Christmas for the Brokenhearted
Photo by freestocks on Unsplash
Reveling in the Christmas season is easy for some people. They live for the holiday decorations, gift shopping, feasts with family, candlelight church services, and snowflakes glittering in the cold sun. But for others, the holidays bring anxiety and gloom as memories of broken families or grief over recent loss leads to despair. How does one celebrate the birth of a king when the only gift one can bring is a broken heart?
But here’s the thing: the gospel accounts of Jesus’s birth, found in Matthew and Luke, don't paint a glorious picture of happy holidays. They’re messy. They’re gritty. It starts with Jesus’s family tree. The Gospel of Matthew reminds us that every family has a few skeletons in the closet, a few stories we would rather sweep under the carpet. Remember Tamar? The young widow posed as a prostitute to sleep with her father-in-law so she could bear a son—and she was considered the righteous one. How about Rahab? A prostitute. And David’s wife? Matthew makes sure we remember that she “had been Uriah’s wife” (Matt. 1:6). You know—the same Uriah that David had murdered because David didn’t want anyone to find out he had slept with Bathsheba. Nice family tree, Jesus.
Then there’s Mary herself. The 14-year-old “was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit” (Matt. 1:18). Can you imagine the conversation between Mary’s parents and Joseph’s parents? They had worked hard to negotiate the dowry and enter into the betrothal contract. Mary and Joseph had not yet consummated their marriage, but Mary had become pregnant! Deuteronomic law allowed such an adulteress to be stoned to death. She claimed the Holy Spirit was responsible for the pregnancy. No wonder Joseph wanted to divorce her, breaking the betrothal contract. To him it appeared not only that she was a harlot, but also a liar. Definitely not marriage material! Where was the good Jewish girl he had been promised? Yet even after the angel reassured him that Mary was telling the truth, his life would not be easy. The villagers—who had not heard the angel’s message—would never stop whispering about the disgrace of Mary’s growing belly and Joseph’s foolishness to marry such a woman. Joseph’s new family would start their life together as refugees in Egypt, fleeing a murderous despot. And when they returned to Israel they would be forced to hide in Galilee for their safety. Joseph had so many shattered expectations.
The Gospel of Luke does not paint a perfect picture, either. Luke starts his story a bit further back, looking at the lives of Zechariah and Elizabeth, who both had come from priestly families—good stock, you might say. But for years the community had been wondering about their secret sin. No one was quite sure what it might have been, but they all assumed the couple had done something wrong. God blessed the righteous with babies, yet this elderly couple had no children. Although Luke reassures his readers that the couple was indeed righteous (1:6), their neighbors were not so sure. Perhaps they thought their suspicions were confirmed after an angel struck Zechariah mute while he was serving in the Temple.
In reality, the old priest’s cynicism had gotten the better of him. He knew the stories of God—he knew about Sarah, and Rebekah, and Rachel, and Hannah, and other once-barren women. Zechariah knew that God had a history of answering prayers and opening the wombs of infertile women. Zechariah himself had prayed. And waited. And prayed. And waited. Yet when an angel of God appeared to him—and not just any angel, but Gabriel, who stands at the very throne of God—you would think that Zechariah would believe what he heard. But years of childless experience had left him cynical, believing that the stories of God’s faithful provision were for other people. If God hadn’t answered his prayers before, then why would he do so now?
Even well-intentioned folks can make missteps. We certainly learn this in Matthew’s account of the good-hearted but bumbling magi. These astrologers from the east had seen great astral phenomena in the sky at the time Jesus was born, and they interpreted this to mean that a great king had been born. They wanted to pay homage, so they made their way to Jerusalem, near where the sign had appeared. They were so excited to figure out what had happened that they eagerly asked questions of the locals without considering the larger political ramifications. You really shouldn’t appear before a paranoid, ruthless king and ask him where the new and better king was just born. Sometimes it’s better to keep your mouth shut.
