Christmas, 2023

(The following is the Readers' Digest condensed version of the message I had planned to preach at Calvary Church yesterday. Last Thursday I tested positive for Covid, so preaching was off the table. So I offer this as a Christmas meditation and invitation. Merry Christmas -- Leo) 

Santa Claus is coming to town and he knows if we’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!

That’s basically Christmas gospel for most of us because most of us like to think of ourselves as basically good people. Of course, we measure good comparatively. We may not be perfect but we’re good compared to the bad people who infamously make the news; or people whose morality is beneath our own—at every level. Even those who are unchurched and make no particular claim to virtue compare themselves favorably with all the hypocrites in church. We can all find something good about ourselves that somehow raises us above the crowd and cancels out or diminishes the evil we have done.

We may think of ourselves as basically good people but what if the stakes were significantly higher. What if it isn’t Santa who’s coming to town, but Jesus. Jesus did promise to come again. The old creed declares that “…Jesus sits at the right hand of the father; from thence he will come again to judge the living and the dead.”

And what if our goodness isn’t good enough. Or what goodness isn’t even the main issue? The Bible says: “Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14 ESV).

While we may consider ourselves to be good, I don’t know anyone who would seriously declare themselves to be holy. Holiness implies a vastly different standard. We instinctively know that holiness has an inescapable God-connection. Compared to others, we may be good. Compared to God, none of us is holy.

And yet that very admission becomes a tacit acknowledgment of our disqualification from God’s Kingdom.

Apparently being good enough isn’t good enough. If we want to see God, we must also be holy. But we have already admitted we are not.

So we have a problem. Whatever holiness is, we admit we don’t have it. And without it—without holiness—no one will see the Lord. We’re excluded from his holy presence. Forget being good enough. By our own ready admission none of us are holy enough!

Christmas is God’s response to our unholiness. At Christmas a holy child came down from heaven to make us holy.

When Gabriel announced Jesus’ conception to Mary, he told her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God” (Luke 1:35 ESV).

In Jesus, God reached across the vast divide between majesty and mortality, and holiness took on human flesh. Jesus was perfect in holiness. His whole existence as a man was consecrated wholly to God. He was indeed the Holy One of God.

Which is pretty amazing when you think abut it. Jesus lived his entire life among us and maintained perfect holiness all the time. Not as some weird ascetic, living off by himself in a wilderness cave, but fully engaged in life—all of human society as we live it.

His reputation was such that those religious leaders who considered themselves professionally holy were offended that Jesus, in their opinion, loved to party. They thought he ate too much and drank too much and hung out with the wrong crowd.

Jesus, the Holy One of God, taught us that holiness had little to do with keeping external rules and regulations, what you ate or didn’t eat, or the people you got next to. Jesus said the stuff that makes us unclean and unholy is in our hearts. 

That’s why, by the way, we are able to make goodness relative. With us, goodness is about doing good things most of the time compared to other people. We instinctively know that holiness is another matter entirely, and that our truest inner self isn’t holy. It’s messy. A lot of it isn’t even nice. All kinds of ugly stuff goes on inside our hearts and minds, our fantasies and longings. That’s why we rightly shy away from claiming to be holy.

Jesus was absolutely holy, inside and out! Everything Jesus did was holy. As a result, Jesus could offer himself as the perfect, holy sacrifice that alone could purify corrupted human hearts like ours and make us holy. Listen to what the Bible says: “And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him…” (Colossians 1:21–22 ESV).

Jesus is the Holy One from God who came to make us holy. This means that if you are a follower of Jesus—if you have trusted Jesus to rescue you from your guilt and become your life-Leader, if you have received God’s gracious gift of forgiveness—Jesus makes you clean. In him you are holy—consecrated to God. That’s why the Bible calls us saints. No matter what was in your past, Jesus changes everything. 

This also means that if you are not a follower of Jesus, if you have not yet received God’s forgiveness by faith in Jesus, your impure, unholy heart disqualifies you from seeing God in his perfect holiness, 

Jesus is really good news. Jesus can wash your heart and your soul and make you pure and holy.

“Without holiness, no one can see the Lord.” 

That little verse is a heart-stopper! It demolishes my pretensions of being good enough for heaven with the blunt trauma of my own accusation against myself that whatever else I may be, I am not holy, not fit for heaven. What will we do when we stand exposed before God in the awesome majesty of his holiness?

Jesus is the Holy One from God who came to make unholy people like us holy—fit for heaven. Jesus absorbed everything in us that is impure and unholy in his own body when he died on the cross, and took it out of the way completely. Everything our unholiness deserved, Jesus took upon himself. For those willing to receive him, Jesus offers to wash us clean on the inside and make us holy, people who are set apart, special for God. 

Of all the gifts you may get this Christmas, nothing matches the gift of the holy child, Jesus. Just as you receive presents from family and friends, why not receive the gift of holiness? Without it, no one can see the Lord. Why go without? Let Jesus give you your greatest gift ever this Christmas, the awesome gift of pardon, forgiveness and holiness—the assurance that one day you will stand before God’s throne, not shrinking in mortal dread, but holy and blameless and free from accusation!

 I had been looking forward to our visit to the Upper Antelope Canyon all week. The images I had seen on numerous sites were amazing with exotic, fluid shapes and warm colors that seemed surreal. The photography would be challenging. Bright daylight filters down through openings at the top of the slot canyon and it could be fairly dark at the bottom. The dynamic range of light could easily overwhelm the camera sensor. I set things up the best I could guess and we set off. 

