Manger Things

A portal is opened to another world.  Someone seems irretrievably lost, but a hero enters an evil world to save him.  A life is sacrificed so that others may live.

I watched the first season of the hit Netflix series, Stranger Things, a few weeks ago (I’d give it an 11, by the way).  If you’re familiar with the show, everything in the first paragraph above is part of the story.  If you’re familiar with the gospel, everything in the first paragraph above is part of the story.

Almost every great story, whether it’s a folk tale, book, or movie (even Hallmark Christmas movies), contains elements of the gospel: failure and redemption; selfishness and sacrifice; lost and found.  Stranger Things is a well-told story and all these elements are present.  Of course, there are many things in the series that do not correlate to the gospel and we shouldn’t try to force them.  I think too many pastors and authors try to find the gospel in everything in order to be culturally relevant, and it’s not always there (naturally, this post is excluded).  Without giving away too much about the story-line of the series, we don’t find parallel worlds in the gospel, nor do we find Eggos.

But there are similarities and they start with the Manger.  A new world was opened to us when Jesus came to live among us.  We were given direct access to the Creator and, one day, believers will enter the portal Jesus opened on the cross and live in that better world with him (the other world in Stranger Things is definitely NOT a better world).  It was necessary for Jesus to come to us because we were lost and without hope.  Much like Will in Stranger Things, each of us wanders through an evil and fallen world looking for a way out.  Someone had to enter that evil and fallen world to save Will.  Someone, and it could have only been someone who was fully God and fully man, had to enter our world to save us.

A character in Stranger Things was willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that her (spoiler alert) friends would be saved from certain death.  Sound familiar?  In any true love story sacrifice is required.; it is required in our lives every day if we love someone.  That defines Jesus – he was the ultimate sacrifice because He loved us.  He paid the price that we could not pay, the price that only He could pay.

In John 13:34-35, Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Jesus had not yet made the ultimate sacrifice when he uttered these words, but it was coming the following day.  The disciples did not yet understand the need for a crucified Messiah, much less that is was about to happen.  At the time, to love others as Jesus loved certainly meant the disciples were to show the compassion and care that Jesus had shown them.  But after the cross, these words took on an entirely new meaning.  To love others is to be willing to sacrifice for them, perhaps even to die for them.  This concept was definitely a “stranger thing” than they had heard before, yet it would mark them, and all followers of Jesus, as true disciples.

Manger things include hope, grace, and love.  May these beautiful things fill your Christmas and may others see them in you and know that you truly are a Christ-follower.  And when the turkey and pumpkin pie are gone, and all the cookies have been eaten … have an Eggo.