The Advent that we are in is not just going back and waiting with them, it's actually going forward and waiting for the next coming of Christ to fully make all things new. So we live in a second advent, if you will, where the word means coming. We're waiting for the fullness to come. You music.
Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ looked like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson, today we have a fascinating conversation about rediscovering the true meaning of Christmas.
Our guest is AJ Cheryl, author of the book rediscovering Christmas, AJ takes us back 2000 years to unpack the rich cultural context and deeper significance behind the Christmas story that we often miss in our modern celebrations. AJ explains how the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the house of bread, where he was laid in a feeding trough, is a profound symbol of him being the bread of life, come to nourish our
deepest hungers. He also highlights the stories of characters like Zechariah and Anna, who models patience, longing and faithful, waiting for the Messiah's arrival. AJ challenges us to approach this Advent season, not just as a nostalgic tradition, but as a time to cultivate our own longing for God's kingdom to come in fullness. He encourages us to create space in our hearts to encounter the God who searches for us even as we
search for him. This conversation invites us to rediscover the wonder and significance of Christmas in fresh ways. So join us and rediscover Christmas. Here's my conversation with AJ. Cheryl. AJ, welcome to shifting culture. Really excited to have you on thank you so much for joining me. Yeah,
Joshua, it's great to meet you, and I'm excited to chat today.
I'm really excited about your book, rediscovering Christmas. I think it's really important for us to dive deep into the story and the context and what was going on and the characters and things that we have forgotten as we, you know, put up our Christmas trees. Have Santa Claus come down the chimney. Have nice presents on Christmas morning. But why are we? Why are we celebrating? What? What is happening, and why was that this first advent really important.
So I love, really just to hear some of your story of how you got into this work of rediscovering Christmas, and why you think it's important to illuminate the Christmas story and what was actually going on.
Yeah, I mean you as a student and sort of a mission leader to the middle and Near East, I think you probably understand it more than anybody, that when you walk the land, you realize that the land is the fifth gospel. It's like your blinders come off, and you begin to see so much that you never noticed before in the two dimensional reading of the text. And so I started that journey, gosh, maybe the better part of a decade ago. There was a guy a
long time ago. He's still actually, I think, leading trips here and there named Ray Vander Laan. And he would take students into the context and teach, you know, from that framework. And then his disciples became my print apprentices. And so I would apprentice from some of his disciples. And when I went over there with them, just the just the whole new imagination of what it means to follow Jesus, started to sort of
connect with me. I'd been a pastor for 15 years up until that point, and so it's been a 10 year journey I'm into, like, I don't know, 25 years of ministry, and only the last years have I begun to understand the depth of the richness of the culture and context by which the Bible through all of the, you know, 1000 years in which it came through all of that came to be in a land. I think, Scott McKnight, I think, said it best that the Bible wasn't written to us, but it was written for us.
And when you discover that there's actually like a real people in place and time, the Spirit was speaking to that is applicable for everybody. It just opens up a panoply of imagination of like, what is that? How do we connect the dots
from that world to ours? I sort of operate with the presupposition that our culture today has more in common with the ancient world than it does the Renaissance or the Protestant Reformation, not to say like that stuff isn't meaningful or real or true, but to say that I think that the things that were happening in the Roman world, the pluralism, the sense of idolatry, and the stuff that was happening then connects deeply with our hearts today as to what it means to follow Jesus in our time.
Okay, well, I want to do. Dive into that for just a bit. So if our culture has more in common with antiquity, of what was happening in the first century, then the Renaissance, the Reformation like that, that time in that era. So our solutions for some of these, this pluralism, these problems that we have in our culture are really stemming from like Renaissance era thinking and starting enlightenment and
then moving forward. So do you think that now, as we've been searching and we're still anxious and lonely and afraid and we don't know how to survive in this world very well, are the answers actually found back in this first century, and how do we start to uncover some of the things that we have lost because of the way that our culture has actually started to shape us?
Yeah, I mean, I think God's writing a really long story. And when you realize that the the realities that God has always been trying to bring to bear in his people are the same today as they've always been. That's just really connected with me. I think that's one of the differences I'm seeing in our time today. That I wouldn't say is new, but it's sort of resurfaced. Is like the longing for story. I think that's why we see Lord of the
Rings, Harry Potter. These sorts of fantasy myths are so fruitful in our culture because people are longing to be a part of something bigger. And this idea individual salvation through the Ordo salutis, what are the four steps, or five steps into becoming, you know, having a sort of transactional, sort of security for the future. I don't think that lands today like it once did, or wanting to say, like, what does life mean today?
