There’s a story I tell sometimes that some of the church regulars may recognise. If you do, I just ask you to smile in the right places.
Source: Pexels (Public Domain)
Before I met my lovely wife Debbie, I had a broken engagement. Or, as my sister called it, a narrow escape.
One lunchtime while I was still grieving the end of the relationship, two friends of mine called Kate and Sue turned up on my doorstep. “We’ve come to take you out for a pub lunch,” they announced.
When we got to the pub, they explained why they wanted to take me out. Before each of them had met their husbands, they too had been through broken engagements. They had a good idea how I would be feeling.
And because of that, they were able to come alongside me in my sorrow in ways other people couldn’t.
For me, this is a picture of what Jesus does for us. The Christmas story says he is called Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’ God takes on human flesh. He is born into modest, if not downright poor circumstances. He lives as one of a nation suffering an occupying army from a powerful empire. He dies an unjust death.
Perhaps you are troubled by personal circumstances or what’s happening in our world. Figures say inflation is down, but the prices we are paying, especially for our food, seem to be a lot higher. How many of us have had to rethink our Christmas meal because bird flu means a turkey is too expensive? More seriously, how many of us are struggling with affording just the basics? Many will be choosing between food, heating, and presents this year.
Or look at the world. Will members of our younger generations have to fight in a war? Some nations are becoming more aggressive. Others think they only become great again when they put others down. It all feels very uncertain and unstable.
I think God knew we needed someone to come alongside us. Someone who would embrace the human condition and experience it from its very best to its utter worst.
Because that’s what the birth, life, and death of Jesus are about. Immanuel, God with us, comes alongside us in the joys and sorrows of life. He knows from the inside what they are like and what they mean to us.
Immanuel, God with us. That’s what each of us can have when we invite Jesus into our lives. With us in the trials of life. With us in the joys of life. With us when we’re just plodding along, too.
Immanuel, God with us, who knows our hopes and fears, our doubts and faith from the inside of human existence himself.
My friends Kate and Sue helped me by their example to know God was with me in the disappointment at the time of that broken engagement. I have gone through the struggles of bereavement and then found he was there with me. In the bleakness of depression, I have found God there at the bottom of the pit with me. Not judging me, like some would, but holding me.
He can come close to any one of us. When Jesus was on earth, he could only be physically present with a limited number of people at a time. Now, he comes to us by his Spirit, and that means he can with all of us simultaneously.
Wouldn’t it be your best Christmas present ever if you asked Jesus into your life?
Well, it’s that time of year when you can’t escape the Christmas songs in the shops wherever you go. I have a certain sympathy for those shop workers who are subjected to the same songs all day long on an hourly basis. Maybe they think that by the time they’ve heard Slade’s Merry Xmas Everybody for the eighth time that day, it must be close to the end of their shift.
But if I were to confess a soft spot for one Christmas single, no, it’s not Mariah or Cliff, but it might be Driving Home For Christmas by Chris Rea. I wonder how many of you will be driving home for Christmas. Or perhaps you are at home and other family members are driving home to you?
Do you look forward to seeing family at Christmas? I do. That sense of the wider family gathering is important to me.
But what we often miss is that Christmas is about family in another sense. John tells us the purpose of Jesus coming is to invite us into the family of God.
Yet many of us missed our own Creator coming into the world (verses 9-10). Even a lot of those who should have known better ignored him or rejected him (verse 11).
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
So what does it take to become a child of God? Let me recount a story that appears in my book ‘Odd One Out’:
Many years ago, I used to meet a friend in central London and we would go to see movies together. We would always find somewhere to eat first and catch up with each other over a meal before heading for the cinema.
On one of these occasions, my friend suddenly said during the meal, “I’ve got something to tell you.” Putting on my best pastoral expression, I listened carefully.
What my friend said was this: “I was adopted as a child.”
Seeing the look of concern on my face, my friend continued, “Don’t worry, it’s all right, I rather like the fact that I know I was adopted. It means I was wanted.”
And that’s how we come into God’s family. We are not naturally children of God, as John says. So God adopts us as his children. And like my friend, he adopts us because he wants us.
