This is the text of the message I preached at our Christmas Day and Eve services:
Christmas is loud; everything comes with an exclamation mark:
Food!
Prawns and puddings; beer and wine; ham and turkey; mince pies and brandy sauce.
Presents!
Our Prime Minister tells us it’s our patriotic duty to spend, and spend big!
Relatives!
Some of us have been preparing for weeks for that special time of the year when we are nice to people we share little in common with, apart from DNA.
Holidays!
In a country infamous for its long-weekends, the Christmas season is our nirvana, unless of course we work in retail or a church!
Stress!
With all the food, shopping, relatives and holidays – Christmas is also the time when nervous ticks emerge and strange skin rashes appear.
Christmas is about overeating, overspending, overstressing.
You can’t avoid Christmas. It is a marketing phenomenon. It is a cultural extravaganza. Christmas has a life all of its own.
It is all so different from the first Christmas.
The first Christmas was not marked by a holiday.
The first Christmas had no billboards, marketing campaigns, decorations, kitsch music or end-of-year sales.
The first Christmas was announced not so much with a shout as it was a whisper.
Jesus did not enter our world through the front door of our world. He snuck in through a side-door where almost no-one would see him.
No-one knew the first Christmas happened really. It was a non-event. Well, almost.
Mary knew something was up, as most young teenage girls do. She had a few clues the angel had given her. And in these clues she rejoiced.
As for Joseph, the punch-drunk, open-mouthed, you’ve got to feel sorry for him husband – well he was clue-less pretty much. Like a lot of husbands really.
Then there were the so-called eye-witnesses.
There were shepherds. But shepherds were not the most reliable eye-witnesses. Shifty characters with dubious pasts, shepherds had about as much credibility as a politician at election time.
The shepherds did see a choir of angels, but it was the middle of the night, and frustratingly on the outskirts of town. Even if they told others, the doubtful looks would have been the same as if we said we had spotted a UFO.
And then there were the so-called wise men from the East; ancient astrologers who left as quickly as they came.
There was no motorcade clearing the streets for a waiting hospital delivery room.
There was the muck and stink of an animal’s feed-box.
Shepherds.
Wise Men.
Choirs of angels on the edge of town.
A manger and animal-stained straw.
Not exactly the way you would announce the coming of a new king. It was either subversive or ridiculous; one or the other.
I am betting on subversive.
Jesus snuck into our world under the cover of a conspiracy of almost-silence.
But on the very first Christmas day more than a baby breathed its first breath. A Conspiracy was born.
Conspiracy of Faith
We live in a world of dizzying number of faiths. But all the small-f faiths in the world share one common and fatal flaw. They attempt to reach for the unreachable. The myriad of faiths in our world are like the little kid stretching on his tippy-toes, reaching for the lollies just out of reach, always out of reach. Religion reaches for the God who is unreachable; the God who is holy and other; big and beyond.
Recently I met a girl called Raya. Raya was born a Muslim in Tajikistan, a country that emerged from the Soviet Union. From the earliest days Raya was a girl who reached for God, always stretching, never quite grasping.
Christmas Faith is big-F Faith. It is Faith that begins with God, God who reaches for us in the form of the Christmas child and Easter Cross.
Conspiracy of Hope
Two thousands years ago, Israel was occupied by a brutal world-power. The Roman Empire
was all-pervasive. It was the dominant force in economics, politics and religion – in the stuff of every day life.And for this Romeand the religious leaders killed him. That should have been the end.
But Christmas is about hope.
Nothing like the Roman Empire had existed in world history. But centuries after Jesus walked our earth Romefell, never again to rise from the ashes. You can walk some of its ruins today. Jesus was killed and rose again three days later. And his living presence is felt on every continent of our world in the hundreds of millions of voices that declare He is Lord.
Christmas is a Conspiracy of Hope. Hope that tells us light has appeared in our world and one day this light will bathe all of creation in its power and warmth.
Conspiracy of Love
Most of all Christmas is a Conspiracy of Love.
Love does indeed make the world go around. The absence of love stops the earth on its axis and our lives in their tracks.
The Bible tells us that God is Love. It is almost trite. But at Christmas-time we see and experience this truth.
Despite some who claim the opposite, God is not absent to our world. God is not on a holiday, watching uninterested from some distant galaxy.
God is tangibly, fully and completely present. And God reveals himself as love in that while we have messed up this world he gave us to look after he has not abandoned us. He has made a way and offered us the means to discover liberation from the weight of our missteps and mistakes. And that Way comes with a name; Jesus.
Jesus came to our world as love. It’s a Divine Love that transforms and liberates and empowers. More than anything else the Christmas Conspiracy shouts to us the three most powerful words in any language; God is Love.
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard tells a story of a king who was very rich.
His power was known throughout the world. But he was most unhappy, for he desired a wife. Without a queen, the vast palace was empty.
One day, while riding through the streets of a small village, he saw a beautiful peasant girl. So lovely was she that the heart of the king was won. He wanted her more than anything he had ever desired. On succeeding days, he would ride by her house on the mere hope of seeing her for a moment in passing.
He wondered how he might win her love. He thought, I will draw up a royal decree and require her to be brought before me to become the queen of my land. But, as he considered, he realized that she was a subject and would be forced to obey. He could never be certain that he had won her love.
Then, he said to himself, "I shall call on her in person. I will dress in my finest royal clothes I will overwhelm her and sweep her off her feet to become my bride." But, as he thought, he knew that he would always wonder whether she had married him for the riches and power he could give her.
Then, he decided to dress as a peasant, drive to the town, and have his carriage let him off. In disguise, he would approach her house. But, somehow the dishonesty of this plan did not appeal to him.
At last, he knew what he must do. He would shed his royal robes. He would go to the village and become one of the peasants. He would work and suffer with them. He would actually become a peasant. This he did. And he won his wife.
God wins us with his Love; Love in the form of the Christmas child and Easter cross.
God became what we are that He might make us what He is.
Christmas is a Conspiracy of Love. Love that perseveres; love that overcomes and liberates and transforms.
Christmas is a Conspiracy. It is a whisper that shouts. It is a Conspiracy of Faith, Hope and Love. It is a Conspiracy that begins and ends with God.
My prayer for you and your family this Christmas and indeed every day is that you will say yes to this love. Hundreds who call this church their home and family have. And we implore those of you who have kept God at arm’s length, allow that love to break through your shield, your cynicism, your unbelief, your shame, your guilt – your whatever. Allow Love to turn your world upside down just as it did 2000 years ago.