Blog Layout

 The Trouble with Jesus

by Constance Hastings

Wrong time for Christmas
December 23, 2024

The Trouble with Jesus is his birth shows God’s plan is

not to fix everything that is wrong in the world, 

but to meet all the wrong in the world with Love. 

Forget it. Christmas never delivers what it should. Again. Inflation presses on, wars that never should have been have global effects, desperate people are clamoring to cross our borders, mass shootings occur every week. Oh, but shoppers charge their cards and dull the senses with commercialism. Your tra-la-la-la-las just aren’t going to sing anything good about this Christmas.

 

If this helps, God knows. God knows it’s a big date on the calendar for us. When daylight lessens, the holiday lights help remind us that life is not as dark as we perceive. Excited children and special holiday recipes give us something to anticipate. Gift giving, especially to those who have less, reminds us that generosity is a gift in itself. All is as if God planned for us to have this wonderful time of the year.

 

Oh, right. Please, please tell. What’s so wonderful about Christmas for us this year or any other for that matter?

 

God knows. God knows what you think Christmas is supposed to be. The thing is, God’s Christmas wasn’t all jingle bells and elves on a shelf either.

 

An Alternative Christmas

 

Take a good hard look at the story, and maybe you can relate. The world was expecting, waiting, trying in its own way to prepare for him. The ancient writings promised time and again he would come. The priests tried to make the people straighten up and act holy for his entrance. Various sects armed themselves to battle for him. They were more than ready for his coming. But stockings hung on a mantle need someone to fill them, and we all know stories of sleighs full of toys and chimney drops won’t do the job.

 

God knows and knows how we think things should be. The problem is, God doesn’t always work like we think God should. God had other plans. So what do we get?

 

The emperor, Caesar Augustus, needed to fund some projects to support his regime. Tax time! Go to those you can oppress and drain them dry. That will keep those insurgents quiet for a while. Every family was ordered to go back to their ancestral homes to be counted and fleeced.

 

Now there was this guy, Joseph, who was in a miserable quandary. Several months earlier he found out his fiancé was pregnant—and he wasn’t the proud father. He could have dumped her, no one would blame him, but that would have brought a different kind of guilt with it. Jewish law stated women found pregnant before marriage should be stoned. He must have cared deeply for her, for he decided to go ahead with the marriage. There also was a story about an angel who assured him all was good, so with only an insane kind of faith, he packs up the girl, Mary, and heads out on a three-day journey to Bethlehem despite her due date being not far off. The Romans didn’t give a Christmas fig about that sort of thing.

 

No telling how hard that trip must have been on her, but their luck ran out faster than reindeer fly. Upon arrival, apparently with crowds that more than rivaled last minute shoppers on December 24, they find there is no place to stay. Even her condition did not yield the mercy of a bed. When you’re tired beyond your last ounce of strength, you take what you can get, a hole-in-the-wall cave of a stable just so you can lie down and don’t have to take one more step. And that’s where it happened.

 

Christmas All Wrong

 

Christmas happened when a baby boy was born to two destitute parents in a barn. The record doesn’t tell it, but you know what it likely meant. Fatigue and filth and only faith to push back fear. One song gets it right: no crib for a bed. With only ragged strips of cloth to securely wrap him, Mary laid her baby in a feeding trough.

 

Christmas happened, and you can bet it wasn’t a silent night. Not long afterwards, a herd of shepherds came barging in, and you can add to that bet they weren’t wearing masks. These men were people of the night, the ones who lived outside on the margins of life in service to the better-off. They came with a story as fantastic and phantastical as Mary and Joseph each had known. Angels, an army of angels no less, had brought them news that the Messiah Savior was born in Bethlehem, in a manger wrapped in strips of cloth. They had run to see it for themselves and now couldn’t contain their joyous praise to God. Telling everyone, the shepherds’ tale left people astonished. That doesn’t mean the shepherds were believed, just that some may have found their tale incredulous.

 

Christmas Comes to the Wrong People

 

Christmas happened, and it happened in every way it shouldn’t. Like a blanket of heavy snow, oppression, poverty, marginalized characters populate the story. Those who should have been in the know did not get an invitation to the party. Yet, when the story was all wrong, that’s when in the form of a baby God showed up. And what do you get with a baby?