Of course, Herod himself provides the prime example of why the Christmas story is not all sweetness and light. Herod the Great enjoyed being king—he funded lavish building programs (including the refurbishment of the Jerusalem Temple), married ten women, and used his political savvy to survive changing alliances. He had no desire for a messiah to enter the scene and change the status quo. Herod was so ruthless that he killed three of his own sons when he felt that they were trying to usurp his power. Some people don’t like change—but Herod, he made sure things didn’t change. When the magi came asking about the newborn Jewish king, Herod sent his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill any possible challengers to the throne. He didn’t care that they were infants.
For the mothers in Bethlehem, weeping and mourning like Rachel weeping for her children, grief defines their Christmas story. Matthew’s record of their pain reminds us that this world is not a holiday movie. This world is raw and gritty and painful. Why else would Jesus come to redeem it?
Maybe you’ve seen your own history in these stories. You’ve heard yourself whispering to God: I’ve got a few family stories I’d like swept under the carpet. I’ve had relationships broken by shattered expectations. I’ve had so many unanswered prayers that I’ve become cynical. I’ve spoken out of turn and harmed those around me with my words. I’ve violently resisted the change that God is trying to bring about in my life. I have wailed the deep, gut-wrenching grief of a mother who has lost her child. How can I celebrate Christmas when all I can bring to the party is a broken heart?
Despite the feel-good marketing campaigns of social media and shrewd advertisers, we do not celebrate Christmas to create the picture-perfect holiday experience. We celebrate Christmas to remember that God himself joined us in the messiness and pain of this world so that he could redeem and transform it. We are not required to paste smiles on our faces and pretend that all is okay. If everything is okay, then there is no need for redemption.
Scripture regularly calls the people of God to remember what God has done. The rituals of the church ground us in the truth that we cannot survive this world on our own. We are called to remember our vulnerability and our desperate need for God’s provision. Our sin-twisted minds frequently try to convince us either that we are too broken for God to love us or, paradoxically, that we are self-sufficient and everything we have is a result of our own power and determination. But our rituals ground us in the truth that everything we have is from God and that God loves us despite our mess. When Israel approached the promised land, God commanded them to remember and not forget: “Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth…” (Deut. 8:18). As the Israelites were preparing to cross the Jordan, God commanded them to set up stones inscribed with the words of the Law, rejoicing in what God had done (Deut. 27:1-10). Yet even before Israel had entered the promised land, God knew they would turn away and abandon him: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Soon you will lie down with your ancestors. Then this people will begin to prostitute themselves to the foreign gods in their midst, the gods of the land into which they are going; they will forsake me, breaking my covenant that I have made with them’” (Deut. 31:16). But God brought them into the promised land anyway. God loved them enough to continue with his plan for redemption. God did not give up on his people.
When Jesus instituted a new ritual with his disciples at the last supper, this too was a call to remember our great need and God’s great deliverance. Together Jesus and his disciples were celebrating the Passover meal and reliving God’s liberation of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. But Jesus proclaimed a greater deliverance from a deeper slavery. Sin would finally be dealt a deathblow through his suffering and death. We who cannot escape sin on our own finally have a path to freedom through faith in Jesus Christ and the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. We are called to remember both our desperate need and God’s great provision. Yet Jesus ate this meal with a disciple who would hand him over to the authorities, a best friend who would deny knowing him, and still other friends who would flee at the first sign of trouble. The Lord’s love is so gracious and so full that he invites his betrayers to eat at the table with him. This is no perfect family gathering full of cheer.
Our regular Christmas rituals—the changing of the parament colors, the singing of great hymns, our candlelit Christmas Eve service—occur every year to call us to remember what God has done. God entered a fallen, broken world and used fallen, broken people to accomplish his kingdom purposes. The cynics, the grief-stricken, the imperfect followers all have a place in this transformative season. Our celebration is not one of holiday perfection, but a reminder that “those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined” (Isa. 9:2). The great joy we hear proclaimed in Mary’s Magnificat, the angelic host’s song, and the prophetic words of Simeon and Anna powerfully announce the upheaval of this broken world. Despite appearances to the contrary, death and darkness do not get the last word. Instead, the brokenhearted find hope in the angel’s words to Mary in Luke 1:37: “For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Dr. Suzanne Nicholson is Professor of New Testament at Asbury University in Wilmore, Kentucky. She is a Deacon in the United Methodist Church and serves as Assistant Lead Editor of Firebrand.