A Christmas Meditation

I thought I would share a meditation on Christmas from the experience of German Theologian Helmut Thielicke during the WWII era. If you think about this, the relevance clearly remains . . .

Jesus Christ in the Front-line Trenches

When I was bombed out with my family, and on the following evening walked through the quiet, peaceful streets of a village, looking for emergency quarters, I had a curious experience. Before this I had often recovered from the sight of ruins and the heaviness of heart that came at nightfall by sending my imagination off on a journey. I thought of a peaceful village with cows coming down the roads to their barns, and people talking about the harvest and sitting around the lamp in the evening, a place that was spared the tumult of war. The people said a friendly "Good evening," the cozy lamplight shone through the chinks in the black-out curtains, and everything was as I had imagined it to be. But the long-for peace would not come into my heart. I felt ostracized and the idyllic scene was tormenting rather than tranquilizing.
In the next few days it drove me back to the ruined city and the people whose faces were still marked by the runes of terror. There I felt at home. They understood what I had gone through because they had suffered it themselves. The people in the village did not understand. To them it was a somewhat disquieting apparition from another, frightening, world. There is nothing more comforting than to have people who understand one. This is what drove many soldiers who had been at the front, and then on their leave enjoyed a good soft bed for a few nights, back to their comrades in the Russian steppe. When a person is pressed hard by dread and terror, then home and fulfillment and the people who are fortunate and have everything - these suddenly become alien.

This also has something to do with the fact that of all people it is the poets who have become the pastors of our time, who do not hand out idylls, fulfillments, and solutions to problems but rather cry out their dread, their nothingness, and their despair to the world. How else can we explain the fact that people reach out for the poems of Gottfried Benn? The "Song of the Passion" says: Wounds must heal wounds. The wounded seek refuge with the wounded. There they are understood, and that by itself means a lot.

Every year around Christmastime thoughts like these come to me. People strain themselves to the utmost to give themselves and others a few hours of joy. Wishes are fulfilled; we step out of the moment, in which ordinarily we are completely absorbed, and restore connection with our own childhood. We remember our mothers in whose protecting care we once lived, the mothers who told us about the Christ Child and Father Christmas. The hardest men sing touching little songs, and in the soft light of candles our hearts leap up. We seek these hours in the same way that years ago I sought out the quiet, secure little village, in the same way that the Hungarians may yearn for the shores of freedom. And then when the candles burn down, leaving only blackened stumps or nothing at all, there comes a secret feeling of uneasiness: we have to go back behind the counter again in the big store, back to our examinations, the flurry in the office, or a clattering machine. This quiet world around the candles is so different from our ordinary life that we cannot connect the two, and in a short time the brightness vanishes behind us - like the lights of the station when we pass the curve.

But the intent of Christmas is something totally different. The Child in the crib is not an idyll. It is only our love and often our sentimentality which have turned his story into an idyll. The Child was homeless. He was shoved off into a stable. Shortly afterward his parents went out on the road as refugees in order to escape Herod's massacre of the children. Then came the life-long hostility of men; the Child always remained, even after he grew up, a fugitive. His heart trembled under the impact of all the temptations, and fears that shake us too. And finally this life ended as it began he was shoved out of the world; he died on a gallows that had the form of a cross. This Man who loved infinitely, and therefore suffered infinitely as he saw men running headlong to their own destruction - they had no use for him. Crib and cross - they are both of the same wood, they are a piece.

And I believe that all this, with all its terror, is infinitely more comforting than the soft, sweet spirit we seek at Christmas, which afterward leaves only a hung-over, letdown feeling if it is the only thing there is in it. Jesus Christ did not remain at base headquarters in heaven, receiving reports of the world's suffering from below and shouting a few encouraging words to us from a safe distance. No, he left the headquarters and came down to us in the front-line trenches, right down to where we live and worry about what the Bolsheviks may do, where we contend with our anxieties and the feeling of emptiness and futility, where we sin and suffer guilt, and where we must finally die. There is nothing that he did not endure with us. He understands everything.

Or do we no longer sense how knowing are the features of this face, which the painters lent even the child and which later gazed upon us from the cross? He does not wear the disinterested face of those people who live in the village called "religion" far behind the mountains of the wicked world; he has the eyes of a person who knows his way about the ruins in our life. Wounds must heal wounds. He became one of the wounded because he wanted to one of us. And therefore that Face does not vanish when the candles go out. For this Figure knows everything: of my loneliness, when I am alone or in the midst of my fellows, of the things in my life that I cannot handle, of the villain who is bedeviling me, of all my fears. For this Companion is with me in the front-line trenches. I can accept everything from his hand, for his hand knows and controls all things. And he lets down the drawbridge by which I can enter the fortress, long since forgotten, where I shall be secure.

