What is so great about Christmas?

On Wednesday I got to speak to a lunchtime Christian group at DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade). I also gave a shorter version of this at a Christmas service in an age care home. This was an amalgamation of two previous talks, (with a few new things). Those past talks are on this blog somewhere with better references. I should say that Tim Keller really is the source behind the main thrust of the first section about God entering our story.

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Merry Christmas everyone. My name is Andrew and I am a minister at St Matt’s in Wanniassa. Thank you for having me.
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Do you like Christmas? Is this the season that makes you jolly? I live in Kambah and not far from me was a house that decorated their home to the nines for Halloween. They got a 10-meter inflatable spider and put that on their front yard along with like 20 different colors skeletons in various potions. For that house, Halloween is their thing. Is Christmas your thing? Do you decorate your place, put lights up and enjoy the festivities?
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In my family, when growing up, I wasn’t allowed a Christmas tree. My dad said it was a pagan icon and we shouldn’t have it in the home. Well, now, since all the kids have grown up and moved out of home, my mother is Christmas-mad. I think it was years of repression, but now they have a big tree that goes up in mid-November, there are bells on all the door handles, there are solar lights outside and a Christmas train at the bottom of the tree that goes round and round. It’s almost annoying going there, with all the stuff around. I don’t like all that jazz. [update: to be fair I went home yesterday and it wasn't that bad this year]
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Now I probably should confess that when it comes to holidays, I think Easter Sunday is the best, give me a resurrection from the dead any day. But that’s not to say I don’t like Christmas. It is growing on me, and over the last few years, I am starting to see how great it actually is. I think it is great for at least two reasons, one is God cared enough for us to write himself into our story and the other is that this means God knows what its like to be us.
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God came down to us and so God knows what its like to be a human. This gives me comfort and hope. Christmas is great, because it is always good in your troubles, to have someone there who also has gone through the same things that you have - who can empathize with you in your pain.
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This is good because despite this being Christmas and a time for joy and hope and peace, the world is messed up. There is great evil. Just mention Ukrainian. Hamas. Palestine. Those words mean something and not all of it is positive.
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And closer to home, you may have elderly parents to look after, or sick family members with chronic pain or mental health issues. Crushing mortgages.
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The morning I started to think about this talk I read on the Kambah community Facebook page this anonymous post:

Reaching out for help. I'm not even sure how to go about this and it's been keeping me up.. I'm not going to be able to afford Christmas for my 3 kids this year. (12girl 7girl and 4boy) Found out my partner has been using drugs behind all our backs. And now just with my income it's even hard to keep up with the bills and a food shop. I'm in contact with vinnies and communities at work but even those companies are having trouble with supply and demand. Does anyone have anything they could help with. even a food voucher will help. Anything at the moment. I appreciate our neighbourhood so much and thank you for even reading this far. Merry Christmas Kambah

The movie se7en with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt is about some detectives trying to catch a very smart serial killer. Freeman’s character is cynical and retiring for he has seen some terrible things. In the movie, there is this conversion Morgan Freeman’s character has with a woman who has found out she is pregnant. He shares a bit of his story when he found out many years ago when his partner was pregnant. He says:

I remember getting up one morning and going to work, just like any other day, except it was my first day after I knew about the pregnancy. And, I... I felt this fear for the first time ever, I remember thinking: “How can I bring a child into a world like this. How can a person grow up with all this around them?”

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The Christmas story would be blasphemous if someone else made it up. It says that God came to earth as a baby, the Son of God was joined to a placenta and came into this world. He had a body with all it aliment and pain receptacles. He grew up surrounded by all this mess. He grew up here. He knows what this is like.
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God wrote himself into our story‌

Now, some don’t buy this. They say we are alone in the universe, that there is no God above. People say they are looking for proof for God and they don’t find it. The Russians were the first to send a person out in space. Cosmonaut Yury Gagarin is reported to have said upon his return to Earth “I looked and looked and looked, but I didn’t see God.” (this picture says “bogue nett” - God no). There is some debate if he really did say this, but anyhow C.S Lewis wrote a response. He said that it is silly to go looking for God as if he were a new chemical in the periodic table or an island in the Pacific. He said God more relates to us in the same way that Shakespeare relates to Hamlet. Hamlet can’t just go looking in the rafters of a theatre looking for Shakespeare as if he is hiding somewhere up there. The only way that Hamlet can know Shakespeare is if Shakespeare was to write himself into the story. 

Dorothy Sayers was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford. She wrote many things including a series of crime novels involving the main character, Peter Wimsey. Peter was some aristocrat who solved mysteries. In the fifth book in the series, he meets this character Harriet Vane. Harriet was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford and she wrote detective novels. Harriet falls in love with Peter Wimsey and eventually, they marry and live happily ever after. 

