Not a very positive start to a Christmas letter. Maybe you’re thinking this is going to be a grumpy, grinchy, negative old man’s pronouncement on the problems with Christmas! Possibly a rant on the evils of materialism and gluttony? It could even be my take on the way life just seems too overly busy as we get closer to December 25. Nothing could be further from the truth. I love the excitement and hype of Christmas. I love giving presents. It’s terrific to get family and friends together at this time of the year. Great food and friends are two special treats.
So here’s the thing I really don’t like about Christmas – it’s the preoccupation with Jesus’ birth. Now, at this point, you may be deeply concerned for my wellbeing. You might be thinking that the next time you see me, you should encourage me to take some time off. After all, I’m a pastor of a church, so I’m meant to be for the birth of Jesus and against all that stuff that distracts us from Jesus’ birth. So let me explain …
Christians don’t make much fuss about the logistics of Jesus’ birth because the Bible doesn’t. Of the four gospels/biographies about Jesus, only two (Matthew and Luke) record information about the birth. Even then, all the ‘normal’ birth data is glossed over. We aren’t given a specific birth date. The weight, length, and head circumference are not recorded. There is nothing about eye or hair colour.
Don’t get me wrong, the birth of Jesus was extraordinary. In Matthew 1:18, we read:
Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.
This fulfilled many Old Testament prophesies made hundreds of years beforehand, such as Isaiah 7:14:
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.
Jesus fulfilled God’s eternal plan and purposes. Immanuel means, ‘God with us.’ God doesn’t just watch planet Earth from a distance. He has drawn close. But at the end of the day, the emphasis is not on the babyishness of Jesus, but the reason he was born.
Christmas would never have happened if there wasn’t a serious problem. It’s brilliantly captured in Matthew 1:21, where a messenger from God appears to Joseph and says:
She (Mary) will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
You only send a rescuer if there is a big problem. As we look around the world this Christmas, it’s clear there are lots of global problems. Wars between Russia and Ukraine as well as in the Middle East. There is a growing concern about global warming and how we mistreat our planet. Here in Australia, we continue to grapple with how we treat our Indigenous people, and although we are a ‘first world nation’, cost of living pressures are causing stress to many.
But the biggest issue every human being faces is the state of their relationship with God. All of us, by nature, ignore God, push him aside or reject him outright. It’s what the Bible calls sin. And that’s why Matthew 1:21 says:
… you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
Of course, the rescue from sin was not achieved through Jesus’ birth. You have to fast forward to the end of each of the gospels to understand how Jesus achieves that through his death on the cross and resurrection from the grave. Paul the Apostle captures this brilliantly when he says in 1 Timothy 1:15:
… Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.
It wasn’t until I was a twenty-year-old undergraduate at university when I understood what Christmas was all about. Up until then, I had sidelined God in my life. Christmas had been all about an innocuous baby. But in 1978, I was convicted that I needed to be forgiven by God. For the first time, I realised that Jesus had been born into the world to save people like me from my sin by going to his death on the cross in my place. It filled Christmas with profound meaning. Christmas was a piece in a much bigger storyline where God is at work to bring people into relationship with himself.
This Christmas, I’m praying that we see afresh that Christmas is the time of year when we remember not just the birth of a child but the birth of a Saviour. This is really worth making a fuss about.