A Season to Laugh
The Bible recounts the unfolding comedy of redemption with its endless zigzags of how God created in the beginning, is redeeming in the meantime, and (in his own timing) will consummate his creation in the end. By comedy I mean that perspective on life, best known in comic stories, that sees life first and finally as a good gift from a good God. It is this same good God that we celebrate during the season of Christmas for having entered history, not only to redeem persons but to redeem time itself.
It is both profoundly comic and really funny to believe that an infinitely wise and all-powerful God could create everything from nothing and then choose to redeem it all through graciously loving his creation back to himself. It takes a bit of a fool to believe that God should do this through particular persons like Sarah, Moses, Joshua, Deborah, Hannah, Ruth, David, Hosea, Mary of Galilee, and Jesus of Nazareth. And if we can swallow the story up to this point, then could we believe that such truth would be turned over to a group of fishermen, obscure Jews, an excommunicated rabbi, and a motley crew of redeemed humanity called the Church?
If a people began to believe that the beginning and the end and the meantime are to be seen this way, they would slowly but surely treat the lowest in society as dignitaries, they would build hospitals, create organizations to educate and honor honest workers, found schools and universities where a broad array of people could be educated, and even move nations to see that universal democracy is possible for people who are so created and so loved by God. And so they did.
Time, fast running out, has always weighed on us short-lived humans. But the God who created time in the beginning has fully entered time with Jesus’ incarnation, and has robbed death of its final victory through the resurrection. The Christmas season should remind us that the very quality of time has been transformed. Time is now on our side. This incarnational or resurrection time, unlike mortal time, is not running out. Indeed, there is just enough of it for each of us to fulfill our unique callings.
How does a human being hold in mind all of this confused reality with its plots and subplots, its endless array of important characters, its wide array of critical issues, and still live in the real world? The practical answer is that this confusion is the real world. It is the world we are given, as a gift. Life as comedy is, therefore, the most faithful reflection of redeemed reality as we live it. The philosophical answer to the question is that we do not have to juggle it all. Only God does that. We are called to know God, through him to know ourselves, and with him to live life gracefully.
Walter Brueggemann, in The Bible Makes Sense, reminds us that the biblical view of being human is that life is a free gift—and that consequently the work of being human is living out the graces of that gift. There will be plenty of time in the new year to give ourselves to the serious tasks of this calling. This is the season to delight in the gifts of life and to laugh with deepest gratitude for the gift of grace.
Dan Russ is a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, editor of Implications, and director of the Center for Christian Studies at Gordon College.
1 Responses (comments are closed) • Provocations, Meaning and Calling, Thu 21 Dec 2006
on 2006 12 22
“We are called to know God, through him to know ourselves, and with him to live life gracefully.”
Thankfully, Dr. Russ has pointed out that we have plenty of time to accomplish this simple, yet difficult collective calling.