What Advent and Christmas Mean to Me

Sermon for Dec. 6, 2020, Advent 2A

Video is here

Luke 2:1-7

 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

One of my sons recently gave me a book to read. It’s called “Dominion: the Making of the Western Mind,” by Tom Holland. The theme of the book is that Christianity has had an enormous impact on the Western world including in the categories we think in. 

For example, Holland writes:

“Whether it be the conviction that the workings of conscience are the surest determinants of good law, or that the church and state exist as distinct entities, or that polygamy is unacceptable, [Christianity’s] trace elements are to be found everywhere in the West.”  

Even more powerful than these big ideas, Christianity transformed the world of ethics.  Holland writes, 

“The heroes of the Iliad, [who were the] favorites of the gods, golden and predatory, had scorned the weak and downtrodden. So too, … had philosophers. The starving deserved no sympathy. Beggars were best rounded up and deported. Pity risked undermining a wise man’s self-control. Only fellow citizens of good character who, through no fault of their own, had fallen on evil days might conceivably merit assistance.”

This book takes a serious look at history. It does not shy away from discussing the dark side of Christianity: Crusades, Inquisitions, persecutions of heretics, and anti-semitism. 

But Holland pays close attention to how utterly different the values of Christianity are from Greek, Roman, or pagan values, and even though those Christian values were not universally implemented by leaders of either church or state who proclaimed themselves Christian, nevertheless they keep resurfacing in renewal movements and periods of reform.  

Holland says, 

“That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely self-evident a truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the ground s of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as Nietzsche had so contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.”

There are many things that I think the Christian Church, on the whole, got wrong, over the years. I have spoken about some of them here. But I wanted to take a moment in this Advent season to tell a different story. I want to share why Advent and Christmas are such a special season for me personally, and I believe, for all of us. The Christian story is amazing, beautiful, liberating, and transforming. So let us look at it.

Something New Can Happen

The story of Advent begins with John the Baptist, wearing the uniform of a prophet. He is announcing that a time of preparation is needed because God is about to do a new thing. 

The true beginning of the story is not with his voice, crying out in the wilderness. The story begins in Israel. In fact, the way the New Testament Gospels tell the story of Jesus, is that the Jesus-story is the culmination of the story of Israel. 

The prophets of Israel proclaimed repeatedly that God was going to do something new and unprecedented. So new, that the former things, like liberation from Egypt, would pale by comparison.  

John the Baptist was in that prophetic tradition, and, according to the gospels, identified Jesus with that new act of God. In Christianity, we receive and embrace the idea that God can, and continually does make things new. God is constantly taking the old, worn out, broken, dead parts of our lives, and creating something new from them. 

There is always a next right thing, even after colossal disaster. There is healing after brokenness. There is forgiveness after failure. The essential Christian story includes the experience that new life, resurrection, follows death. 

This is not just something we can say about the final moments of our lives on earth, but of every moment. The old life can be left behind; a new life in the Spirit is continually possible.  

The Gift of Repentance

John called for repentance as the means to prepare the way for the new things God was going to do in and through Jesus. This too is a priceless Christian treasure: the freedom to admit our failings. In fact, the regular self-assessments we do in prayers of confession are powerful tools of spiritual growth. 

We have received the gift of a pattern of living that starts with acknowledging our human capacity to get it wrong, knowing that the invitation to confess and repent, or change our thinking, is a gift that leads to growth, not a prelude to judgment. The judgment is that, as Paul proclaims, “in Christ, we are forgiven.”  

The Gift of Forgiveness

The new thing that John wanted to prepare us for by repentance includes not just the liberating message that we have been forgiven by God, but a new vision of life in a covenanted community, in which we freely forgive one another. This is the antidote to toxicity in communities. 

One of Jesus’ central themes was that God’s beloved children must forgive each other. In the prayer Jesus taught us we say, “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. 

The early Christian communities worked hard to learn and teach this. The writer of Ephesians says, “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  

There is no room for the evil eye in the communities that gather to follow Jesus, in other words, churches. There is no space for bitterness, jealousy, resentment, or vengeance. 

Instead, we are called to check our egos; to let go of the need to be seen as justified, to have our excuses taken seriously. This is a huge gift of the Christian tradition: that the cycle of wrong following wrong can stop. Instead of cycles of violence, Christian communities can be sources of healing and wholeness, of reconciliation and mutual encouragement.  

The Gift of Dignity for All

In Advent, when we anticipate the celebration of the birth of Jesus, we take a step back to listen to what we are saying and try to hear it again, as if for the first time. If we can do that, we should be shocked at Christianity’s gift to the world of a concept that God cares for people, for all people, but especially for the little people; the people of no account; the people at the bottom of the ladder. 

The idea that we can tell a story in which it is conceivable that God comes to the earth in the body of a poor child in a poor family, instead of being born at the palace, is amazing. The idea that the baby’s bed is straw and not silk is astounding. If the story means anything it means that God’s heart is broken for the people who are broke. Mary’s famous poem, the Magnificat, praises the God who, she says, 

“has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.”  

In the ancient world, strength was celebrated. The wealthy were valorized. Slavery was assumed, and slaves had no rights. The gift of Christianity is to find dignity in every human, regardless of station in life. 

This orientation to the poor and vulnerable, the weak and defenseless has created movements of liberation all over the world. From the abolition of slavery to the elimination of apartheid, and from the women’s movement to the Black Lives Matter movement, people all over the world now accept the very Christian concept that might does not make right. Oppression is wrong. Discrimination is wrong.  

The Christmas story starts with a poor couple being pushed around by a heartless, greedy empire, and forced to travel on foot, even during the late stages of a pregnancy. The story unfolds at a scene in a stable, in a manger with minimum wage-shepherds and farm animals because God is on the side of the least of these. In the Christian understanding, God is finally defined as Love itself.  

Light in the Darkness

When we see the Christmas lights that symbolize the light of love shining in the darkness, we can rejoice that the gift of Advent and Christmas is still producing hope in dark times. 

When we see the creche scenes with their mash-up combinations of all the gospel stories, we can rejoice that the baby they are all adoring is the one who showed us a God who is on our side, who is for us, and who calls us all children. And that is just the beginning of what Advent and Christmas means to me.