The
Meaning of Christmas
Galatians
4:4-7
What
is the meaning of Christmas? That
is the sort of rhetorical question which a preacher is likely to ask
at this time of year. Or
perhaps it might be posed more sharply, or even bitterly: What
is the true meaning of Christmas? The
implication of asking the question that way is of course that the
true meaning of Christmas has been or is being obscured by something
else. And
it is not hard to see why a frustrated preacher might feel it
necessary to ask such a question, and ask it in that way.
For
one thing if you didn’t know it would be easy to assume that the
meaning of Christmas was any number of things. The
preacher’s frustration may grow out of how much of the messaging
around the subject and the moment of Christmas seems determined to
direct our attention away from what preachers might like to make us
think about. Most
often at this point preachers complain about the commercialisation of
Christmas. The
meaning of Christmas, if you didn’t know, would appear to be a
massive celebration of spending. Much
of that messaging would seem to imply that for Christmas to be
Christmas a great deal of money must be spent. Money
spent on gifts. Money
spent of food and drink. Money
spent of decorations. Money
spent on holidays, afterwards, to have something to look forward to when it’s all over. If
you didn’t know you might think Christmas was a massive sacrificial
offering to be made to Mammon and to the gods of consumer capitalism. In
the face of such Christmas messaging a preacher might be tempted to
say: “Bah, humbug!”
Of
course materialism isn’t the only message which is being promoted
for Christmas. One
might think the message of Christmas is noting more than nostalgia
and sentimentality. One
might ask the question, “What is the meaning of Christmas?” not
with a sense of irritation but with a sense of regret. Looking
back one might wonder what happened to the Christmases of the past,
which some how felt different or better. Perhaps
this Christmas this would be the strongest temptation of all.
Given all that has conspired to make us miserable this year, and all they ways nothing is normal, our
efforts might be directed to recapturing that sense of joy and wonder
that seems to be have been lost, buried under whatever it is that
Christmas has become now. Maybe
we might recognise that part of what has been lost is our own
childlike innocence. That even before this year happened nothing is as wonderful as it once was. Nothing is a sweet as it once was before living in a world that
includes pandemics, injustice and naked greed, made us hard-boiled
and cynical. We
might look to children to help us recover what has been “lost”,
use their excitement and happiness to try and recover our own. We might tell ourselves with a tear that is mixture of joy and sadness that "Christmas is for the children."
Of
course preachers being preachers, another temptation that is hard to
resist is the temptation to moralise. We
might tell ourselves, alongside Charles Dickens who gave us Ebenezer
Scrooge’s “Bah, humbug!” that the message of Christmas is to
make us better, perhaps kinder. Every
year charities and “causes” surf their messages of generosity and
unselfishness on the larger tide of self-indulgence and
acquisitiveness that goes with the season. Every
year their a charity singles and charity campaigns designed to to
remind us that there are people around us and throughout the world
who are not having as nearly a good time as we are. The
slightly unpleasant truth about such campaigns and about preacher’s
moralising at Christmas is that the best it can really hope to do is
replace joy with guilt. And
guilt is seldom a helpful emotion.
In
the face of all this the puritanical streak in many preachers might
tempt them to abandon Christmas altogether. A
preacher might say that what Christmas has become is irredeemable,
whatever the message of Christmas was, it cannot now be recovered. We
don’t have the power and resources to compete with those who want
to sell us stuff or even those who want us to help others, so perhaps
we shouldn’t try. After
all, we might tell ourselves, isn’t Christmas a relatively late
addition to Christianity? Isn’t
Christmas an attempt by the Church to colonise a pre-existing pagan
festival? It
can hardly be a surprise then that the pagan messaging of the older
mid-winter festival seeps through a Christian attempt to bury it
under something else. Besides
which isn’t it entirely possible to believe what Christians
believe, and live in the way Christians are supposed to live, without
reference to Christmas. After
all isn’t it the small minority of the authors of the New
Testament, Matthew and Luke who find it necessary to recount the
Christmas story. Paul,
a preacher might reassure us, has no mention of Christmas. And
despite how we arrange the books of the New Testament, Paul is the
earliest Christian writer whose works have come down to us. And
Paul by himself is responsible for fully 28% of the New Testament and
his biography is half of one of the other books, Acts. Can’t
we be like Paul, and save ourselves the aggravation and do without
Christmas altogether?
Preachers
are predictable creatures. Everyone
just knows that the answer to that
rhetorical question is “no”! We
can’t do without Christmas. What
is more, despite what we might think, it is Paul himself who can tell
us what the meaning of Christmas is. Paul
in just two verses summarises the message of Christmas:
But
when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a
woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under
the law so that we might receive adoption as children as children.
