CHRISTMAS: The Wonder and The Threat

Well here we are again. This is Dicphoth with stories from the road and today it's Christmas here we come. Here we come. It's an interesting time because it is this season if I can put it that way. We're past Black Friday and all the shopping that you get, stuff cheaper all that. But it's this celebrative time upcoming these next few weeks and it is both sacred on the one hand and secular on the other. It's the it's the most commercial of all the seasons I think. It's interesting to read from the Gospels what it says about this moment in time if you're in the church world or any of that. The word Advent pops up. An Advent by definition is the arrival of a notable person, event or thing. Hence the Advent season. This is with the Gospel of John says about that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. That's like in the first chapter. You get down just a few verses and it says this the word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Advent the arrival of a notable person of enter thing. So in this podcast I want to enlist the help of a notable person and actually for the next five podcasts I want to enlist his help because this past May the planet lost that notable person. His name was Tim Keller. Tim Keller was an East Coast guy and Tim Keller lived large. He was a large man at a large heart, large faith, large reach. Anyway, to Heaven last May after years of battling cancer. In terms of role people know him in small part and I'll say more about this as the founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City which touched generations of younger people in that very powerful high intensity city. This man from Pennsylvania came over and did this thing if you will with his wife Kathy in terms of the church plant. From my view, Tim Keller was one of the giants of our time. The week after he died Peter Wainer who was a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum and served in the Reagan and George H. W and George W. Bush administrations wrote a kind of a eulogy sort of his reflections on his friend. Wainer is a contributing editor at the Atlantic and also a pinion writer for the New York Times but just want to read you a couple of things that he said about Tim because I think that his comments more than me just reciting a bio would help us. Tim became one of the 21st century's most influential and revered church leaders, a pastor and theologian, an author who sold an estimated 25 million copies of his books. One of the things Peter says that made Tim distinct was his ability to bring an ancient faith into the modern city, into the lives of busy young professionals who might otherwise have dismissed it and to do so with quiet confidence and not hostile defensiveness. He made the discussion of faith seem relevant and exciting. He named the idols of our lives, Wainer goes on which often come in the form of striving for worldly success. He spoke about how we make the mistake of turning I love this part, how we make the mistake of turning good things into ultimate things. It resonated. I have met few people, Peter Wainer says, who have delighted in discussing ideas as much as Tim. They fascinated him, formed him, vivified him and his mind was a wonder to behold, intelligent and orderly and insatiably curious. He was a voracious reader who possessed an amazingly attentive memory. If you engage Tim on a topic, either one and one or in a small group, he was likely to cite some combination of theologian's philosophers, psychologists, sociologists, prayer, playwrights and historians. Tim offered the references easily, unauthenticiously, like a person sharing a new gift he was excited about and was sure you would be too, but above all, he wanted to better understand God in order to better love God. So I never met Tim Keller. I've listened to him. I've read him seven years ago in 2016. This man who lived large wrote a rather small book, actually. I read it several times and it's the truth behind Christmas, the celebration, that most of us experience or observe. So our December podcasts will do this thing. We're going to remember Tim Keller because we're going to quote him some more. By excerpting his book Hidden Christmas, The Surprising Truth Behind the Birth of Christ. This is how it begins. I just want to start on page two, just to sort of give you a feel for what he says. As a Christian believer, I'm glad to share the virtues of the day with the entirety of society. The secular Christmas is a festival of lights a time for family gatherings and a season to generously give to those closest to us and to those in greatest need. These practices are enriching to everyone and they're genuinely congruent with the Christian origins of the celebration. Because of the commercial indispensable ability of Christmas, it will remain with us as a secular festival. My fear is, he says, however, that its true roots will become more and more hidden to most of the population. The emphasis on light and darkness comes from the Christian belief that the world's hope comes from outside of it. The giving of gifts is a natural response to Jesus' stupendous act of self-giving when he laid aside his glory and was born into the human race. The concern for the needy recalls that the Son of God was born not into an aristocratic family but into a poor one. The Lord of the universe identified with the least and the most excluded of the human race and it goes on. Along with Tim Keller, I would like to introduce you to the person I'm asking to participate these next few weeks and that is our third daughter, Susanna Ruth and I have four children, Erica, Jenny, Susanna and Chris. Susanna lives in Idaho and she's a writer and the mother of three and so what we're going to do is I'm going to ask her to join me in these podcasts going forward. And so I just zoomed with her the other day and said, Sus, would you help me with this? She said she would and so here she is. Hi Susanna. Hello. We're zooming here and you're looking good. You're looking vivacious even at the end of a day. Great. Thank you. Dad, I appreciate that. I don't know if I'm looking vivacious or not. Always. So just so folks can know you a little bit. You were born in Urbana, Illinois. Some years back we moved to California. You did your growing up years pretty much in Santa Cruz California on the coast went to college and met this guy and can you just give us a snapshot from there and all the meeting this guy. He was funny and cute. What can I say? Okay, then you married him and you and you. Yes, we got married. He was youth pastoring at the time. So we used pastored for five years and then ended up going back to Washington DC when you and mom were in DC as you know and partnering with you and the work you were doing there and also Scott was on staff with Mark and Laura Batterson at National Community Church and that was a really really fun time to be a part of what they were doing there and at that point we had two little guys Jack and Will and then NCC kind of launched us back to the West Coast when we church planted at that point we started a church. So for the next 14 years that's what we were doing. Scott was lead pastor and then also doing marketing as a side job and then I was trying to get published. I was trying to start writing and get published during that time and so that was kind of where we were for