In fact, he so wants us in his family that he sent his Son Jesus to bring the invitation personally to Earth. And when Jesus came, he knew that we had barriers we had erected between ourselves and God.
So Jesus took down those barriers. The shame we feel, rightly or wrongly, over our lives: nailed to the Cross. Our wrongdoing, when we do the opposite of what God loves: nailed to the Cross. Our weakness in the face of the forces of evil: nailed to the Cross.
What is there left for us to do? John tells us it takes two responses: receive Jesus, and believe in Jesus.
To receive Jesus is to receive him and all the gifts he has given us, including what I’ve just described, where he has taken away all the barriers between us and God.
To believe in Jesus is not simply to believe in his existence, but to trust in him. In fact, it is to trust our lives into his hands. Not only does he know what is best for us, he also enrols us on his adventure of making all things new. He has a purpose for our lives when we believe in him.
So this is God’s invitation to us at Christmas: to understand that Jesus has come with God’s invitation to join his family, because he wants us and loves us. And to respond by receiving all that Jesus gives us, and by entrusting our lives to him.
These things bring us into the family of God, and we join our brothers and sisters in the family who support us in our new journey.
There’s no script to follow the video this week as unusually for me I prepared this talk entirely in my head and delivered it extempore. You could always watch the video a second time!
My two churches have combined to help produce a video carol service. In a year when the traditional gathering in the church building under candlelight was either impossible or impractical, various people offered to read the traditional lessons and be recorded on video.
Meanwhile, I downloaded some videos of carols from Engage Worship – their offer of these videos was really the genesis of the project. I added a humorous video from the Bible Society which has a timely word for this season of the world that we have been enduring.
So put aside sixty-seven minutes and twenty-one seconds, kick back, and enjoy these carols and the message this service brings.
There are two groups of people I would like us to think about for a few minutes this evening.
Group number one: cast your mind back to July this year, and the birth of the royal baby. Crowds gathering at Buckingham Palace awaiting the posting of the official announcement; other crowds at St Mary’s Hospital, camera phones poised behind the barricades for that first glimpse, and then an outburst of applause and flash as the proud parents came out.
Follow that with the speculation as we awaited the announcement of his name. And sure enough, he was given conventional royal names: George Alexander Louis. Kevin and Tyler weren’t in the running.
Then we had the christening, where there was more media coverage about the gown the young prince would wear than the meaning of the ceremony. Do only the royals dress up their little boys in frilly clothes, or is it just preparation for a public school uniform when he is older?
Trappings, ceremony, accoutrements – and enough coverage in Hello magazine to destroy all the rain forests. We expect that with a royal birth. Facebook and Twitter going crazy, you know the deal.
Yet we celebrate a royal birth at Christmas that looks so different. No privilege, no wealth, no ease. Mary is a teenage girl who may popularly be suspected of a scandal. She doesn’t come from an upwardly mobile family, and she had no chance of an education, let alone one at a prestigious historic university. Joseph wasn’t born licking a silver spoon, and he merely grew up to become an artisan, working as some kind of carpenter, builder or stonemason. You want that extension on your house or that new fitted kitchen? Call Joseph, and he’ll turn up in his old Transit van, with his plaid shirt, beer belly, and a copy of the Daily Mirror.
Royalty? Well, the only connection they got with royal circles was when the local despot Herod felt threatened and sent his death squads into Bethlehem. Mary, Joseph and the young Jesus have to leave everything behind and become refugees. No palace for them.
All of which leads me to believe that the Christmas story is especially for the poor, the forgotten, the obscure and those who think they are nothing or worthless. Do you feel insignificant? Jesus came for you. Do you feel like you don’t count? Jesus came for you, too. Or do you feel like you are on the margins, or rejected, or that you will never be popular? Do you believe that you are the sort of person who, when fame and fortune come along the road, take a detour to avoid you? The Jesus who came in the Christmas story is for you.
Perhaps, though, you are not like that. You may be one of those Surrey residents who has wealth or power or position or influence. If so, then the story of Christ’s coming at Christmas is one that holds dangers for you – or at least warnings. It is no good relying on our social position or our prestige with Jesus. Why would the King of Kings and Lord of Lords be impressed by that? Doesn’t your power or property seem puny in the light of who Jesus is?