Despite
the fact that Paul doesn’t recount the Christmas narrative, the
whole story is implicit in those two verses. And
what is more this story is not, as some might think, a late addition. This
is Paul writing to his friends in Galatia, and there is good reason
to believe that this is in fact the oldest book of the New Testament,
the first to find its current written form.
In
a single sentence Paul tells the whole story and draws our attention
to the meaning of Christmas:
When
the fullness of time had come. . .
There
is a trajectory, an arc of history, in what God is doing. Much
of that history is told in what we call the Old Testament. The
image I like is that of a bow being drawn back, pulled back to its
greatest tension, and held for a moment, until the string is released
and the arrow allowed to fly. What
we call the New Testament is the climax of that older story. It is the flight of that arrow. In
the build up to Christmas we remind ourselves of the preparations God
makes for Christmas to happen. The
final step in that preparation is John the Baptist. Mark
doesn’t tell the Christmas Story but
John is very prominent in his account of the Good News. And Matthew
starts his telling with a genealogy, all the generations that lead up
to the moment of Jesus’ birth. Then:
God
sent his Son. . .
This
of course is the key to the meaning of Christmas. It
might be insufferably twee, but it is not wrong to assert that “Jesus
is the reason for the season.” Christmas
is about the way God comes to us. Without
Christmas, without Jesus, God’s Son, there is no way for us to find
our way to God. Without
God’s action we would find ourselves as pagans worshiping not God but
power or money. Or
we would find ourselves trapped in moralising guilt or
sentimentality. For
some the idea of virgin birth is hard to swallow, but the story is
told that way for it to be clear to us, that Christmas is something
that God does. The
initiative is with God. God
sends us his Son, we are not taking anything to God.
All
sons have mothers:
Born
of a woman. . .
Jesus is God’s Son. To encounter Jesus is to
encounter the fullness of God The likeness between Jesus
and God is sufficient for John to say, in the introduction to his
Gospel:We
have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son full of grace
and truth (John 1:14) But
whilst Jesus is God, the great mystery of the Gospel is that Jesus is
also entirely human. Paul
doesn’t name Mary, but she is as present in his account of the
meaning of Christmas, as she is prominent in Luke and Matthew’s
telling of the Christmas story. My
favourite Christmas hymn, one which we don’t sing enough because
it’s not really a carol is Charles Wesley’s “Let earth and
heaven combine” (Singing the Faith 208). Wesley
says: “our God contracted to a span, incomprehensibly made man.” Perhaps
Wesley’s poetry is better, but Paul was already saying from the
start.
There
is a particularity about the Christmas story. Jesus
is born as a human. But
there is a particular context to Jesus’ birth:
Born
under the law.
One
of the things which Christians have often been forgetful even
resentful of is the Jewishness of our faith. God
is not God in general. God
is not a philosophical abstraction. God
is God in particular and God has acted in a particular way. That
way is sovereign grace. God
of God’s own deciding choses to act through Israel. Jesus
is in continuity with the history of Israel. One
of the Christmas stories we
often tell on this Sunday is Jesus’ parents’ fulfilling the law
by having him circumcised and presenting at the Temple. Jesus’
birth is the context of faithfulness to Israel. The
only true and living God is the God who makes himself known in this
context.
For
Paul though the law also stands for everything that goes before this
“fullness of time” that has now come about in the birth of Jesus. The
law for Paul means all the efforts that humans make to either
approach God, or conversely to avoid God. God
brings this to an end in the Christmas story.
Christmas
must also point to Easter.
In
order to redeem those who were under the law. . .
Paul
knows you can’t have one without the other. Christmas
implies Easter. Easter
requires Christmas. Christmas
by itself is sentimentality or it is self-indulgence. Jesus
is born with a mission, and it is a mission which leads him
inevitably to the cross.
But
for Paul story telling isn’t enough. For
him even theology isn’t enough. Paul
always moves from theology to life:
So
that we might receive adoption as children.
Paul
is fascinated by ethics, how we should live. But
he knows God wants us to escape the burden and oppression of
moralism. And
this is the true meaning of Christmas. God
knows we cannot help ourselves. There
is nothing that we can do that will bring us closer to God. Which
is why God acts, which is why Christmas. God
comes to us now, as his natural born son, so that we might be adopted
as the children of God. The
meaning of Christmas, according to Paul and the whole of the New
Testament is this: God
comes to us, so that we can call God our Father.
Amen.
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