that 14 year period. And you wrote several books that ultimately were published. I think the first one was all in Jesus and a good pair of jeans that was baker or that was baker yeah that all I need is Jesus and a good pair of jeans the tired supergirls searched for grace. My favorite title is my bangs look good and other lies I tell myself. I think that's because you came up with it. Oh, was that it? I hope that sounds like it. Anyway you wrote several. I like that one too. And you've written you've written now for a guidepost morning with Jesus and been part of that for the last how many years? Probably I think this is my 15th year. And a few years ago you and Scott then moved to Idaho where he is part of a company as a senior content marketing person. Yeah, he's a senior content marketing strategist and then he also is on the teaching team at our church. Okay. And I am still writing and doing different different kinds of writing now. So that has been really a fun shift for us so at this point in our conversation I read to Susanna the passage from Tim Keller's book that I've already read to you here on this podcast that ends with the phrase Christmas like God himself is both more wondrous and more threatening than we can imagine. Here's her response to that. Well, I think that last phrase is what really caught me when it's more what did you say more wonderful and more threatening than we could possibly imagine? Correct. That's his line. Yeah, I think the way that he phrases things is so profound and compelling to me. And I think growing up, Christmas and all that it entailed was more on the gift. One of the reasons I wanted to talk with you these next few weeks and there's a tribute to Tim Keller and the way he thought and how he moved people with truth is that you really like Tim Keller. Yes. I'm small. You listen to his podcast. I have no idea whether you listen to mine, but I know you listen. Which is great, you know, because I really like Tim Keller. But why do you why do you like him? Well, I think both of your podcasts are great. So I'm just going to say that. But this week early will keep you in the world. Go ahead. Thank you. I started listening to Tim Keller probably about six years ago and it was when I was teaching middle school, I taught middle school for two years and it was one of the most, wow, I don't know, just challenging jobs that I've ever had. Would you call it, would you call it wondrous and threatening? For all you teachers are out there. You know what I mean. But I think that I was looking for just a way to anchor myself in my faith in a not in a new way, but just in a way that was very solid and the way that he spoke about Jesus and the impact that he has on culture, the impact that he has in our personal lives. He's just very wise and grounded and I wanted those words of truth to be the ones that were resonating inside my head as I was trying to teach other little or not little actually, but young people and just to have those words of wisdom in my mind. So I got to the point where every morning when I would wake up, I would just listen to one of his podcasts and I have friends on a text word with me and I would just let them know, well, my BFF Tim Keller says and that was how I would start out most of my texts. With that in mind, we're going to wrap this up and I'll come back to you for our next podcast and our next one and our next one because you're going to be my December girl and we're going to work with this. You and I and Tim Keller are our favorite guys, but let me ask the one last question before we get up and the question is this, looking back on your years growing up years particularly, did you have any favorite Christmas or a couple that stand out to you? So when I ask Susanna this question about a favorite Christmas or ones that stand out, what she says is that she has a season of Christmases and here's how she described. I have a season of Christmases that I would say were my favorite and that was when we were living in Santa Cruz and we would go to Modesto where moms tell our folks where Modesto is if you don't mind. Modesto is in California is about two hour drive from Santa Cruz in the San Joaquin Valley nestled in amongst the Ammon orchards. My grandma and grandpa Blakely lived there and then there were three houses next to theirs where all my aunts and uncles lived and those were filled with cousins and so we would drive. I don't know if it was after you got off work, but I remember usually driving there at night. It just took so long to get there. That's all I can remember. Just ages to get from Santa Cruz to Modesto, but we would reach the end of Carver Road where all of our relatives lived and you would start honking the horn and we would let them know that we had arrived for Christmas and then it would just be a full, I don't know how many days we would probably stay three or four days. It would just be cousins and there wasn't even a lot of presents or big things or anything like that was just the joy of all being together and having fun and going to church and we would usually load up in the church bus and go sing Christmas carols to different people that we didn't know, but we didn't care because Uncle John would drive the car. He would drive the bus fast and would like go way fast up over the levees. That was so good. There were so many good memories that are attached to that. So it was just that being with that with our family and with our cousins and just experiencing that joy of Christmas together. I remember one of the times in the bus we were all bundle up because it was in the high 20s which for that sort of California that's pretty cool and they don't get snow in Modesto, California, but it's damp and so it sort of cuts through and we went to the home of some immigrants, some Russians who had been and splanted in our grandfather, my father-in-law, your grandfather, Blakely had been involved with that and so we went to sing for them, Carolyn, outside and they came and stood out on the front lawn and the father who was a big bear when we talk about a Russian bear, big guy came out and he was in a tank top and it was just, you know, I got a beanie on, I had gloves and stuff and I walked over to him and I said, man, aren't you cold and they looked at me and Grandin said, this is no cold, Siberia is cold. I think that's the second time in all these years of the podcast that I've had Susanna on with me. So I'm excited about these weeks going forward. I got to tell you it's fun for me to be able to do this. So here's my thought, the one I ask Susanna, what Christmas has stand out for you, either which one or what couple or what season and why do they do that? I'd encourage you to think about that, maybe even share that with folks who are close to you and as a final thought, don't forget the wonder of Christmas, that's really awesome and I don't use awesome very often, it really is and don't forget that it's also a threat, isn't that fascinating language that killer uses? What's it a threat to is what I ask myself, I would submit as we close our time that it's a threat to apathy, self-centeredness, how about shallow thinking, what about darkness on all its forms or stingeness or ignoring the poor and the disenfranchised? So here you go, I'm signing off this week, watch out, here comes the light of the world, stick with both, God bless, thanks for listening.