The Slot Canyon is only about two-hundred yards long and I took over two-hundred images.

We had arranged our tour with a company that offered deluxe vans.  They were comfortable and outfitted with four wheel drive and off-road tires and wheels. It turned out to be a good choice. After we left the highway it was a good couple of miles of rough sandy wash before we got to the entrance. Many tours offered seating in the back of open pick-ups, strapped to benches on both sides. That would have been a rough ride.

There were thirteen of us in our van. This would be the group we would stick with, the driver being our guide and shepherd. The groups went through in a steady stream one at a time with just enough space in between to separate the groups. Here's a collection of images from our tour.

Susie approaching the entrance

Our guide took this for us. 

It took some real horsepower from Photoshop to bring these to life. And, because the ISO was so high, everything went through a de-noise filter. But the slot was pretty spectacular.

Coming out the other side, we had to go back over the top of what we had just passed through. This gave us a good glimpse of the desert. 

Our guide told us the pock marks in the rocks were from shots fired at Indians hiding in the slot canyon.

This is the wash above the slot canyon. Flash floods would fill this with a torrent of water, all of which went through the slot. These flood carved the canyon.

Looking down on the exit from above

Metal stairs took us to the top and we walked across a sandy trail back to the vehicles.

Looking back at the wash above the canyon

This is the wash below the slot canyon. You can just see one of the vehicles heading back at the end.

And we're back at our vans. We were in the pretty ones.

This marked the end of our trip in terms of planned events. The car was already loaded---we had checked out of our motel before the tour---so we grabbed lunch and headed back to Flagstaff for an uneventful flight home the next morning.

It was a whirlwind trip but worth every minute of it. 

Let me leave you with this reminder. The video is set in a different biosphere but the words of the old hymn performed by the Getty's still speak to our experience:

This Is My Father's World

Thursday, October 20

 Thursday was our last day at the Grand Canyon. We had scheduled a sunrise tour for that morning and met our tour bus about forty-five minutes before sunrise. As it turned out, we could have saved ourselves the cost of the tour. The shuttles could have taken us to the same place and we would have missed only the driver's narration. 

In any case, we drove to Hopi Point to watch our last sunrise at the Canyon.

When we got back to the lodge, we packed our gear, loaded the car and began the drive east again along SR 64. Our next stop would be Page, AZ, a three hour drive north with a few stops along the way.

Susie took this of me on one of our stops en route.

We stopped at a side attraction offering a view of the Little Colorado River. The site had the requisite Navajo pottery and jewelry for sale, and a sign warned us to stay on the trail and look out for rattlesnakes and scorpions. We did and were treated to this view of the Little Colorado.

The landscape along the trail.

It's hard to capture this in a photo. The canyon walls are scary steep and solid rock.

Susie enjoying the view.

SR 64 connects with Hwy 89 which would take us up to Page. It's a gorgeous drive with amazing rock formations, desert and tantalizing invitations to go off trail. Since we were on a schedule we had to bypass several of these opportunities, but we still enjoyed the ride.

The Vermillion Cliffs

We arrived at Page and enjoyed a prime rib dinner in a local family restaurant. Page is a relatively small town of just over seven-thousand residents, but it sits in the heart of many of Arizona's scenic hot-spots. Lake Powell is there. Horseshoe Bend is just SW of town. Monument Valley, Glen Canyon National Recreational Area, and Bryce Canyon National Park are all within easy driving distance. But we only had one more day and that would take us to the Upper Antelope Canyon, a slot canyon famous for it's fantastic shapes.

Wednesday, October 19

 The Grand Canyon is deservedly one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. It looks almost as if a pair of giant hands rent the earth apart leaving behind this enormous gash to which some five million visitors come each year to witness its majesty.

I woke up early Wednesday morning (still on Michigan time) and stepped outside for some sunrise photos. In the first picture you can see the Bright Angel Trail heading down to the Phantom Ranch.

The vistas are amazing in every direction and I was only witnessing one section of the chasm between two points. 

While I was out a cow elk wandered by, munching on the available browse. She seemed completely unconcerned with my presence, and the several others out for the sunrise, and enjoyed her breakfast stroll through the village.

Grand Canyon Village is a small town with year round residents, mostly the staff serving the visitors and Park Service employees. They have their own school including a high school which graduates about fifteen students each year.

Looking west along the rim sits the Lookout studio. It was designed by architect Mary Coulter as a place for visitors to photograph the canyon.

The Hopi House was another Coulter design, modeled after Hopi pueblos. Tourists can buy American Indian arts and crafts.

At 9:00am we boarded a Desert View tour bus to visit the eastern reaches of the Canyon. It took us along SR 64, stopping a various overlooks and ending at Navajo point and the Desert View Watchtower. This is where the Colorado River enters the Grand Canyon and the canyon itself begins to open up. 

Susie took her Stetson, first chance she's had to wear it.

The watchtower at Navajo Point was another Coulter project. It was conceived to resemble other towers built by the Navajos in the desert. The are was under construction so photography was constrained.

One of the juniper trees that populated the landscape

Mary Coulter used Native American petroglyphs in the walls

One of the ceremonial shields used during the dedication in 1932

The views from Navajo Point spilled out over the desert to the east.

You can see the Colorado River coming into the Canyon from the east

On the way back we made a stop to see "the duck on a rock."

We poked around the rim during the afternoon then took a shuttle out to Mohave Point for the sunset. Again, the afterglow was amazing.

The setting sun just kisses the peaks in the Canyon.

And then back to the lodge for another night's rest.