What is formation like now? What is the way of Jesus for my life in real time through all the things I'm experiencing, I think that's the gift that the ancient world and the land bring us back
into, is that imagination. And so I've certainly been really moved by that and a longing to stand on the shoulders of not just those who came before me the last couple 100 years, but the last couple 1000 years, what does it mean to hook back into those people and to follow the same Messiah that they were attempting to follow in a city like Ephesus, in a city like Caesarea, Philippi, these sorts of places, has
ministry changed for you since you have, like, dived into walking the Land and being being there, how have you communicated differently, or how have you shared different stories? What are you like drawing on more than you did in the past? How has ministry shifted
such a good I'll just put it through like a teaching ministry, which is my primary sort of bent. I teach context. I teach a lot of maps. It's kind of a running joke in our church and but it's not enough to give a history lesson like, how do we connect the ancient world to the world today? So that's a lot of fun when you begin to understand how the ancient context actually rolls up onto the shores of life on Monday. And people aren't used to that in the church.
They're used to all sorts of different styles, and many of them very good. But I would just say, when you start to teach ancient context, people sit up a little bit higher in their
chair. And I think the reason for that is because a lot of Christians are bored, and when they start hearing what the world was like when Jesus walked it, and what this parable actually means in its original hearing, what this would have felt like when Paul said this and and the undertones of what he was really hinting at, I think people begin to say that the text is so much deeper than I ever knew. And so that's what I'm seeing. And then I'm seeing a real hunger for people to say,
I want to go there myself. I want to walk the land. I want to be on a pilgrimage. I don't want to be on sort of, like some transactional, sort of, you know, religion. I want to feel
like I'm walking the path. And so a lot of that is walking our path here, wherever we are, but a lot of it too, is taking some time and some resources to say I want to walk the steps of Jesus and find out what it smelled like in these places, what it what it felt like in these places, what limestone feels like under my foot, what the dirt feels like in the Judean wilderness. That I think is really gripping people right now,
I've just seen an uptick of people that wanting to go on pilgrimage, people walking the caminos de Santiago, people going, you know, to to Turkey and and, and then looking at Colossi and Ephesus and, and then people going into the Holy Land and going on pilgrimage, but walking the path. And it's an, I think it is an interesting thing that I've seen a huge uptick in people starting to write books of what pilgrimage is. So then, what is that as a
disciple of Jesus? How do you see our life as a disciple of Jesus as a pilgrimage? And how is that different than a transactional view of disciple? Ship or doing church and being a Christian in the modern age?
Yeah, I think it's that view that spirituality is choices, you know, it is the big moment. Sure, it is the feel on the mountain, whatever. But more than anything, I think for people to come back to the ordinariness that you know, Paul would say this word, you know, peripateau, you see all over the New Testament. And let's just take Ephesians. You see it seven times that Christ has done all
this for us. He's walked the path we couldn't so that he could enable and fill us to the way that we can, over the course of time, begin to walk like him. And so I think it's the recovery of spirituality as a process of choices that over the course of time, God molds and shapes us into the form of Jesus. And God seems very comfortable with time, rather than perfectionism and getting it right or
behavioralism. Seems very interested in authenticity and naming where we mess up, and taking responsibility for our own stuff and getting back on
the path. And it seems to me like that's a very interesting spirituality for people today to show up and to say, like, I'm, I'm not even close to being there, but I'm, I'm in, I'm committed to the journey and having grace on myself that God already has toward me, not just for some future destination, but for, like, what it means to show up again with my kids that I messed up with in my tone yesterday, or with my wife that I didn't respect yesterday, or with my colleagues or whatever,
this idea of being fully into a process by which God is making us like him, I think that's interesting for people once again, and it doesn't leave you with a sense of existential boredom that you say a prayer when you're 13, you get on with your life, and hopefully You can cash in when you die. That just seems like a dying model in a world that's longing for justice, in a world that's longing for mercy, in a world
that's longing for growth. And so that's where I find really interesting that the ancient world, I think, has to sort of give to us.
So we as believers in Jesus, disciples of Jesus are caught up in this, this story, and the story where Jesus has actually become incarnate and come to earth here in Bethlehem as a baby. Can you take us into that story that we're still caught up into, that Jesus is actually coming? What was happening in in that place, in that time before Jesus was born, like, right before set the scene, what was going on?
Wow. I love this question. Joshua, this is so good. So, you know, Galatians talks about how, in the fullness of time, you know, God came. And I think we often think, like, why? Like, why did God come then, when we have Twitter now, right? Or we could have trapped him on video camera. It could have been solidified forever.