Christmas – the time when we celebrate the coming of the humble king – is the time when we can only come to that king in humility ourselves. We don’t get into heaven on the basis of our contacts or whose number is on speed dial in our phone. But if we do come in humility, then we discover the amazing truth that Jesus is for us.
Group number two: they were a gang of heavy drinkers who lived on the outskirts of town. They carried weapons, which they were ready to use and they were known to conduct burglary raids together. Better not get in their way, or they might use a knife. They weren’t unemployed, they had a trade, but people were happy to do business with them, just so long as they stayed out of harm’s way. Although they tended to use other people’s land for their work, and if they came over your boundary, then you’d better not argue. At least, not if you wanted to keep good health.
If you had a gang like that living in your town, what would your attitude be? Would you call the police? Would you band together to hold a public meeting and demand that civic officials took action? Would you lobby your councillors or MP?
And what would you call for? ASBOs? Have them locked up? Perhaps they’re really illegal immigrants and should be deported.
Do you know what you’ve just done? You’ve just kicked the shepherds out of the Christmas story. The shepherds were the rogues, the chavs, the petty criminals of first century Palestine. Not respectable. The Daily Mail would have run front page campaigns against them and their type.
And yet, and yet … these people, these crooks, these bandits, these ne’er-do’wells, these scum of the earth are the first to hear the announcement that the Messiah has been born. If you think that Jesus came just to hang out with the ‘good’ people, forget it. He came for the bad and for the misfits.
If you doubt me, think about some of the crowd Jesus hob-nobbed with during his adult life. They weren’t all scallywags, but plenty of them were. Simon the Zealot was a terrorist or a freedom fighter, depending on your political views. The brothers James and John had a nickname – they were called ‘the Sons of Thunder – well, what kind of guys get that for a nickname? Early Hell’s Angels, perhaps? Matthew was a collaborator with the occupying Roman army.
So Christmas is a time to put to bed once and for all the idea that Jesus came for good people. Right from his birth, throughout his life even to his death on the Cross , when he was crucified with two common criminals, Jesus came to offer forgiveness and a new life to people who knew they were bad.
If you think you are a failure, this is good news for you. if you think you could never possibly be accepted, this is good news for you, too. Jesus wants you to say ‘yes’ to him and follow him.
But others here might be thinking, I don’t see myself like that. I’m a good, decent, hard-working member of society who is trying to be respectable. I put things into society, I’m not a taker. Why should Jesus favour the scroungers and the hoodlums? It’s unfair.
Do you know what the basic problem with that argument is? When we try to argue that we are fundamentally good, we manipulate our image. Like a photo of a plump person with acne being made to look clear-skinned and slim in Photoshop, so we tell the good story about ourselves and we mask the ugly truth about our own selfishness.
And Jesus won’t let us get away with that. Following him can only begin and continue with an acknowledgement of our selfishness, our thoughtlessness, our unjust behaviour. Without that humility he can’t clean us up, much as he wants to.
So I invite you to be like the shepherds this Christmas. Come dirty to the manger, and find the One who accepts your praise, makes you new, and calls you to follow him.
I’ve tried writing an address using an app on my new iPad called Haiku Deck. It’s a way of making simple PowerPoint presentations. You don’t get to do anything fancy with transitions, animations or anything like that. You just get to enter two lines of text and choose from some stunning Flickr images that have a Creative Commons copyright licence.
I’ve based this on the story of the shepherds in Luke 2:8-20. Obviously this isn’t a full script, but I hope there’s enough here for it to make sense. Let me know in the comments if it needs illuminating in any way.
I’m doing a short talk at tomorrow evening’s carol service, using PowerPoint to go through some of the characters in the nativity story, to see where we might identify with them. The presentation is below from Slideshare: when I previewed this post, I couldn’t find the two tabs, the right hand one of which is for ‘Speaker Notes’ for each slide, where you would find the bones of what I am going to say. So if the notes don’t show up below in your web browser, go here to find them.
Big Circumstance 