 

Christmas happened, and it still happens. Our Christmas story this year once again is not the Christmas we want. We sit in this messy middle, wait for life to get back to some kind of normal, pray that the insanity on the streets all the way to political houses stop, that there would be a cease fire for Ukraine and Gaza. But that’s not Christmas. We never get what we want for Christmas. That’s what we think God should do, and almost always, God never does.

In a real way though, this is likely the closest to God’s Christmas we may ever know. If we are still as church mice on Christmas Night, we just might see a strange sight through the frosted windowpanes of our souls. God shows up, not how we want, not bringing us all we want. God’s plan is not to fix everything that is wrong in the world, but to meet all the wrong in the world with Love. Just as a baby, despite a birth that is all wrong, is held and received in Love. So whereas God shows up in the most unexpected forms, God shows up in the very form that the world needs most.

 

That is, when it seems the worst could or has happened, that’s when God shows up.

 

Christmas happens. Look for God’s love in the most unexpected, all-wrong, no good kind of places in your life. For in that space, God will show up. 


“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to all.”

Luke 2:1-20



Subscribe to The Trouble with Jesus Blog Here.


The Trouble with Jesus: extravagant love comes with extravagant sacrifice.
By Constance Hastings March 31, 2025
Judas wasn’t your best guy. Why you brought him in, we’ll never understand. How he ever became treasurer for your disciples’ accounts must have happened with mastered manipulation. As it is, though his intentions weren’t the best, he may have had a good point here. And saying it might have been the mic drop of the night.
The Trouble with Jesus is his teachings go places we never see coming.
By Constance Hastings March 23, 2025
Frequently when Jesus was teaching, those of ill-repute were in the crowd, tax collectors and “other notorious sinners.” Reputations are made by who your friends are. True, so why did Jesus seem to prefer, maybe even have a better time with the likes of these? He answers with parables about what gets lost.
The Trouble with Jesus is he advocates for more time by grace while not denying judgement.
By Constance Hastings March 17, 2025
The Trouble with Jesus is he advocates for more time by grace while not denying judgement.
The Trouble with Jesus is how he knew what was coming and still went straight into it.
By Constance Hastings March 10, 2025
The Trouble with Jesus is how he knew what was coming and still went straight into it. He'd call out Herod for the fox he was even as he sobbed over the rejection he'd meet.
The Trouble with Jesus is he seemed to be looking for something no one else could see.
By Constance Hastings March 5, 2025
All heroes have an antagonist, one who pushes hard against the best parts of who you are and what your purpose is. Fitting then, God’s beloved Son would meet the total antithesis of who he was before he even got out of that hot place, a kind of hell.
The Trouble with Jesus means treasures dear to God are the ashes of our lives.
By Constance Hastings March 2, 2025
The Trouble with Jesus means our treasures are most dear to God when they are the ashes of our lives. Whatever upholds justice and love of neighbor is what God desires.
The Trouble with Jesus: High mountaintops are only a flash, touchstones to who he is...
By Constance Hastings February 24, 2025
Any who have ever had a mountaintop experience will tell you, it’s nothing that can be planned, arranged, or scheduled. Spiritual encounters come out of the blue, filled with insights, revelations not previously perceived but somehow needed and relevant to a moment or period of life. And they never last. If anything, they serve as touchstones reminding of the source of that power, power greater than oneself in God who was, is and will always be.
The Trouble with Jesus: he taught like a hacktivist.
By Constance Hastings February 17, 2025
The Trouble with Jesus is he was a hacktivist, someone who uses hacking to bring about political and social change.
The Trouble with Jesus: His kind of world change calls for taking on the very identity he carried.
By Constance Hastings February 10, 2025
Jesus, let’s ask the hard question. Are you a communist? All this talk about helping the poor (or however you describe economically deprived, marginalized people) along with negative criticism of the rich and powerful is getting a little heavy. I mean, what have you got against people getting ahead in this world and having a measure of wealth, enjoying life, amassing friends and followers? “Woe to you who are rich…what sorrows await you who laugh…” This country has its success due to capitalism. Free enterprise made us what we are today. We’ve got our faults, but Marxists we ain’t.
The Trouble with Jesus: you can’t ignore the changing political, economic, and social scene.
By Constance Hastings February 3, 2025
The Trouble with Jesus: To understand what Jesus was calling them to do, you can’t ignore the changing political, economic and social scene.
More Posts
Share by: