The Christmas Story – Do We Really See!

As a scientist I love the magazine, the “New Scientist”.  In fact you don’t have to be a scientist to love it as it brings the world of science into our lives in ways that we can understand and be amazed at.

The other day it had an article, about how we can all have an ethical and guilt free festive season.  Apart for the obvious, which is don’t spend so much money that you get into debt, buy pressys that are from sustainable places, from sustainable material or make your own if you can, don’t use wrapping paper, or at least recycle it, and don’t eat and drink too much, there was some interesting words about Father Christmas. 

It points out that Santa has become in some places a way to monitor children’s behaviour!! Be nice or else. As the writer of the article says, that’s horrible, and St Nick deserves better! Sometimes I think our faith has turned into this as well, but that’s for another day.

In the end however, the author points out that Santa Clause does not have to be set aside to enjoy an ethical Christmas.  The magic and mystery is a great thing, but the ways we use the story may need to reflect more of the joy and wonder of the holiday.

For the myth of Father Christmas is a form of storytelling and really, it’s okay.  For we are story tellers, all of us.  Someone recently suggested that a truer name for our species rather than Homo sapiens might be Homo Narrans, the storytelling person. We heard it earlier in the children’s address.

So what we are doing here with Father Christmas is using a story to transmit some deep and meaningful messages to the kids.  Things about kindness, sharing, and the spirit of love and life.  Now I can hear you saying that it gets commercialised and trivialised, and  he gets turned into a policeman at times, and yes I agree. But the spirit of Christmas is there if you look. 

Thank goodness since we raised our kids to love Father Christmas, to embrace the joy and wonder of it all, send letters, leave out food and drink and carrots, and even get a pressy from the big man from the south pole.

However it does point to the need to understand its role in our culture.  And the role of story and yes, myth in our faith traditions.

So let’s come back to today, Christmas day. Of course we believe with all our hearts that it’s about Jesus. But how exactly!

Because Christmas is not something the early Christians celebrated. It wasn’t until Emperor Constantine in the 4^th century took a pagan festival called Sol Invictus, or birthday of the unconquered Sun as the date for Jesus’s birth because it wasn’t really known, to get things going, and even then it wasn’t called Christmas, but the festival of the nativity of our Lord.  Christmas wasn’t really celebrated as a huge event until the 18^th century.

So while I don’t want to compare Father Christmas with Jesus, it’s a good segway into the idea that our Christmas stories are so much more than a set of facts, which we regurgitate every year and then forget. Or worse still discount as being unbelievable.

Rather if we see the Christmas stories as myths, beautiful and powerful, it brings them alive.   As Keith Rowe says, myths are the mirrors in which we see what we might become. They represent a way of human knowing that can be placed alongside scientific knowledge as two complementary pathways into life’s truth. They don’t have to be literally true to be true!

And they can come up with some unexpected insights. Things we don’t see until we really see!

I have spent many a Christmas day sermon talking about the stories, how they only appear in 2 of the 4 gospels, how they reflect in miniature the world Jesus lived in, how they were written a long time after the death of Jesus. How they have different accounts, and how they represent the time they were written. So today I am going to go wider and more universal.

While both accounts are full of earthly things, and some mystical things who is the child at the centre?  The Gospel of Matthew describes him as Emmanuel, God with us.  Jesus is at the centre of the story, the character extraordinaire.  A revelation to us about where God is to be found and what God needs from us. 

This is the essence of the stories. 

Even in our cynical, secular world, it seems to echo a strange and beautiful and evocative call.  Where is God? Tell us about your God. Particularly today when war, and violence and climate catastrophe, and loss and grief is just around the corner.

As Keith Rowe suggests, “There are no facts upon which we can say for certain that God is with us or even that God even is, but over the centuries those who have taken the stories of the birth of Jesus and the life of Jesus into their hearts and imaginations have been changed.  And maybe they have glimpsed this God”. 

Not a God in the sky, not a God who intervenes in human affairs every now and again, but a God found in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world as Frederick Buechner would say. A presence found in all of life, from the smallest molecule of the universe to the complicated but beautiful creatures we have become. A presence found in Jesus.

The reading today from the Gospel of John speaks of this.  We hear what the early Christians heard. Jesus has come into the world to bring life and light.  God’s light and life.

So the birth stories we hear in December each year are not really about a baby at all but about a man, called Jesus and about his life in God and in the world. 

They are about finding God in this human Jesus, who lived and died in 1^st century Judea, but who more than anyone since has shown a new way to live with one another. 

The stories of the poor shepherds who were the first to hear of the birth, of a defenceless baby, of parents who were refugees, of a smelly stable, and animals and women and foreigners and angels reflect Jesus’s life and teachings in miniature. A way of love, grounded in the earthy world that he knew and in the indwelling spirit of God that guided him.  A kingdom of love, compassion, forgiveness and deep joy irrespective of race, religion, class, gender and age.  Where everyone was to be included and no one went without. A kingdom of justice.

One that so challenged the authorities of the day, the Roman Empire, but also some of the religious leaders that he was ultimately killed. Because Instead of power and violence and injustice and exclusion, hallmarks particularly of the Empire, we get a Jesus who was a man for others.  He taught and demonstrated that to find meaning in life one must learn to live for others.

It’s message that resonates with the lives of all human beings everywhere, not just those in the 1^st century. We all want to be loved and included, and valued, and have meaning and purpose in our lives.

So what do we do with Christmas in 2022? What is it really saying to us?

Maybe the spirit of goodwill at Christmas time infects even the critics to believe in the possibility of something different and better, those who are Christian and those who aren’t.  Peace on earth, goodwill to all people and the possibility of hope and transformation.  The challenge is to take this spirit and make the moment last.

And I believe it will last when we see that the God we meet in Jesus is not some otherworldly creature confined to the outer reaches of our reality. Rather the God we meet in Jesus is the life force that surges through all living things, from the moment the universe exploded into form, until today and into the future.  A presence that drives us to be better than we are, more loving, more compassionate and more forgiving. Our hope lies in people, from a church or not, touching and connecting to God’s spirit in ways that make a difference, both to themselves and to others.

People I have seen this week, this month, this year. Who support  the homeless and those without food and shelter, who care for the sick and dying in our hospitals and homes, who teach and nurture even the most difficult and troubled children in our schools, who donate money and time for others, regardless of where or who they are,  who are gentle and kind to anyone serving them, whether that be in shops or other agencies, who seek sustainable ways to live and work, and those who try to change the status quo by advocating, protesting and generally being annoying to our politicians.  Let’s continue to pester them!

As Martin Luther King said, “hope comes in many forms, mostly not supernatural.  Rather in the shape of people, people helping people. God is found in the midst of this action, not separate from it. Springing from an eternal source within which we live and move and have our being.  Out of that we can go forth into the world, with love.

So as unexpected as it is, we are reminded again today at how these Christmas stories, surprisingly, live on, even when you think they may disappear. Jesus message of love for others, powerfully expressed, a long time ago, lives on in our precarious and complicated world because of the truth that lies beneath and beyond them. For God is still here, working within all of creation and in you and me and in all people everywhere.

We just have to look and listen. And follow his lead. For Jesus is our brother, not our divine rescuer.

Amen