This morning we gathered to sing carols, celebrate Christ’s birth and think about the raw ingredients of Christmas. For most of us, food and presents form an integral and essential part of the Christmas festivities, but the Christmas story is not simply about self-indulgence and saccharine sentimentality. When we cook, we must follow a recipe, using the right ingredients and the right proportions of ingredients; in the same way, we must get the balance right in following Christ and then we find the truths of the Bible relate to our everyday lives now, just as they did that first Christmas.
Often, there are unpalatable aspects to the Christmas story which we prefer to ignore, focussing on Nativity plays with sweet children, angels and miracles. But the Christmas story (found in Luke 1 & 2, Matthew 1 & 2, John 1 and Revelation 12, as well as in many prophetic announcements in the Old Testament) deals with shame and misunderstanding as it looks at the painful subject of childlessness and then pregnancy through the unbelievable story of the Holy Spirit conceiving a child in Mary. Shame, doubt, fear and scorn all feature in this story, just as they do in our lives, even if we are living faithfully before God.
Discomfort and inconvenience also feature in the story, with a Roman census meaning a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem and then the inconvenience of no guest room at the inn. Life doesn’t always go the way we planned. There are lonely, painful seasons in life. There are times when everything seems to fall apart, and we don’t understand why. Sometimes, other people seem to be in control of our lives, and like Caesar Augustus, governments and those in authority can have a detrimental effect on us. We live in a fallen world; we live amongst discomfort and inconvenience. The Christmas story isn’t all about perfection, despite our modern take on it. The faithful obedience to God and to the law seen in Mary and Joseph do not magically make all their problems disappear. In our lives too, disappointment and frustration may well feature frequently.
There is also baffling and incomprehensible suffering in the Christmas story, rarely featured in our Nativity plays. We like to focus on the miracle of a new star appearing to the Magi from the east (Matthew 2:2) and the procession of the wise men bringing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to Jesus. (Matt 2:11) We like to talk about the significance of the gifts: how gold represents the fact that Jesus is the king of kings, how frankincense prefigures his priestly role and how myrrh represents the anointing and suffering He will go through to bring us life. We do not like to dwell on the evil of Herod or why God allowed the Slaughter of the Innocents (Matt 2:17-18) We do not understand why God protected the Magi and Jesus but allowed innocent children to be killed. There is a constant struggle in life to trust in God’s goodness and sovereignty when life seems to contradict this.
One definition of reality is that it deals with what is true. The Christmas story is true. It involves the miraculous – God sending angels as His messengers, a baby conceived to a childless couple, a baby conceived by the Holy Spirit so as to be without the taint of sin, visitors coming from long distances to worship, prophetic words from Anna and Simeon which look ahead to the cross. That reminds us that God is still involved in the miraculous, still involved in doing what is humanly impossible, in our lives. But it is a story that does not minimise the difficulties and troubles of life and which does not ignore the pain and suffering we all feel. We can unwrap the Christmas story, taking off the wrapping and bows and ribbons, and still find truth within. Moreover, the new name given to us at Christmas to describe Jesus (‘Immanuel,’ ‘God with us’) reminds us that now we walk daily with our Saviour through the shame, misunderstanding, discomfort, inconvenience and incomprehensible suffering of life in a fallen world.