JESUS, CHRISTMAS AND STORY | PART 1

By Jill Roberts and Michael Canalé

Michael reminds us that,

“In the Native American culture, the storyteller is the most important person in the tribe.”

This individual outranks even the tribe’s Chief. Why? Because, it is through the storyteller that the tribe’s yesterdays are able to be perpetuated into its present as well as its future. It is the art of taking bygone times and sustaining them, preserving tradition and a People itself. As Michael so profoundly says, “Story is history.” It is the critical record without which we miss the backstory, the context, through which we can make sense of who we are now and how to best get to whom we want and need to be.

Few people, maybe none, have explored this concept of story more skillfully and passionately than Donald Miller in his seminal book, A Million Miles and a Thousand Years. In it, he writes a statement highly relevant to this blog:

“Good stories don’t happen by accident, I learned. They are planned.”

With this preamble, Michael and I segue into our blog and the concept of story as it relates to Christmas. At Christmastime, we tell the beautiful story about Jesus’ Incarnation and we tell it in thousands of ways. Next week, we will concentrate on the birth of Jesus itself, along with its infinite ramifications. This week’s blog will focus on the period of time before the birth of Jesus.

In writing How to Find God in Under Five Hours, and, specifically, Chapter twelve, I attempted to establish the backdrop for the Incarnation by pondering, in my mind’s eye, what was happening in Heaven years, months and moments before Jesus left and came to Earth.

In the law, we have a concept which is termed, “a case of first impression.” It occurs when a question of interpretation of law is presented which has never arisen before in any reported case. To my knowledge, my discussion of last goodbyes in Heaven presents such a consideration. The following narrative is lifted out of my book, verbatim, from Chapter 12. It chronicles my thoughts as to the backstory of December 25th and our celebration of Emmanuel…God with us:

“Much later, there came a point when the Jews were, once again, living under very hard times. The ruler of most of the world was Rome, which was very powerful and did not treat the Jews well. In fact, Rome made their lives especially difficult and was even occupying the Promised Land.

So, the Jews waited for, really, longed for the deliverer who was called the Messiah and who had been promised many hundreds of years earlier by prophets like Isaiah and Micah. They prayed that God would soon send this Messiah to rescue them from the Romans.

In Heaven, God was about to answer their prayers. Even before the time that people had made a disastrous choice in the Garden of Eden, something God foresaw, He had this plan. He always knows the future, but, before He was ready to put this into action, as we have read, He wanted to have a very special people, a Chosen People, through whom to send the Messiah. As we saw, He started this People with Abraham and made the Jews His own. He safeguarded them from trouble many times, and they knew they were His. Finally, the time had come for the Messiah, Jesus, to leave his home in Heaven and to be born on the Earth. The Jews were waiting and now God was ready! Why was He ready? The answer is, ‘He heard the cries of His children.’ Think of the conversation between God and Jesus at this moment – picture when God the Father must have turned to Jesus and said, ‘I have heard the cries of My children. When we hear the cries of our children, we leave everything!’ Envision God saying to Jesus, ‘We’ve got to do something!’ ‘God was hostage to the cries He heard.’(These quotes are from Ger Jones, Pastor of Vintage LA Church, Santa Monica, California and were part of a sermon preached by him at Rock Harbor Church, Costa Mesa, California.)

God was ready;Jesus was ready. The time was at hand.

Can you imagine what the goodbyes between God the Father, the Holy Spirit and Jesus were like? They had not only been in existence, they had always been in existence together. There had never been a goodbye between them. There has never been a goodbye in all of history like this one!

Can you additionally visualize what it would be like to be part of the triune Godhead, living in Heaven for all time, a place where there is no pain and no sickness but instead a perfect world – a place where your power is unrivaled?

Can you envisage what their last moments together were like as Jesus left Heaven? All the pain of this separation was for us, for every person who ever lived or who would ever live. What an unimaginable sacrifice before his mission on Earth had even begun.

But how was the Messiah, Jesus, going to come to Earth? We know that he was coming in the direct line of David. You might expect that, as a result of such an ancestral line, he would arrive in a palace or appear as a famous soldier. Would he be a prince, or even a king? The truth is, he would be a King, but not at all in the way one might expect.”

This ends Chapter Twelve of How to Find God in Under Five Hours. It substantiates what is stated earlier in this blog – good stories are planned. Story is history, as Michael says, and is the background revealing to us that Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice on the Cross, began with his sacrificial leave taking from the perfection of love and place in Heaven. The Earth beckoned to him to leave complete goodness and power, in order to disentangle the world and, in doing so, to save us from ourselves and the enemy of both God and Mankind, Satan. He would come to what Michael calls, “ the land of the fallen angel,” after the poignant, unprecedented goodbyes in the heavenly realm. And so, the story continues…