But you see in the sort of amazing story that God's been writing over the fullness of time that Christ came in, when the road system was being developed by Rome, when the language was being unified by the Greek when the sort of economics and the socio sort of development of the expectation, even for the expectation of Messiah, as Rome was getting adjusted to Caesar, Augustus being called Son of God, so all of these frameworks are coming to bear at the right time in
which God could be birthed into The world. I think it's amazing how God so quickly flips the scripts on the empires of this world to leverage it for the kingdom work that he's doing. And that's just the amazing sort of slight Hand of God. It's ridiculously wise and beautiful. So in the fullness of time, Jesus comes, and he's not just born. I if we did a poll of how many people, and this is what a lot of this book, rediscovering
Christmas is about. If we did a poll of how many people even knew what Bethlehem meant, I think we would be, as pastors, really despairing of like, like, we think it's just a random town. Maybe it was a prophetic text. But like, the word itself means house of bread, and it's like, okay, who cares? Well, it's interesting, because Jesus would call himself the bread of life, and the first place that he would be placed wasn't like some bed, or it like the text is very clear that he was placed in
a feeding trough. So from the opening pages of the gospel, what you get is, in the fullness of time, the bread of life was born in the house of bread and placed in a feeding trough called a manger that would nourish the hunger of every human heart that is something like that's a story we need to tell, and that's one that Christians wake up and they say, Whoa, maybe this God is much more strategic and capable and beautiful than I can ever
imagine. What does that mean to trust that kind of God today with the challenges I'm facing? I think that's interesting.
What did it look like, then, like when he was born and placed in that feeding trough. Was he in a little barn outside? Yeah, was he in? He wasn't in the guest room because I was occupied, but he might have been in the in the A family room or a living room, and, uh. So take us. I just want to
picture it. I think for a lot of people, we don't know how to picture the place and the area and why it's important for us to get the picture, because we have lots of scenes of mangers, but it's probably wasn't like that.
Yeah, so this is a chapter on the innkeeper that actually doesn't exist. The word fornkeeper used in the early part of Luke is not the word Luke uses for the Good Samaritan parable, which he does mean innkeeper. So there's no in there's no Holiday Inn. I think we imagine the La Quinta that since then, somehow this family rocks up and there's an innkeeper, and it's the sign says, No vacancy. And he's like, go down the road, because there's a barn over there.
There's a cave or whatever. And actually what it looks like then was a house. And over time, you would build a guest house that attached to your house, or was on top for guests, because hospitality was a primary value. I mean, you've been to the Middle East, even today, hospitality is significant, even for your enemies, for a certain
time. And so you know, to reimagine and to etch a sketch your Christmas pageant, imagine coming into a room, and maybe there's a couple steps up into the living room, and then adjacent to that, as a guest room, well, there's a census going on. And so you can imagine other people have flocked home to Bethlehem, to Bethlehem, and
that guest room is full. And so Mary and Joseph, this couple that are pregnant but are betrothed, but not consummated yet like that would have been scandalous for them, even to ask for hospitality from a family member, which it probably was, was associating with all sorts of sin that this couple, we've not been invited to their consummation. They're just in kiddushin. They're just betrothed and so inviting them in and that there's no room in the guest room because someone
was probably occupying it. So there's this lower level that you enter into. That was where the animals would would be. And people are like, Well, why would animals be in your house? Well, in certain months, you they provided heat. This was before the heating system of Linux, or whatever your heater is in your house. And so they would have animals come in there. And that's why there would be a
manger in the house. Is because animals would need to be and so you can imagine, here's the King of Kings being born into a place where there's hospitality, but there's no extra room in the guest room, and so he's probably somewhere in the living quarters, and that they place him in the manger, because that is where it was available for him to lie in that main room you would come into that you would step up from the animal trough in that area would be the kitchen, but also it's where you
would sleep, and so it would all be in one room. Basically. It was the the first open floor plan was in the ancient world. So the architects sort of geek out on that and the designers, but I think that's a very provocative sort of re imagination, because I'm used to it being a barn down the street and the innkeeper was pointing, you know, walk that way and you know, there's no vacancy here. The story is the exact opposite.
It's actually about a guest house or a guest keeper, a house owner who was willing to be hospitable despite scandal that could have been attached to his hospitality, and that this room would have been one filled with family and some maybe friends and animals, and that this is the sort of environment in which Jesus, the bread of life, comes into the world, the lowest of low. It's remarkable. What do you think?
Well, I think, well, because it's such a huge honor, shame culture where any shame like that, which is a scandal, basically, they want to cut it off and hide it away and not be seen. And if that shame, that scandal actually comes in contact with you, you are also seen in the same way. So you're essentially cut off from that community because you're associating with scandal. This is why Jesus has all of these, these issues of like eating with sinners and tax collectors and
his ministry, right? And so as he's eating with those people, they're thinking, Oh, their their sin and shame is actually attached to Jesus. But as you see with the with the story of the bleeding woman, even if he touches, she touches, Jesus's robe, the power goes out of him. The shame doesn't come on him. He actually dispels all of the shame. And this is, I think, a beautiful picture of Jesus coming in, incarnate into a
place of scandal and shame. And as he comes as the bread of life, he actually then dispels that shame and brings that light into the into the darkness, into the world, into the scandal. And I love the beautiful picture of what Jesus does, especially around shame, in that context, in that area. Yeah.
