What's the Deal with Christmas?

 The scriptures referred to are Luke 2:1-20, John 1:1-18.

Sermon writing is hard, especially when you must preach on the same events every year, like Jesus' birth, death and resurrection. What can I say that is neither obvious and needs no repeating nor simply a repetition of what others have already said over the last 2000 years and probably said better than I could?

My sermons tend to consist of 3 parts: What?, So What?, and Now What? In other words, what is our topic, why is it significant and what should we do about it? Which is why Christmas is particularly difficult to preach about. Jesus Christ, God's son, was born. It's there in the gospel texts. There's the “What?” and it doesn't need that much elaboration. You can do a bit more with the “So What?” part, delving into the significance of God becoming a human being and how he chose to do so, by being born into a poor family. But the Sunday after Christmas, you have pretty much exhausted that. The real problem is the “Now What?” part. Jesus is born. What is your response? Say “Happy birthday?” Pass out cigars? Tell others about it? But in this day and culture, pretty much everyone knows that Christmas celebrates Jesus' birth. So if that news was going to elicit a response from people, it already has.

Some of the response is sentimentality. People take the elements of the nativity story and make pictures, TV shows, Christmas cards, figurines, etc. that are cute or even appear reverent but which miss the point of the significance of Jesus' birth, aside from non-specific platitudes about love or peace. I am not against these things but let's face: there is a whole industry out there that churns these things out, not for the sake of the gospel but to make a buck catering to people's sentiments.

And, of course, that industry realizes it doesn't even need to deal with the hot potato of God Incarnate but can do equally well or better churning out elves and reindeer and candy canes and Batman tree ornaments and ugly sweaters and nostalgic Christmas specials and romantic movies set during the holiday season in which women fall in love with someone who in some cases turns out to be Santa Claus. And all this stuff obscures the true nature of Christmas. There is a hilarious speech in Doctor Who in which an historical tour guide from the future tells people about a Christmas that he has reconstructed from the fragments of our culture that survived to his time. He says, “I shall be taking you to Old London town in the country of UK, ruled over by Good King Wenceslas. Now human beings worship the great god Santa, a creature with fearsome claws and his wife Mary. And every Christmas Eve, the people of the UK go to war with the country of Turkey. They then eat the Turkey people for Christmas dinner, like savages.” And the Doctor listens to this garbled version of secular Christmas with increasing alarm. But, let's be honest, that's how it might seem to a stranger who only knows of the Christmas-adjacent trivia under which we have buried the real Christmas.

Some respond by deconstructing the story. They look at each part of the narrative and do lots of research—and speculation—to figure out the year and the time of year of Jesus' birth, the exact place where he was born, the historicity of Herod's slaughter of the innocents, the nature of the celestial event that the magi observed and more. And, again, I don't mind these. I love learning more about the period and the culture into which Jesus was born. But, like the sentimental elements of the narrative, they can get people sidetracked from the point of the story, the good news of what God did in Christ. Folks get so absorbed in the details of each brush stroke that they don't see the whole picture.

Some respond by making their yearly or semi-yearly pilgrimage to church. They sing familiar hymns and listen to familiar stories and feel they have done their duty to God. They might bring their children or grandchildren, thinking that, like homeopathy, exposure to a tiny bit of something, in this case religion, will do the job that regular doses were designed to do. And part of that is thinking that faith is a nice extra to life, not something vital to a robust spiritual life. If I treated my physical therapy sessions that way, I would still be unable to walk. If we want to walk with Jesus, we need to keep coming to where 2 or 3 are gathered in his name and he is in their midst. We are to be the body of Christ, not independent agents with a side gig.

I was surprised to learn that for the first 350 years the church didn't have a holiday commemorating Christ's birth. The passion, death and resurrection of Jesus was the center of the faith. Because if they hadn't happened, there would be no church. A person being born is not earth-shattering news. A person returning from the dead is. Only in retrospect did the church feel it was important to celebrate Jesus' birth as well. And it wasn't to replace a pagan holiday that December 25^th was chosen. It was based on the ancient idea that a person's death took place on the day of their conception. If Jesus died in the spring, at Passover, he must have been conceived around then 3 decades earlier and therefor born in the winter. Since March 25^th was considered a probable date for his death and thus conception, December 25^th was chosen as the likely day of his birth. It had nothing to do with taking over the pagan holiday of Saturnalia or Sol Invictus or the winter solstice.

As we said, Jesus' resurrection from the dead is the real news, the good news. It showed that Jesus was not just a prophet or a Messiah wannabe but the Lord of life. It was so unexpected that the disciples had to rethink not only who Jesus was but the nature of God as well. And only then, looking back, did they realize that for the Lord to die for us he had to be born as one of us. And that shows how much God loves us.

Let's say you were really into an endangered species that lived primarily in a area that would be flooded soon due to global warming. And let's say you knew of a better safer habitat where they could live if you could just get them there. But they are shy of human beings and run from you and hide. How can you get them to safety? What if there was a way you could become one of them and gain their trust and lead them to their new domain? Would you do it? Would you do it even if you knew you would have to die to get them there? If so, it would mean you really loved them.

Christmas is not about angels or animals or a manger or a star but about God loving us enough to give up his prerogatives and privileges as divinity to take on our humanity. And in doing so, he knew that life would be hard and end in a brutal death. He knew all that going in. And he did it anyway. That's love. That's incredible love. And our response should be to share not just that story but that love with everyone we meet. And to keep coming back together to celebrate that love with others who are of the same mind and spirit, and to give and receive encouragement and knowledge and support and wisdom and spiritual refreshment and, yes, to sing songs about the God we see in Jesus, the baby, the man, the sacrifice, the risen Savior.