O Christmas Tree

For another year, the task is done. The tree has been dragged out of the garage and meticulously assembled in the living room. I've crawled around in the attic to find the bins labeled "Christmas ornaments" and pulled them down - at great risk to life and limb. (Actually, with my weight loss, for the first year ever I am under the suggested weight of the attic stairs that I installed eight years ago; less risk than ever!)

Decorating the tree is probably the one holiday task that the three of us (the wife, the daughter, and I) all do in unison. This year we made the $0.59 investment in new hooks, turned up some Christmas tunes on the surround sound, and we hung ornaments with various levels of familial significance on the tree limbs.

As I was hanging the "baby's first Christmas" ornament on the tree, it occurred to me that decorating the tree was a picture of our lives. We've got lots of ornaments, or accessories, with which we dress up our lives. The more the better to give our lives more meaning and value. When we're with others, we can use the accessories to compare and covet. Christ is not immune to being relegated to one of the branches of our lives.

Because making Jesus our identity is difficult, requires reflection, and often causes us to suffer,we then settle for making Him an accessory in our lives.

When Jesus plays the role of accessory, He is there to make us look good. Christ becomes a mask that we wear in certain situations, usually when it is convenient and necessary. But when we accessorize, if we are honest, if our Jesus ornament was taken away, life would be pretty much the same. We were 'good' people before, and we'd be 'good' after. Jesus makes no noticeable difference to our day to day decisions or behaviors.

So we end up running to other things in order to build up our identity. More accessories.

Accessories fit into the space that we have for them like that low branch on the tree that needs something so as to not look so plain. Problem is, accessories get lost in the crowd. My daughter found a large bead on the floor that fell off one of our much loved ornaments. As dad, it is my job to find and fix the ornament, but I cannot find it. It is lost on the tree among all the other decorations. So the piece sits on the counter until after Christmas when we de-decorate the tree. It is one ornament among many, getting lost in the crowd, ironically losing its significance because of all the other precious decorations that are its neighbors.

Like Jesus. Lost among the gym, work, book club, recycling, marriage, and all the other accessories that we turn to in order to feel significant and valued. One among many. Something we pull out in appropriate situations, then put back on the tree.

Judas had Jesus as an accessory. Wanting to overthrow the rule of Rome, Judas sought Jesus on his own terms. Fitting Jesus neatly into his already established beliefs about the messiah. And in order to speed things along, Judas sold his accessory for 30 pieces of silver.

Accessories are easy to give up or become the object of our blame when they are not serving our purposes. We control the accessory.

If Jesus is just to be an accessory in our lives, we are bound to be disappointed. We'll blame him and question him, but the problem is that we won't have given our lives fully to him. Rather than him being an ornament on us, we are to be IN him. In Christ. We are to disappear in the covering of Christ. A new identity; a new creation that changes everything. Changed by His work, not by dressing ourselves up with ornamentation.

Problem is, identity change is a daily battle. It is much easier to don the ornament and move on to the next thing. So we end up with crowded lives that look like each year's Christmas tree.