Cancer Blog #16
By Brian Zimmerman
Begun on July 31, 2021
Email: dyingman1@yahoo.com
My Dying Words
Entry# 16
December 24, 2021
Special Christmas Eve Edition
Christmas and Death
In this entry, I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the celebration of Christmas and its relation to death. You wouldn’t think death would have much to do with Christmas, but I’m not talking about our celebration of Christmas, but what Christmas was. It always amazes me how many modern Christmas songs are all about what we did or do in our celebrations and family traditions and how little they are about Christmas itself, i.e., the birth of Jesus in Galilee. Because when Jesus was born, his birth was heralded by heaven through the legions of the army of God (i.e., the angels. Ignore the Renaissance paintings of angels, especially the cherubs pictured as chubby little babies. The first encounter we have with the cherubs in the Bible is in Genesis 3:24 where God stations them as guards with flaming swords to prevent Adam or Eve making it back into the Garden to reach the tree of life. Sounds more like Special Forces soldiers than pudgy infants. Why else when angels appear would they constantly have to say, “Don’t be afraid”? Again, sounds like soldiers appearing from nowhere startling everyone. Did Tinkerbell have to reassure everyone when she showed up with the lost boys? Maybe the singing angels were like the West Point choir.) There was also the worship of the nations coming to see the long expected king (how did they know to show up? Where did they get that prophecy? Probably from Jews from the Diaspora would be my guess), the magi bearing gifts of great value- gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This is the version of Christmas we tell our children so as to not frighten them. But, there is a grown up side to Christmas as well. The world of Satan had a response to his birth as well and it was an orgy of death trying to destroy the gift of life, for Herod in his attempt to end the life of a possible rival king murdered all male children in and around Bethlehem who were 2 years old and under. So while the angels, shepherds, and magi rejoiced at His birth, there was a part of the world system that opposed him, and caused death to be its response to God’s offer of life. The people of God were moved to lift up their voices not in praise but great sorrow in response to the first Christmas:
“A voice was heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children; and she refused to be comforted, because they were no more.” (Matthew 2:18).
And, so the pattern has continued that had begun following the disobedience of Adam and Eve, their fall from innocence with one child murdering another (Cain against Abel), death attempting to end the gift of life. But, with the birth of Jesus we have our greatest hope, for He came to rescue us from darkness and death, granting us light and life, the hope of peace with God and with one another.
Christmas and Life
We live in a culture that ignores death, even seeming to try to hide the fact of death or obfuscate it with various euphemisms. Or, it celebrates the death of the innocent with the so-called right of abortion, or entertaining the hope that euthanasia will be a pleasant way to end all suffering. It is no wonder that the people of the West are terrified by so many things. We are controlled at the root of it all by a fear of death. Yet, from God’s people, the church, goes forth a message of light and life in the celebration of Christmas as we stand with the angels, the shepherds, and the magi in their joy of this greatest of gifts. Buried under the layers of greed and silly sentimentality, we find a word of powerful, unstoppable hope, for one has been born who was been dogged by death and Satan from His beginning of life in this age, and who was finally caught and executed and buried. But, He emerged from that grave full of new life, an immortal life, one that could never again be ended by death. Satan had lost the battle against life. And, Jesus offered that deliverance also to His followers who can now lose their fear of death, fear of an event that is no more a threat, but is rather the hope of release to a new age. And, that offer extended far beyond the people of the Jews, who first received His offer of immortality, but also to us as well, who are not Jews, even to a people who have sat in a land of darkness and death, but now can have lives of joy, even in the midst of their dying and death: “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all the people, for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:10-11).
So, as in the first Christmas so now we see the end of that which threatens us most, but which will no longer cause us to be afraid. For now we have a Savior who was born to bring us light and life, who beat death and the devil at his own game, taking the end of life and turning it into the beginning, weeping into laughter, tears of sorrow into tears of joy.
Next entry: The next entry will be a discussion of the value of death.