First off I hope you all had an action packed Christmas and New Year. I know I did. It was great to have free central heating and someone to do my laundry.
Every year we have a midnight service at our church where there are usually a couple of music acts from some of the more talented members of the congregation and the minister (namely, my dad) gives an inspiring sermon to prepare us for Christmas and New Year.
This years sermon was particularly interesting, and I hope no-one will mind me sharing some of it. My dad is prone, like me, to thinking outside the box. I wouldn't say we're into deep philosophy or anything but we both tend to find new ways of looking at things. New angles of approach, that spark thought and debate. Now as some of you may know, I'm not a huge fan of organised religion; however, I do believe in God, and sometimes when likeminded people meet together, we get little gems like this one. I won't quote word for word but you'll get the idea:
"Anyone who knows me knows I have a passion for railways, and that I have a rather respectable garden railway in my back garden. On that railway, Fred the station agent stands on the station platform watching the world go by. Day and night, rooted to the same spot come rain or shine in this little world I created. He cannot go inside, stretch his legs, or even turn his head and look the other way. Would I like to be like Fred and join him on the railway? No! I don't want to give up the ability to move and think and create and become a piece of plastic. I don't want to be outside in all weathers, stuck to the ground and unable to see the trains as they run by.
What we celebrate tonight is God doing just that for us! Becoming part of the world he has created, with all the physical restraints of his creation.
We retell the story each year of the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in the stable, the angels, shepherds and wise men. But why? Millions of babies have been born over the years, but only one gets the Christmas treatment - why? There's nothing interesting or good about being born in a stable, yet we recall it each December - why? The answer to all those WHYs is in the identity of the baby. Jesus is God, born as a human being. Christmas is the celebration of the most remarkable project in human history, where God, the creator of the whole universe, became one of his own creatures. God became human in Jesus. As John put it 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us'.
Of course its not quite as simple as that, not all of God can fit into one man, he had to give up a huge amount. Omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence. He had to suffer cold and heat, hunger and pain, temptation and frustration. Ultimately he suffered humiliation, betrayal, torture and death on a cross. You have to admit, when God became human, he didn't do it in half measures. He got the lot. He put up with everything we have to put up with and more!
So why did he do it? The answer is love. The one aspect of God's nature that filled Jesus in abundance is love. Now I am very fond of my model railway in the garden, but for me, it is all set dressing for running trains. It's the running of trains that is the important thing. My little creation is there for only that purpose - so for me, becoming like Fred has no appeal and no purpose.
For God, things are different. Gen 1 'God saw all that he had made and behold, it was very good'. God loves his creation. He loves everything he has made, he has given it all purpose and enabled it to function. Unlike me, God doesn't hold a controller to make things do exactly what he wants, he has given us freedom to choose, the ability to create and destroy, to love and to hate, to imagine and to plan. In short we are a bit like him - again from Gen 1, he created human beings 'in his own image'. So God made us and God loves us, why become one of us?
We got it wrong. Because God loves his creation, he does not control it but allows it freedom to develop and grow. The problem is that as you read the Old Testament you realise it is the story of human life! Give people a free choice, and like as not they'll make the wrong one.
Over the course of human history we have drifted further and further from that vision of humanity in the image of God, and our relationship with him has become more and more distant. We put ourselves out of God's reach by many of our attitudes and the things that we do. Somehow God needed to give us a way out, a way to redress the balance, a way to be reconciled to him. At the same time, he needed to preserve our freedom to choose. If we are to love God, we need to want to love him, you cannot make someone love you. So he made that huge decision to be born as one of us in Jesus. He did that to show us what human life is really meant to be like, to show us what God himself is really like and to give us the opportunity to come back to him and enjoy that loving relationship which over the centuries we had lost. A loving reunion we call salvation.
Christmas is the time when we celebrate the start of God's work of salvation in Jesus, for God becoming human in Jesus Christ is the start of the way back for all people. The way back to what we were meant to be, the way back to the love of God, the way back to life in all it's fulness. All we have to do is to turn to him in faith and love and ask him in. What a Christmas present!
Happy Christmas!!"
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