I mean, what we're seeing is a great reversal, right? And we see that all through the story of the great reversals, even of Mary reversing the curses of Eve, you know, and the one who seduced, the angel that seduced, we know, Satan was an angel, an angel that seduced Eve into eating of the fruit. Here you have the
reversal in another angel. All also talking to Mary and this angel, it's the reversal of that and that she receives in the fruit of her womb the Messiah who would come and crush the head of the one who was the original tempter. And so you see these great reversals all over the scripture that the coming of Jesus, there's so much
connection. There's a chapter on Mary in this book where there's a connection between Genesis one and Genesis three, with Luke one, and what God is doing in the reversing of human history toward His love and His favor, and it's through Jesus. And it's absolutely stunning.
That's amazing. You know, I just remember we were sharing the story out of Luke with a Syrian refugee, this Muslim woman, and as she heard the story in Luke. And so I'll just come into the the character you just mentioned that the angel. But when the angel came into the shepherds, the shepherds. It says, I bring you good news and glad tidings for all people. She stopped us there, and she said, Is Jesus really for all people? I thought Jesus was just for you Christians, but it's Jesus for
all people. And we basically just said, Yes, that's what the angel says. The angel says, Yes, Jesus is for all people. And she said, Well, if he's for all people, I love him. I want to follow him. And it was in in that encounter with the shepherds, as she is a was a Bedouin woman herself, and very acquainted as a shepherd. And actually, then bringing it into that place of saying, the shepherds get to receive as well, and then I get to receive this good news that is actually
for all people. And I think that is also a great reversal, where the Jews are looking for a messiah for them, right? And Jesus says, I'm actually a messiah for all people. And that is a reversal, and I think it's still having this great, amazing impact today.
And, you know, I think that gets back to the beginning of our conversation around walking the land, as you realize Jesus isn't American. You know, you realize the story, though it includes us, it's not solely about us, it's it's so much bigger than we can ever imagine. And I think for those that are hungry, they recognize that, and there's a kind of awe and wonder that comes out of the significance of this ancient story that was for everybody.
It's just beautiful. And I year after year in the season of Advent. Return to the awe and wonder that, wait even I'm included in this. So it's easy to have the posture of like, wow, even they're included in this, those people over there. And it's like, actually, we're the ends of the earth, even we're included in this. And to resize ourself into the magnitude of God's story, I think is really good medicine and really good for our formation. All right, let's
step back a little bit. We're entering into the season, this Advent season. Why is the the importance for us to actually do some of this Advent work and wait for this coming King, this Jesus, that is going to be incarnate with us, and then going through the seasons of Advent, what was happening back in the story for us to so that we can posture ourselves into a place of actually joining in to the story of what was going on before Jesus was born. Yeah, I'd
say connect the season of Advent with your longings, like where there's ache in your life, that's that's the gift of Advent that leads into the day of Christmas, that leads into the tide of Christmas, that leads into the the rest of the church calendar. What I mean by that is that Advent is, is the invitation to not suppress your doubt and your fears, your hardship, your struggle, your conflicts, unforgiveness. It's the season to check in with all that and to
connect your heart. First of all, to go back with the ancients who were waiting for the Messiah to bring the great renewal that the world was waiting for. The Advent that we are in is not just going back and waiting with them, it's actually going forward and waiting for the next coming of Christ to fully make all things new. So we live in a second advent, if you will, where the word means coming. We're waiting
for the fullness to come. But I think what happens is we don't learn to long to wait to ache. We want to satisfy that with quick, cheap substitute. Thoughts of whatever that might be, consumption, media, parties, staying busy. And so we don't actually tap into what the season is trying to do in us, which is to wait. You know, there's a reason why long longing is about longing, right?
There's like a sense of the longing for something should require a kind of holy patience in us that's not willing to settle for something quick, like, I'll put it in an example. It's like I have an 11 year old, and she'll come home after school, and let's imagine I love to cook. So let's imagine I'm making, I'm making her favorite meal, and but she's hungry, and it's not going to be ready for a couple hours. She is so tempted to feast on just what is not food, you know, chips and junk
and whatever. And by time we get to dinner, she's just not hungry. And it's like that, I think, when it comes to this season is we are willing, we're not willing to wait for a true feast. And so we saturate ourselves with, you know, all the things that the season brings Aunt Sally's fruitcake to whatever, whatever, and all of a sudden, when the real meal is here, we're like, Ah, I'm good. I'm gonna take a nap. And we miss the actual fullness of what it means to live into the story.
And so that's what Advent is trying to do in us, and that's creative in us. That's not like, Hey, here's the five things you have to do. It's to say, how can I get in touch with my brokenness, and how can I turn that in a way where only God can solve this, and I'm not going to seek cheap solutions to take the edge off. I think that has a lot to do with our formation and Advent. Take us
into some of the characters that were in this longing, in this waiting for Jesus. Who? Who are some of these, these people? What are what are we missing when we when we just know their names?
I'll talk about Zechariah briefly, and I'll talk on a briefly Zechariah. This is a deeply religious man. The text actually tells us He's righteous. So Luke wants us to know from the very beginning that he doesn't have a child, but that's not connected with God's love for him and blessing of him. That's not connected to sort of any sort of thing he's
done or left undone. It's just he hasn't had a child yet, yet, and that creates a kind of shame and stigma in the community that they're wondering, like, what's wondering, like, what's up with Zechariah and Elizabeth? Like they're barren, and he's, like, one of our most significant priests. I think he was probably somewhere connected to the
Essenes as a Sadducee. And so then he draw his number to be in the most incredible place, where you light incense right next to the Holy of Holies, like, once in a lifetime opera. Lifetime opportunity. And I think there's an irony that as he's watching the smoke go up, representing the prayers of the people, I think he's probably saying to himself, this is what I would be saying to myself, like God doesn't hear my prayers. I'm a little ticked off about that he hears everyone else prayers, but
not mine. And I think that's why, when the angel shows up, he's startled, because he's not expecting God anymore in his life, that happens all the time where God didn't blow something in my timeline, and it's like, I'm I'm sort of going through the motions here at best. And then all of a sudden, he's silenced when the angel tells him what will happen to him. Now, I don't think the silence is a punishment, and here's the twist on the story, I think it's
a gift. We look at that silence like God being like, Hey, what's your problem? I'm going to do this to you because you haven't been faithful. I think what God is saying is, I want you to cultivate a deeper longing and waiting and hope in me. So I'm going to, I'm going to create some silence in you so that you can expand that space in you that only can fill and watch
what I do. And so Zechariah is the motif is just amazing on what it means to wait and to hope, even things that are unresolved, because God will bring to pass his plan in due time. The other one is Anna. You know, this is a post birth narrative for Christmas tide. I tend to think Anna, you know, she's a widow in the temple. She's been carried by the temple system for, I don't know, 60 some odd years. She prays night and day. Widows were very
vulnerable. And I think what's happened this is, I make this up, Pompey comes through in the in 60 years before Christ Pompey comes through and basically takes over that part of Israel. I wonder if her husband was killed by Pompey's soldiers, and what she does is, the math works out. What she does is, goes straight to Jerusalem and is cared for by the system. There.
I'm just curious if this is someone who whose husband was taken by the enemy, and instead of rejecting God, running from God, blocking God off from her life, she runs straight to. To where she believed God most dwelled, which was the temple. And she dedicates her life to praying for the advent of the Messiah. And so when she sees him, it's like I have actively been waiting for you and praying for you my whole life. And I
can, I can die now I wonder. I just think Anna is someone we don't pay a lot of attention to. She's kind of like a footnote in the story, and yet, what an example of someone who faithfully, actively waited for the Messiah to come, and he did. So those sorts of narratives really challenged me in the Advent season.
I think that longing, that waiting, has been so difficult in many people's lives. And hey, God doesn't hear my prayers. He's answering other prayers. Everybody else is having a baby. Uh, we can't get pregnant. I mean, my wife and I have been through that process as well, of that longing we have a son now, which is incredible. Both Zechariah Anna and a lot of these others received encounters that shifted everything. For
them, it changed everything. I don't really think anything really shifts unless there is an encounter with God, like a God is the one that actually creates the change. But it's an encounter. And this story, this Christmas story, is full of encounter, of like heaven meeting earth, of Jesus coming in, of angels, of like everybody's speaking. It's just like the stars, the Magi coming like it is like heavenly encounter all over the place,
that shift everything. What is the role of encounter and then receiving that encounter for change in this story, in this Christmas Story,
yeah, I've got this whole chapter on angels, and it's, I mean, they, they're everywhere. In fact, they, they saturate all the scripture, and we don't see them. They're sort of like the elephant in the room that we never name and talk about. There's this. There's this interesting thing called Wi Fi. I don't know if you've heard of it. Everyone's really into Wi Fi. Everyone sort of dismisses the ethereal. I shouldn't say everybody. There's actually an
uptick for spirituality. But you know, the first thing you do when you go visit a hotel is you ask what the Wi Fi password is, right, or a coffee shop. So we're sort of already primed that the invisible is a part of our everyday life. We can't see it. They said, If you could see Wi Fi, it would look like rainbow of light everywhere, everywhere you go. And I just wonder if, if the Divine is like that, that our world is actually charged with the divinity of God and God's emissaries everywhere.
And we just were just not aware of it, and that seems to be the case in the biblical text. And so why wouldn't that be the case now? And so I think there's a role for for that, our role in that encounter wherever they come, because they're often surprises. It's not like we can manufacture them or control God and tell God exactly how or when and where that needs to happen.
What we can do is position ourselves to be available for that encounter, you know, and even that sometimes God bursts through that wall and disrupts our lives to get our attention. But I find that there are ways that we can induce the kingdom of God in our life advancing, and a lot of that is creating hollow space in our day, somewhere to be with God. That's not the only place God meets us, but, but there is a practice of cultivating but I love that, that that phrase prepare Him
room. Conversations I'm having with myself through this Advent are, am I intentionally designing my day where I'm literally preparing him room in the deepest part of who I am, because that's where the Spirit of God dwells, and I want to attend to that and encounter that through silence, through stillness, through responding, through whatever words I use, through music, whatever that is like, I just want to intentionally feel like I'm on a journey of not just gliding
through my season, but preparing him room to speak, to say something to me slowly over the course of my life. So those are things that I think I'm checking in with this Advent, lighting a candle in the corner every morning, preparing him room to speak to my heart, being in the gospels, walking in a really specific way of holding certain prayers in my mind. These are ways in which I attempt to induce God's kingdom, trying to be attentive to who he is and what he's doing in the world. There's
two things I'm reflecting on as you're you're sharing that one, I think that because we're caught up in a larger story, we often, we often just think of the immediate moment, like I don't feel God right now, and I haven't felt him for 10 years. But if. You go into the story of the Bible. You go the story of Christmas. You go the story of Advent, you go
in the story of our lives. We our lives are not flat, and they're not all mountaintops, they're not all valleys, but we're we're ebbs and flows, but God is consistent and faithful through all of it, I can name a handful of like God, encounters that I've had in my life that have really shaped the trajectory of where I've been and what I've done, and the culture I've tried to cultivate in my life, and the marriage
that I've tried to have. But there are many times where I just don't feel that encounter, or feel like the presence of God is with me, sure, in those in those longer moments and longer years of despair and loneliness, how do we recognize the shepherd, The Good Shepherd, is walking with us in the valley of The shadow of death, that we know that he is there, even though we may not feel him. Yeah. I
mean, this is the deep stuff of the journey, right? You're gonna have those moments and seasons and years and decades. For some mother, Teresa would affirm that, and she's one of our spiritual heroes in those moments in my life when I don't feel it. It's
the invitation to trust it. You know, I don't feel God, but I trust, I trust that God is and then, you know, Ignatian spirituality, I think, has something to teach us about this, which teaches us to review the day and to say, you know, where did I sense God's presence? Where did I sense God's absence? I to review what
the day was like. I think a lot of my joy, a lot of my feeling God's presence, comes from gratitude for for what is happening in my life, no matter who you are and all the things we're going through, something good is happening somewhere in your life. It's always true. There's always something that you can find that is happening that is good, even in our hardest moments. And it's
starting there. You know, it's easy to start with what's not working in my life, and to try to build out a spirituality from there, or a day from there, a
worldview from there. But what if we started the day in this Advent with what is working, and that we built out from there, so that the joy that comes from realizing that God's hand is connected to whatever is working can sort of help speak into where things aren't working very well, and that I don't always feel like all of my life is deficit, that there actually is things that God is up to in your life, that maybe we haven't connected the dots around his
hand and our experience. And so that's a simple way, I think, to practically sort of cultivate joy and awareness of God's presence in our life.
Jesus is the butt of life. We get to feast on him. Oftentimes, I think we we think that Jesus is the one that provides the bread that we feast on, instead of Jesus being the bread that we feast on. What's then? What is that difference for us to know that he's the one we feast on? So it's not really the external circumstances of what I get, but who he is and how I could be with him.
