A sermon for Advent 4 2007

Do we really want to put Christ back into Christmas?

The Rev. Mark Ainsworth

This morning I have something of a confession to make. It may get me into some trouble but I have to admit to it publicly. I am increasingly uncomfortable with the idea that we should put Christ back into Christmas as some claim we should. There I said it. Now I realize that the Rector’s Warden may at this point reach for his cell phone to call someone to report heresy from the pulpit. So I will say again, just to make sure I am understood. I am uncomfortable with putting Christ back into Christmas.

Now I have to attempt to explain this assertion. By saying what I just said I am not supporting the nauseating ‘happy holiday’ greetings and the politically correct homogenization of Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Christmas. Those of you who know about the history of our Nursery School know that it was the so-called ‘Holiday Event’ of the former regime that first alerted me to the fact that right within the walls of the Church political correctness was more important than Jesus in this season. So political correctness is isn’t my reason for being extremely diffident about putting Christ back into Christmas.

You know that there has been a backlash against some of the politically correct nonsense concerning eviscerating the public square of nativity scenes, Santa and Happy Christmas. Macys a few years ago changed its ‘happy holidays’ back to ‘happy Christmas’ and some people thought this was a positive move. I’m not so sure – but not, I repeat because I am a devotee of abstract notions of diversity. No. I have theological problems.

What kind of Christmas do we want to put Christ back into? A Christmas that has been secularized almost beyond recognition by materialistic greed, credit card debt, the worship of family, and over indulgence in eating and drinking while Christians in other parts of the world, like Darfur for example, barely survive. Do we really want Jesus back in that, like a wooden nativity scene to complement the season devised by our culture? I am not sure I want Christ associated with that! He has never fit in with our agenda and with our presuppositions. And then we might also ask the reverse question to the one I began with - what kind of Christ do we want but back into Christmas – the little baby so inoffensive and undemanding?

Recently on National Public Radio I heard of the growing movement coined ‘festivist’. Apparently this came from the T.V. show Seinfeld which was meant to be an ironic look at the whole season but it has actually spawned a movement. You can get festivist cards and other paraphernalia. It’s amazing that some people take comedy seriously. Well anyway, Festivists are those who, usually for atheist reasons, get rid of Jesus and religion from the season but they like all the heart warming trappings associated with the way we celebrate it in America. I think they are onto something because they realize that they can have those things without Christ, because many of those trappings have little to do with him anyway.

I am not against people having fun. There is no ‘bar humbug’ here. I just want us to face Christmas and look at it on its own terms. What kind of Christmas might we wish to put Christ back into? So I think that businesses should be open on Christmas day and that the Christians, if they really believe in the importance of the day, should be forced to take it from their vacation time. Christians should not be afraid of wishing people happy Christmas, or actually sending cards that have something vaguely connected to Jesus in them – what a novel idea. The Church should reclaim its feast day and not look to the government or the department stores for support. Some Conservative and Liberal Christians equally make the same mistake of looking to the government for all sorts of support – whether it be some liberals with unexamined secular presuppositions about abstractions called ‘rights’ or ‘justice’, or some conservatives with some equally unexamined belief that somehow America has to be the church.

Let us return to the kind of Christmas that first confronted the world. It was a totally new beginning. What God did didn’t fit in – which is why Herod tried to kill Jesus and ended up massacring all children under two in Bethlehem – just imagine that as the final scene in a Christmas pageant! No ho, ho, ho, Christmas there. Not nice!

The Miracle, announced, as we heard this morning, to Joseph was as problematic to him as it would be to an atheist who cannot in principle believe in a virgin birth. Joseph knew where babies came from, And the gospel writers are not afraid to admit to Mary’s wondering, ‘how can this be’.

The unprecedented nature of God coming in human form was a strange to Greek Gentiles as it was to Jews. That the ‘Word’ would become flesh was to the Greeks, who believed the ‘logos’ or ‘word’ was the impersonal entity at the heart of the holding together of the cosmos, total foolishness. To the Jews who believed the ‘logos’, or ‘Word’, was the speech and activity of the living God by which he had created and sustained all things, it was a blasphemous scandal.

A word needs to be said about miracles. For a variety of reasons miracles have become seen as unwarranted intrusions by an absent God and, because they are unrepeatable, they cannot possibly occur. But if we actually read the bible – and I have said it before but it actually helps to read the bible, you should try it – so if we read it and think about things we realize that (a) the bible never describes God as somehow being absent and disconnected from creation and then intervening from outside and (b) the world itself rests upon the foundation of uniqueness – the world began, and that beginning has not occurred again, it is unrepeatable, and therefore to claim that miracles are like scientific experiments, in other words they must be repeatable whenever required, is a false conclusion.

Once Joseph had embraced the new starting point then he could start to see how this had been foretold in the past but people had not understood the total upturn of events required. This is something Mary understood - ‘you have cast down the mighty from their seats’. This is what Paul wrote of in today’s’ epistle, the gospel of God as he calls it, ‘which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son…’ Joseph would have struggled to see it as good news because it contained great difficulty. Yet the heart of what God has done was and is gospel – which means good news. That is Christmas. The good news that what we are awaiting does not fit into our constricted categories. God can do all things and has shown his love for all things by personally entering into the frailties of our life. God didn’t send condolences about our existence, he send his Son to share it.

As Advent draws to its glorious end and we await to sing the song of the angels, to wonder with the shepherds, and to ponder with Mary, may each of us take a little time to see that Christ cannot be fitted into much of what goes for Christmas these days without Christmas being turned inside out. And that is good news.

Let us await simply Jesus - enjoy Christmas yes, but see the important distinctions between what it has become and what we must become through Jesus our Lord.