Unexpected Jesus

The following is a story I wrote for our Christmas Eve Service. It is based on some personal experiences and other stories I have heard.

I want to tell you the story of how Jesus took me by surprise. It happened right before Christmas when I was 21.

My name is Alex. Growing up my mom would drag me to church most Sundays. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to believe. It was just that the stories didn’t make sense to me. Especially the Christmas story.

Our priest said that Christmas was about God's greatest gift of love to the world. But why did it have shepherds and wise men and animals in it? What did Bethlehem have to do with anything? Why was Jesus, who was supposed to be God himself, born to poor parents? Come to think of it, no one ever really explained why Jesus was born at all. I remember thinking, “Can’t you have a message of love without all the extra stuff?”

Once when I was 8, I was in the church Christmas pageant. I was the innkeeper. The one line I was supposed to say was, “I’m sorry, there’s no room in the inn.” But when my big moment came, instead of saying my line, I blurted out, “Sure, you can have my room. I’ll sleep in the stable.” Yeah…talk about an awkward moment.  

As a teenager, I found better things to do with my time on Sundays than go to church. I felt more love hanging out with my girlfriend than going to some big building where they talked about a God you couldn’t see.

By the time I got to college I had ditched whatever faith I had. When my freshman roommate invited me to the Skeptic’s Student Union, I found good company. We read French philosophers and talked about how science disproves faith. I have to admit I became one of those people who posted snarky memes on Facebook ridiculing Christianity.   

But meanwhile, I was crushing it in school. I decided to do a dual major in sociology and religious studies, and was writing my senior project called “Religion as a Cultural Narrative.” This gist was that all religions basically were created by people to maintain shared values and provide stability in a culture. By the fall of my senior year I was already lined up with a fully-funded graduate program at the University of Chicago.

On December 19th of my senior year, Jesus was the last person on my mind. But that day, a poster in the student center caught my eye. It said, “The Surprising Truth of Christmas,” a free lecture hosted by the Christian Student Fellowship. Inexplicably I felt a strong urge to attend. Maybe it was my inner skeptic wanting to show up and crash the party. Or maybe it was my inner 8-year-old, with all of his unanswered questions about Christmas.

Then I noticed that the event was happening at 7 o’clock that evening. I was supposed to be going out for drinks with friends to celebrate the end of the semester, but strangely, my hand went immediately to my phone and I sent a quick text saying I had to bail.

At a minute before 7, I walked up to the second floor of the Student Center to the meeting room where the event was happening. As I got close enough to the door to see inside, I froze. I noticed only a handful of people sitting in there, and they were all, as far as I could tell, part of the Christian Fellowship group. My heart started to race. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said to myself. This would just be too awkward. But right as I turned to leave, a man stepped out into the hall. He was a tall, middle-aged guy, balding, with a turtle neck and a tweed jacket. “Just in time!” he said. “Come on in!” I reluctantly followed him into the room, and everyone turned to look at me. Everyone knew me as, by now, the president of the Skeptic’s Student Union. I saw shock on some faces. I thought I saw smiles on some others. My face turned red and I made a bee-line for the seat farthest in the back.

When I sat down, another student got up and introduced the guest speaker, the man I met in the hall--Rev. Dr. Timothy Carson, a pastor from Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, down the street.   

Dr. Carson cleared his throat, and said, “I wish I could draw a crowd this size on a Wednesday night at my own church.” A few people chuckled.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, wondering if I could come up with an excuse to slip out early.

But as Dr. Carson began his lecture, I was transfixed.

“Christmas might not be about what you think it is,” he began. “In fact, the first Christmas wasn’t about what people thought it was. Jesus the Messiah came in a way that no one expected.”

He wove his message from several of the accounts of Jesus’ birth, reading from a worn Bible in his hand.

From Matthew chapter 1 he explained that the genealogy of Jesus was full of surprises: failed kings, prostitutes, outsiders to Israel. Not the kind of pedigree you would expect for the Messiah.

He read Luke chapter 2 and explained that the first people to whom angels announced the news of Jesus’ birth were, shockingly, not the religious leaders or the rich and powerful, but shepherds: those who were poor, outcast, and humble.

He read John chapter 1, unpacking the claim that Jesus was fully God, who came in the flesh as a human being.

“The authors carefully wrote these accounts” he explained, “To show us who Jesus really was. He was Israel’s long-awaited Messiah, yet he came in a way that no one expected. He was the world’s true king, yet just as there was no place for him in the inn, he would be rejected by his own people. He was God with us, in the flesh, yet he was a human being whose life ended in torture and death on the cross.”

“In conclusion,” he said, “the surprising message of Christmas is the gospel: The Creator came into his creation in the person of Jesus Christ to save us. Not through power but through weakness, in laying down his own life for us. From his birth in a manger to his death on a cross, it’s a story we never could have dreamt up. All we must do is be humble enough to surrender ourselves to him.”    

Dr. Carson asked if there were any questions or comments, and to my surprise I shot up my hand. He raised his eyebrows and nodded for me to ask my question. Everyone in the room turned and stared at me. “Thank you, Dr. Carson,” I said as cooly as I manage. “You talked about God becoming a person to save us. But If Jesus really was God, as you say, it’s unbelievable to me that the creator of the universe would actually become a helpless baby, that he would have to sleep, eat, that he would feel pain, let alone that he would be rejected by his own people, and die on a cross. It seems irrational.”  

Dr. Carson looked at me with a steady gaze. He paused for what felt like an eternity. I expected some kind of rebuttal or defense. But when he finally spoke, all he said was, “Thank you for making the uniqueness of Christianity so clear.”  

My mind was racing. I had never heard anything like this before. I felt as if I had been turned upside down and shaken and all my ideas and beliefs were in a jumble. 

I left the lecture that night in a daze and went straight back to my room.

The next day I had a 3-hour drive home. I thought about what Dr. Carson had said. I thought about my life. I felt strangely exposed, like someone was looking straight into my heart. I felt guilty about my pride, my meanness, and a hundred other things. But more than that I felt a sense of love.

On Christmas Eve, I went to church with my Mom. I felt like I was hearing the readings and songs for the first time. Everything made sense in a new way. As we sung “O Little Town of Bethlehem” we got to the line, “Where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in,” at that moment something happened. “Jesus,” I whispered. “I believe in you.” “Jesus, come in and be my king.”   

That’s how Jesus took me by surprise. And I want to ask you on this Christmas Eve, has he surprised you, too? 

You might be wondering what happened in life after that. Believe it or not, I walked away from that fully-funded grad program and went to seminary instead. And do you know where I got hired as an assistant pastor? Emmanuel Presbyterian Church, working with Timothy Carson. Jesus is full of surprises.