Here’s how I landed on that title for our Christmas series - Finally Jesus. Jesus was not plan B in God’s way of thinking. He didn’t have a plan A, the garden and then something went wrong and he had to think of another plan. “Oh, I know, I’ll send Jesus and see if that works". Jesus was not some additive in a string of historical events. We have creation, then fall, then Israel, then exile, then, Jesus, then… Jesus is the finality of all things. He was the plan all along. Finally Jesus means, finally, God’s plan is coming to a close, a climax, an earth shattering conclusion. Everything God was planning for culminates in the arrival of Jesus, vis-a-vis, Christmas. Christmas is the culmination of God’s entire plan for His creation for all times. God wanted his creation to be a perfect kingdom, a fairy tale kingdom where everything alive lives in perfect symbiotic relationship with everything else and with its creator - a Bambi kind of kingdom where Babmi’s mom doesn’t die (sorry to ruin it for you) and Bambi doesn’t get hunted down by some horrible meat lover.
True story, tangent alert. My dad was a big hunter. So he’d make a venison dish he called Bambi balls. He’d take venison and roll the ground meat into balls and sauce them in wine sauce, current jelly, port, and sherry and serve them in the sauce over noodles. Amazingly good.
OK, back to my point. And so this perfect kingdom, only one thing was missing. The final piece was placed in thee puzzles that brings the entire puzzle into full perspective as it was intended. Are you with me? Is this too surreal? The one thing missing in God’s kingdom was a king. Jesus was born as king of God’s kingdom. At the exact moment of his birth, a new era was dawning. It was the finality of God’s plans to inaugurate his kingdom on a fallen earth. Ok. So what? So what? So... you play a role in that kingdom if you acknowledge Jesus as king. And if you don’t? Then you are free willed to be your own king over your own universe. Remember what happened to Israel when they refused to acknowledge God as their king? Jesus is King means you are not. And many of us just need to come to that place before we can play a role in God’s kingdom.