I mean, I think, and again, we're, we're in deeper modes of spiritual maturity here. I mean, we're talking about participating in his sufferings. We're talking about eating the meal he ate, drinking the cup he drank, not in replacement of him, but in participation with the spirituality of the Cross, which is not an which is not a spirituality of immediacy. It's one in which I trust where the story is going. I know resurrection will, I mean, he, he prophesied, he said, and I'll
rise in three days. You know? He put himself in the context of Jonah. However, he also said, God, if I can get out of this crappy situation I'm in. You know what I mean? I'm for that, knowing that he was submitting to the Father's heart and about to walk through a shadow of death. And it's in that that he he tucked himself into feasting on the Father, and we feast on him. I think it's interesting getting back to this bread
motif. There is no culture in all of the world that doesn't have a form of bread, like a unique, creative form of bread. You take any culture in the world, the tortilla, the pita, the whatever there is sourdough, there is bread everywhere in the world, and that Jesus would say, I am the bread of life in every culture of the world, the integrity is preserved, but the creativity of the context in which Jesus can fit into is absolutely beautiful. And so what does it look like to feast
on him? I think again, getting back to that sin. That Jesus, this doesn't make sense. I don't like what I'm eating here in this circumstance. Nevertheless, I trust you, and you're enough for me, even when that's really hard pill to swallow. I think that is true, nonetheless.
Can you take me into this, the practice of sacrificial giving, the practice of the Magi, and take us into that story. They're following the stars. What's, what's going on, illuminate this, this part of the story for us. Yeah. I
mean, how do you it's controversial. I think it's funny. We've tried to sanitize it and make it like, Oh yeah, yeah. These astrological Zoroastrian, you know, mystics are part of the story, right? I mean the breadth in which God is bringing his salvation story to the world, with shepherds and astrologers and just all of the people you wouldn't expect that would be there from the socioeconomic, cultural situation. It's amazing. It's right there from the very beginning of who Christ came
for, for everybody. You know, I think the scene for us is, is here are these guys who had been giving their whole life to this craft, and all of a sudden their moment had come. And in the book and that chapter, I kind of clear up, or try to clear up, some of the contextual complexities around the East, but they're going west, and how does that work? And all that, I think what's more interesting is that they've packed up their camels with the best of what
they brought. But what's often not talked about is that despite the sacrificial gifts they gave, I think they received in Christ a greater gift, and they recognized that and and this is my sort of critique on the progressive edge of American Christianity right now, they didn't admire him. They adored him. They didn't say, Wow, what a guru. And you know, Jesus is a great teacher, a great guide, and we should this. This is this is the Lord, this is God, and we are going to bow down before
that. We have finally found the one the world was waiting for. And they weren't insiders. They were outsiders that made that discovery. And I think there's something there about laying down their gift, no matter how much we give, God has already out given us in Jesus. It's, it's beautiful. You actually can't it's not a transaction of like, okay, I'm going to do
this. Okay. It's not like, it's not like the equation is fair, that they gave gold or frankincense so that, and so God gives God Self, and so that's a fair transaction. It's not even remotely close. It's just what they got. And they're like, take it like, this is what I got.
This is what I've brought. The best of my culture, of this myrrh, which symbolizes your death, which is crazy from the very beginning, the very embalmment that he would have 33 years odd later is right there in the beginning that this is how he actually becomes the gift of the world. I think that is a mystery that needs further pondering in the local church, certainly expanding the scope of God's story for the people you like least, or would affirm least. So there's a lot there to
meditate on. I think that's really good medicine for us.
Thanks. Now you have to take me into a place where I have to love the people I don't like. Yeah,
man, right. Come on.
We need it, right? Well, it's weird.
They go through the present king of Israel, who should have known, and you talk about creating space in your heart and preparing room for the Kingdom. I mean, Herod was, was the anti narrative of that which that was a joy to write about,
because it's so much later. We don't know a lot about Herod and the local church, but there's a lot we know about him from history that we need to learn that helps set the table of, how am I becoming like Herod, who resists giving to who resists opening my heart to Jesus that wants to control and be my own lord and king and just the the awful regime that he he led to in hopes of securing what he could never secure is just he's a tragic, tragic flaw in the story.
Well, give me a few few things about Herod that we need to know that we don't talk about best
builder that probably ever existed, built stuff like wild, to even see his stones that are still the temple, his his palaces. If you've never been to Masada, make that a goal of your life to get to Masada. I mean, the most incredible, impressive political leader we've ever seen. He could speak Greek. So he understood that world. He was, you know, politically, Roman. He had a sort of backdoor ethnic Judaism thing going on was also connected to the tribe of Esau
in his lineage. And I go through that and that weird story playing out all these years later, but I think there might have been, and this will be controversial to say, and I'm not sure if this is true, I think it might be somewhere i. I think that some Jews were like, we hate this guy, and he's taxing us to the help, but he's he's creating jobs, and he's building our economy, and maybe if we back him, when he gets strong enough, he'll take over Rome, and we won't be under
their neck. We won't be under their boot anymore. I have to think that maybe there was a kind of a deal that they turned their their, you know, blind guy to Herod's behavior because he
was advancing their nation. So I think that there are things that even in today's world that would be a healthy sort of reflection of like, where am I, where am I making compromises for the sake of the economy, or where am I making compromises for the sake of you know, whatever that might be, Jesus is King, and he's not up for election, as my friend Scott Sauls would say. And what does it mean to revere and serve
him first? And most you know, so Herod's a Herod is a figure that would be worth reading about, because I think there's a lot I have probably more in common with Herod than I do. Anna
of Herod is the anti story to the story of Christmas here. Then what is this thing that is coming? What is this kingdom? Then, if it doesn't look like the power of the world to shape the economy or to bring about something a political arena in the world can bring about. What is this kingdom that Jesus is ushering in that looks different, but is actually much more powerful and good and beautiful than anything that the world's economic or political systems can ever imagine or dream of,
isn't that the question? I mean, how much time do we have here? I mean, certainly it's a world where it's beatitudinal. You know, bless her, the poor in spirit bluster, the Merciful. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, it's always different than you think, and it's always better than you know. It is provision for the least of these. But it's not socialism. It's not government
mandated. It's it's through the gift of transformation that the human spirit longs to see every heart filled, every mouth filled, every every person loved Like, like, I think that is the work of the church, not to sort of outsource that to the government, to the state, but to say, how do we play a significant leader in that world of of pure religion, of caring for orphans and widows like these are the things Jesus did.
