One day, years ago, I stood at the counter of Tim Hortons peering through the glass window at the array of donuts, muffins and cookies. The tantalizing sight enthralled me, but after this day things would never be the same.
You see, back then people smoked in Tim Horton’s. A friend had recently remarked on how smoky their baked goods tasted. This day I ordered a coffee and a gargantuan peanut butter cookie, sat down, took a big bite out and immediately wanted to spit it out. My mouth tasted like I’d licked out an ash tray! I had been going to Tim Horton’s at least weekly for years and had never noticed the smoky taste before.
If we don’t know what we’re looking for, we’re not going to find it. And just as I couldn’t taste the smoke because I wasn’t expecting to, so we won’t find God if we don’t know how he “tastes.”
Mary, the mother of Jesus, knew that taste. How do we know that? Shortly after the angel Gabriel tells her she will bear God’s Son, she bursts out in a spontaneous, jubliant song of praise saturated with biblical references. She knew God’s word and so knew the kind of God who had spoken to her.
She understood God’s kingly power. Her song contains several allusions to it. God is “the Mighty One” who “has done great things” and “performed mighty deeds with his arm.” But she also knew that God turns all human concepts of power on their head.
She was familiar with the major biblical theme of the great reversal. Mary proclaims that God scatters the proud and brings down rulers from their thrones while lifting up the humble. He fills the poor with good things and sends the rich away empty.
In her own life, she goes on to witness God’s power displayed in precisely the opposite way we would expect. When God’s Son is unveiled, no powerful superhero reveals himself. No king or president commanding a vast arsenal of spears or nuclear weapons appears. Rather, God’s power reveals itself in a helpless, cooing baby, “Jesus, the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:24).
He lifts up the humble and fills the poor with good things. We exalt the strong, the winners, the powerful, the talented, and the beautiful. God’s eye is upon the poor, the broken, the sick, the aged. He tells us the ones who are blessed turn out to be the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who know they have failed.
Jesus reveals a God who is not harsh or one who condemns us for our faults. Rather, he comes alongside to help. A God who is patient. A God who sympathizes with our weakness and is willing to work with us again and again as we stumble through life.
To look for the right God we look for a “great reversal” as seen throughout the bible. It’s never more evident than when this cooing baby grows up and fulfills his destiny. He chooses to die on a cross for his enemies rather than destroy them.
What kind of God are we looking for this Christmas?
How does God “taste” to you?
(If you would like to watch the talk where I expand on this message, view here.)
Leave a Reply