Talking about Jesus and geese. Because Christmas, that’s why!
Luke 2:1-20; Titus 3:4-7; Psalm 96; Isaiah 9:2-7
Once upon a time, there was a man who lived on a farm. One day, while he was by himself, a blizzard stirred up – wind, snow, a regular mid-western snow-storm of doom. As the man looked out the window, the only thing he could see was the whiteout of the storm. As evening approached, he sat down to relax in front of his fireplace. Just then, he heard a loud THUMP outside the house. After thinking about it for a bit, he decided something must of hit the side of his house. He looked out the window to see what may have hit, but there was so much snow he couldn’t see more than a few feet.
A bit later, during a lull in the snowy mess, he bundled up, determined to brave the snow to find out what was going on, and what had ran into his house. Imagine his astonishment when he saw a flock of wild geese in his field. They had been flying south for the winter, but the blizzard threw them off course and couldn’t go on. They were just stuck there, flapping their wings and flying around the field in low circles, not knowing where to go or what to do. With the storm, there wouldn’t be anything to feed or shelter them, and they were in trouble.
The man figured out that it must have been one of the confused geese that caused the thumped; the extremely low visibility meant they couldn’t see where they were going. The man started to feel sorry for the geese, and wanted to do something to help them. They’d be a lot better off in the barn than out here, he thought; it’s warm and safe – they could spend the night in there and wait out the storm.
So the man trudged out to his barn through the snow, opened the doors, and… nothing happened. The geese just flitted about, not noticing either the barn or the safety and shelter it offered them. The man tried to get their attention, but that only served to frighten the geese, moving them even farther away from the barn.
Well, that didn’t work, the man thought. Maybe something else will convince them. So, being a fairly smart man, he went into his house and got a loaf of bread, making a trail of food into the barn. The man, looking a little proud of himself, waited for the geese to follow the trail, but they never did. They carried on just as they did before.
Next, the man tried to herd the geese into the barn, but that only scared them more, and led them further and further away from the barn. Nothing he tried worked; the geese simply wouldn’t go into the warmth and safety of the barn.
The man didn’t stop thinking though, I bet if I were a goose, they’d follow me into the barn. Now, it just so happened that the man had a few geese that lived on his farm, who were already safe in his barn. He went, picked it up, and carried it around the flock of wild geese so that he was on the opposite side of the barn. Then, he let his goose go, which of course promptly headed straight back into the barn, as it wasn’t very happy to have had to go outside in the first place. Then, each of the wild geese followed the man’s goose into the barn, able to safely ride out the rest of the blizzard.
This is a cute little story a friend emailed me a little earlier this month, which I edited quite a bit, but it really fits what happened at Christmas, when God because a goose. No? I knew something was wrong…
Christmas is all about celebrating God the Son becoming Jesus in order to show us what God is like. Isaiah calls him Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. The Psalm says that he will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with this truth. Luke tells us some of the events surrounding his birth, but want I really want to focus on is what Paul tells us in the letter to Titus.
Paul writes that when Jesus showed up to save us, essentially from ourselves. It’s our human nature to want to do whatever it is we think is right. Just like the geese who refused to enter the barn, our own thinking of what is right tends to get us into trouble. We do things that may seem fun or something that seems like a good idea at the time, but ends up with consequences we didn’t expect.
But God has something else in mind for us. He has a better idea for our lives than we do – a life of freedom with him, one that will culminate in beating even death and living forever at the best party ever. It’s a chance to leave our lives’ “blizzard” and enter the safety of God’s “barn”, to make a particularly corny, yet fitting, analogy.
That’s what Christmas is about – God become a person to show us the way to him. It’s about freedom from all the things that get in the way of the life God has for us, a life realized when we follow Him.