffee machine working in the morning no one has seen,

   The enough that I hope to God will feed my children,

   The hard work that went into the seatbelt around my child’s waste- 

These things and countless more I believe in without sight.

What else is Christmas than seeing through believing?

For in my believing I see a Creator born in the likeness

   Of my baby picture,

   A love in labor for peace on earth,

   The impossibility of true aloneness,

   The way the universe works in the way

   Newborn and new mother understand what each other needs.

In my fear, I would have made certainty certain.

Out your love you chose to give me belief.

It is in believing that I see what was always there:

   My own acceptance by you,

   The way light is undimmed by darkness,

   How love always finds a way.

I would have made certainty certain and been less alive for it.

Holy One, bless me with a heart hungry for believing

   In you and what you are up to,

   And then I will glimpse, like the audience let in on the magician’s trick,

   The genius of what love can do.