Do you see what Dorothy Sayers did? She had created this world and this character Peter Wimsey, and she felt for him. She saw that he was terribly lonely. So, she wrote herself into her own story to save Peter, to give him love and company. And we may say this is sweet and nice and lovely, for Dorothy Sayers to fall in love with her main character. But that is exactly what God has done for us. The good news is this Christmas story. Every other religion says God is up here and you have to believe in him down here. But only Christianity says God wrote Himself into the story. He saw that something was terribly wrong with us, that we were all under the curse of death and that we were lost. So He entered this world out of love to save us, and to bring us back to him.
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In the Bible, John gives his own account of the Christmas story at the start of his gospel:

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John 1:9–14 NIV)

‌Here, God comes and dwells with His people. He is the light to help all those in darkness. But His people don’t see Him, they don’t recognize Him. Yet some do, and those that do are brought into the family of God. And John writing in his gospel says He has seen Jesus. He knows him. He is an eyewitness, and he says God came and dwelled with us, to save us from darkness.
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Some may think we don’t have a watertight argument for God, but we have a watertight person in Jesus who is God. And Jesus came to us, we were not forgotten or overlooked or ignored by God. He came for us. He wrote Himself into our story, we are on the same timeline as Jesus. Came to help us, and that gives me comfort.
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God knows what it's like to be us

‌And not only does God coming to us give me comfort, but the fact that he was born as a human and grew up in this world also gives me comfort. God doesn’t just sit back and watch what pain and suffering we are in, He entered this world as us.
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There is a difference between an athlete and a TV commentator. The commentators know what the athlete should have done and pontificate to no end about it. They are observers of those doing the hard work. But the athlete in the ring or on the field knows just how tough it is. The athlete experiences the action first-hand with very little time for contemplation. And so with Christmas, we see that God doesn’t just objectively know what its like to live in this world, He entered the area, He played the game, He suffered and knows experientially what it is like to live here.
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When I was in my late teens/early 20s, I read Byzantium by Stephen Lawhead. It's about a monk, Aiden, who is sent to deliver a Bible to the emperor but gets kidnapped by Vikings. After a series of trials—including uncovering a conspiracy, killing someone by taking justice into his own hands, and enduring betrayal and enslavement—Aiden returns to his monastery disillusioned with his faith due to the suffering and injustice he experienced. One day, his Viking friends arrive, not to raid but seeking him to plant a Christian church among their people. Aiden is stunned. This is too hard for Aiden to believe. After all they have seen and shared, why would the Vikings believe in this god? His friend the Viking replies

My people “pray to many gods who neither hear nor care… But I remember the day you told me about Jesus who came to live among the fisherfolk, and was nailed to a tree … and hung up to die.
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And I remember thinking, this Hanging God is unlike any of the others; this god suffers, too, just like his people.
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"I remember also that you told me he was a god of love and not revenge, so that anyone who calls on his name can join him in his great feasting hall. I ask you now, does Odin do this for those who worship him? Does Thor suffer with us?" …“Is that not good news?”

This response caused a great internal struggle with Aiden and for the next few pages, he talks to himself about why this Viking who experienced the same things he did wants to embrace the faith while he is walking away from it. He finally confronts himself and says:

Did you believe that God would shield you forever from the hurt and pain of this sin-riven world? That you would be spared the injustice and strife others were forced to endure? That disease would no longer afflict you, that you would live forever untouched by the tribulations of common humanity?
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Fool! All these things Christ suffered, and more.
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Aidan, you have been blind. You have beheld the truth, stared long upon it, yet failed to perceive so much as the smallest glimpse of all that was shown you. Sure, this is the heart of the great mystery: that God became man, shouldering the weight of suffering so that on the final day none could say, "Who are you to judge the world? What do you know of injustice? What do you know of torture, sickness, poverty? How dare you call yourself a righteous God! What do you know of death?"
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He knows, Aidan, he knows!

The great thing about Christmas is that our God, entered our messed up world, and suffered. He knows what it is like to live here and He came, so that He could help us through, for we can not make it on our own. Hebrews says:

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:14–16 NIV)

Our High Priest, the one we turn to for help with God, can empathize with us, for they know temptations and sufferings, for they have lived here. We can now, turn to our God and He will give mercy and grace and help us in our time of need. This is not just sympathy which is about feeling for someone, but this is empathy which is about feeling with someone. Our God doesn’t just show us pity for what we are going through, but He understands the feelings of pain that we experience. Is this not good news, and we can now come to him for help in our time of need.
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So this Christmas, do the decorations, have the family over, buy all those presents, do all the parties and end-of-year things, but don’t forget that our God became one of us, and he can empathise with us and offeres us grace and help when we need Him. This is what is so great about Christmas.