This is the sort of path that we're called to follow, is to be like him, um, and so there's a lot more we could say. We certainly couldn't say less, but there's a lot more we could say. I think the Beatitudes is always a really wonderful place to start of what the kingdom looks like. And I think it also looks like the overflow of the Holy Spirit. These fruits that we look at in Galatians, these aren't like abstractions. Like this is what the kingdom life looks like. It's growing in
peacemaking. It's growing in joy. It's growing in self control, like when a community catches fire for that vision, they give a preview of what the kingdom that we are waiting for, this Advent that is to come, what it looks like. The question is, can we find people in a community that want to position themselves and surrender where that kind of life becomes possible? That's a hard thing to do. Yeah.
So good. Well, AJ, if people would go out and get your book rediscovering Christmas, what would your hope for them be? And how should we engage this book?
Yeah, my hope for them would be that throughout the course of Advent, and then, most notably, on Christmas Eve, that their hearts would adore the one who came for them, the one who we're trying to find, is the one who came to find us. And so he's been searching for us much longer than we've been searching for him. They would be found. I would hope that you would find little moments of your day where you can sneak into a corner and pray. And those chapters are scripturally
LED. They're also visually led with the sketch that my friend Rick Sargent here, a local artist in Charleston, did to sort of just guide your meditation, that you would Kindle, um, hope, and that you would revel in the story because it includes you. And that would be the dream is for people to know Jesus and to know that the story is so beautiful and is so ancient, but is so new and and God is waiting for you,
beautiful. Thank you. A couple quick questions I have at the end. One, if you go. Back to your 21 year old self. What advice would you give? AJ,
oh man, if I go back to my 21 year old self, I would probably say, slow down. God gave us the gift of time so that not everything needs to happen at once. So slow down and don't compare yourself. It's okay to be who you are.
That's such great advice for everybody. It's so good. It's so hard. I need to figure out, hey, when can I take the mask off and be who I am? And I've created me to be AJ. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend.
I have been reading my friend Trevor Hudson's new book. He's my spiritual director. He wrote a book on on discernment. So if you're searching for a new sense of call in your life, stepping into he's a really great guide. I I failed to remember the name of this title. It's new, but it's earning God's will, and stepping into your calling,
discerning God's will.
Yes, I
should be. I should be interviewing Trevor shortly. We've been been rescheduled a couple times, but he should be be on the podcast soon. So, yeah, he's
a wonderful, wonderful guide into that good
so I will definitely reconnect, connect with them, make sure we're on. That's good. AJ, how can people go out get your book, rediscovering Christmas? Anything else you would like to point people to? How could they connect with you?
Yeah. AJ, Cheryl, that's two, R's, two, L's. AJ, cheryl.org, if you want to correspond, I check email every day, and we'd love to keep the conversation going.
Great. Well. AJ, thank you for this conversation. Thank You that we you actually put us into this place 2000 years ago. What was going on in the story where Jesus came incarnate to us to to Earth, which is mind boggling, mind blowing. Incredible that God would do this for us and be with us in the middle of our longing. And that there is some hope along the way that he ushers in this new life, that as he was in Bethlehem, the house of bread,
he is the bread of life. He was placed in this feeding trough that we get to feast on Jesus, and that this bread motif is happening throughout Scripture and throughout our lives. And thank you that you bring us into this place of adoring Jesus, that we get to be ones that adore him. And so my hope and prayer for all of us, as we celebrate Christmas, we actually get to adore the Savior, the King Jesus, that has come for us. So thank you. AJ, it was a
great conversation. Yeah, Grace and peace to you.
Joshua, you