Here is One who is waiting and looking for me.

See Christ and the Meaning of Life, Sermons of Helmut Thielicke (Baker, 1975, pp. 6-19).

A report from Baton Rouge

Back in article 2 of this series I challenged us as a Fellowship to act in responses of faith to God's sovereign work in Hurricane Katrina. Hundreds of us have gone to help do relief, clean-up, repair, etc. in the Name of Jesus. We continue to rejoice in this!

One of the challenges I gave was to see FGBC churches planted in the affected area. I don't know if anyone else is working on this - let us know if you are. But we at Myerstown, PA have taken this very seriously. We sent an Evangelism Team, and now we have sent one of our couples, Kevin and Lorna Kreider, to be Grace Brethren church planters in Baton Rouge, LA.

An overall report follows, written by Joe Couch, one of our New Beginnings staff members at Myerstown.

Baton Rouge, LA Go Team Report:

God began a work in a city of Louisiana this past August with a terrible circumstance Hurricane Katrina. One might think this city was New Orleans, but God chose another city, Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. God caused a hurricane to hit New Orleans in order to start a Grace Brethren church in Baton Rouge.

On the morning of September 10th, 2005, 8 people woke up not knowing that the Lord was about to change their lives forever. The Lord Jesus was doing a work in Baton Rouge, and He had chosen them to join Him in that work. As the morning progressed, Pastor Keith Shearer challenged a group of men from New Beginnings GBC at a prayer breakfast to consider what God would have them do in response to Hurricane Katrina. Immediately after this at an elder board meeting, Pastor Keith challenged the elders of New Beginnings to consider what God would have them do in response to Hurricane Katrina; he also expressed his heart’s desire to see at least 12 Grace Brethren churches planted in the South.

Pastor Dan Jackson read Acts 13, this is where the Spirit set aside Paul and Barnabas for the work He had called them to. The elders immediately began to pray over this passage, and God stirred the hearts of the elders that an evangelism team must go and proclaim the gospel, and plant a Grace Brethren church. Much relief work was being done, but how could these people call on the Lord Jesus for salvation if they did not hear the gospel?

Pastor Keith and Evangelist Joe, worked on the plans for an evangelism team to go; God put in the hearts of these 2 men the city of Baton Rouge, and the passages of Luke 10 and Acts 13, to define the Go Team. The tactics of evangelism came from Acts 13, go as Paul and Barnabas did and share the gospel in the city in the places where people were gathered. The accommodations for the team came from Luke 10; go to the city and find a man of peace and stay with him, eating and drinking what he gives you and not moving around from house to house.

During this time, God raised up a team of seven men, and, He raised up a husband and wife to move down to Baton Rouge and lead this new work. Kevin Kreider, one of the elders, and his wife Lorna responded to God’s call; Kevin resigned his job of 27 years and they prepared to move, even before the team had left for Baton Rouge. God had made it clear, He was beginning a work in this city.

As the team went to Baton Rouge, they devoted themselves to allow God’s Word to be their only guide for the trip. They held to the promise in Jeremiah 1:12, that God watches over His word to perform it, and perform it He did! The team was able to experience God do things that only He could do right before their eyes and before the eyes of many lost people. God performed all the words He had given this team. The actual emails from the team during the trip can also be found on the FGBC website.

Now, at this moment, Kevin and Lorna Kreider are living in Baton Rouge, and have a group of people they are meeting with on Sunday mornings. This is in the area affected by the worst hurricane in our nation’s history, an area void of Grace Brethren churches. They need your prayers, they need your support! God not only chose New Beginnings GBC to join Him in this work, He has chosen our whole Fellowship to join Him in establishing His church that preaches the Bible, the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible! “Expect great things from God! Attempt great things for God!” Arise! We are Grace Brethren, our time is now! We must not fail!

Thanks, Joe.

We will need over $100,000 in 2006 to launch and support this project as well as our church planters. New Beginnings GBC is responsible to raise and administrate these funds, according to GBNAM. We trust God to do this through us.

I also thought churches and individuals in our national Fellowship would desire to help pray, give, and go. If you or your church would like to give, please write your check to "New Beginnings GBC" and label your gift "Baton Rouge Church Plant." Our address is New Beginnings Grace Brethren Church, 430 E. Lincoln Ave., Myerstown, PA 17067. Thanks for your involvement. We believe God for this!