Christmas Has Ministry Implications
Let’s think about the mystery of the incarnation for a moment.
God is revealed to us as being one God in three persons. The three persons are the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. When God works, it seems that the impetus comes from the Father, is expressed through the Son, and is applied by the Spirit.
Now, let’s narrow it down a bit. The Son has eternally existed as the target of overflowing love from the Father (for some great thoughts on this, check out Michael Reeve’s little book Delighting in the Trinity, InterVarsity Press, 2012). One of the ways in which the Son responds to the Father’s love is in full cooperation with and obedience to the Father’s will. At a certain point in time (between 6-4 BC or BCE, depending on your preference), the Son added to his divine nature a human nature (in full cooperation with and obedience to the Father). Here’s how the Gospel writer John summarizes it, using the Message translation for the sake of casting new light on familiar truths…
The Life-Light was the real thing:
Every person entering Life he brings into Light. He was in the world, the world was there through him, and yet the world didn’t even notice. He came to his own people, but they didn’t want him. But whoever did want him who believed he was who he claimed and would do what he said, He made to be their true selves, their child-of-God selves. These are the God-begotten, not blood-begotten, not flesh-begotten, not sex-begotten. The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish. – John 1:9-14
The Son of God showed up as a human, perfectly imaging God and his love, the way in which humans were always intended. And he showed up to deal with the problem of sin. How would this come about?He gives a glimpse of this to his disciples, and to us, during a meal he shared the night before his crucifixion (might as well stick with the Message translation for this one too):
Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other. – John 13:34-35
I trust you’re familiar with the essential parts of the rest of this story. But these words about love sound about right, don’t they? Especially coming from the One who is the eternal target of the Father’s inexhaustible love.
All of this has implications on the way in which we “do” youth ministry. According to Jesus’ incarnation, youth ministry should be “incarnational.” This is not a new concept. Adults make themselves present to young people, on their turf.
You may have heard the mantra, “young people will only come to the extent to which we (the youth ministry leaders) are willing to go.” There’s sociological truth to this statement, but I think it misses the theology behind the incarnation. The statement smacks of what Andy Root, in his work Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry (InterVarsity Press, 2007), names personal influence relationalism, or using personal relationships for leverage. This is not the aim of faithful incarnational youth ministry, but it may be an outcome.
The Son added his human nature out of full cooperation with and obedience to the Father. He showed up to truly love, in a way that had only been hinted at up until that point, and he calls us to show up in the same way (John 13:34-35, above).
A few years ago, I got an accidental glimpse into what this might look like in youth ministry. It was a dark and snowy night (for real) when we carted around 200 middle school students in buses and vans to and from three different locations throughout our city. The first stop was our downtown outdoor skating rink. We didn’t have unique use of the facility, so that added to the craziness of the environment. Also, I’m not the most organized process-thinking or delegating-type person, yet I was in charge of everything. Buses were pulling up and dropping kids off, the parking lot was icy, and there was a long line of people wrapped around the little building out of which they distributed the skates. After they got their skates, they tried their best to find space on the limited benches to change their footwear. Many also tossed their coats on those same benches. After everyone was relatively settled and skating or watching those who were skating, I, along with a 7th grade guy who was my shadow most of that night, made my way toward the rink. As soon as I entered, a 6th grade girl ran up to me in tears. She believed her phone had slipped out from between the pile of coats on the benches and fell through a sewer grate behind the bench. Sure enough, when my 7th grade “shadow” reached through the fence and shined his light through the grate, he could make out her dimly still-lit screen opaquely shining through some shallow muck 12 feet down in the sewer. What to do? I knew the girl and her family. I knew their resources were particularly limited, and this phone would not be easily replaced. I looked at my “shadow” and asked if he’d be willing to accompany me outside the rink’s barrier to see if we could budge the grate. We snuck around the fencing. Both of us grabbed the hefty grate and slid it away from the hole. As we were doing this, a crowd of students, naturally, began to form. I descended the metal built-in ladder down to the bottom of the sewer, where there was enough sludge for me to drop down onto. But, before I was able to fully descend, the rink manager ran over to see what was going on and yelled at me to stop what I was doing and climb out. I told him I was only one step away from recovering her phone. While he continued to yell, I dropped down, rolled up my sleeve, dipped my hand in the muck, grabbed her phone, and ascended.
After I handed the phone to the girl and apologized to the rink manager, my 7th grade shadow looked at me and said, “That’s the most Pastor thing I’ve ever seen!” It took me a while to sort out what he was saying. I think what he meant was, “That reminded me of Jesus.” To this day, I’m not sure what he was most reacting to. Was it the love demonstrated to the 6th grade girl? What is the “descent” down the dark sewer? Was it reaching further into the muck to grab the phone? Was it the resistance to the authorities? I’m not sure exactly what it was.
Honestly, in the moment, I was thinking more about being Batman than I was Jesus. But I think God’s Spirit used it to apply the message of the Good News to this young man. Jesus perfectly imaged God to us. Because of his Spirit’s presence in us, we can image God to the students in our ministry. Let’s do that by obeying, serving, and loving like Jesus this Christmas season!
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