FAITH

Christmas is for unbelievers, too

the Rev. Jeff Miller Faith Columnist

When I was a teenager I worked at a Mexican restaurant. I made tacos, washed dishes, cleaned the grill, and did whatever else my boss instructed me to do. It was also there that I received a welcome into the home of a family that had a deep and lasting impact on my life.

While folding burritos, I found friendship with one of my co-workers, someone who later became my best friend and college roommate, someone who I am still in contact with these 30 years later. I remember once during the Christmas season that he invited me to his house for a gift exchange. It was just him and his mother, as his stepfather had recently attached himself to a woman who seemed more novel than his own wife, abandoning the family altogether. And so it was: two pimple-faced teens and one downcast mom, along with an infectiously happy black lab named Winston, gathering one cold dark December night.

As for me, in those days I was a rebel without a cause. I had little sense of my value in the world and was struggling with meaning in life, my grades, and the law. The blue lights had shone upon me too many times; being arrested and handcuffed does something to a 16-year-old, and among others these experiences put in me in a sober state. I was searching, and in the midst of obese men in red suits and the gaudy materialism all around, a holy hand came upon me and drew my attention.

It was this little splintered family, celebrating Christmas, that got to me. It was a humble evening that I remember well. My friend’s mom had apple cider cooking, the smell of which, mixed with the scent of the fir tree in the den, cast a kind of magic on the place. Given the context, it was a sad house: empty rooms, one less car in the driveway, only a few presents. But there was something in the air that ascended beyond all of that. A mother who loved her only son, Christmas music playing in the background, and the invitation of me, a heathen, into all of it.

I was slightly uncomfortable. I was sure I knew what Christmas was, but these people thought it was something else. Up to this point, I had never attended church in my life. Nor had I ever read the Bible, and I had no idea who God might be, much less Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Living in the “Bible belt” might seem to automatically indoctrinate a boy in these things, but that was not the case at all. I’d always thought Christmas was simply about spending money and getting the newest G.I. Joe toy, and that in doing so, all my dreams would come true. Obviously, because of my life status, that was not the case. I was pretty empty.

It was in that context that I would say I experienced my first real Christmas. There was food, music, and even a gift for me, the ornery friend of the guy on the grill at Del Taco. I remember how unusual the music was, because this was the first time the lyrics meant anything. I had listened to a good bit of Christmas music before, but this was the first time I actually heard it. The songs playing on the stereo were not about reindeer, presents, or how good I might or might not have been all year. They were about hope, love, and mercy to a dark world. The words rang out with power:

“No more let sin and sorrow grow

Nor thorns infest the ground;

He comes to make his blessings flow

Far as the curse is found.”

As I heard those words, I realized that they were talking about all of us in the room. Broken, lost, without hope, dejected, we were a sad lot. But there was a truth present in that home and in our lives that was greater. God sent a baby in a manger to offer new life, to break through the darkness in the world and offer rescue and ransom to all under its power.

This was one of many sovereign occurrences in my life at that time that converged to result in a radical change as Jesus intervened, made himself quite known to me, and redirected my life in a wonderful way.

The story of Christmas is for unbelievers just as much, if not more, than it is for believers. I still drive by that house on occasion; my friends are long gone but the memory of their kindness to me one Christmas many years ago is still quite alive. They loved Jesus, and because of that they put aside their own struggles and invited an angry punk kid with a mullet into their home, and in the process, they changed his life forever.

Joy to the world, folks. The Lord has come. Go tell somebody.

The Rev. Jeff Miller is the pastor of Vineyard Community Church in Augusta.