It’s December. Sweet month of mistletoe, holly and ivy: there are carols in the air, bells on the corners, reindeer on the roof. Madison Avenue has been kicked into high gear. Hollywood is busy making movies that sound the message on silver trumpets: “Christmas is about family, Santa Claus and Dr. Seuss.” Every pastor in the nation is preaching a sermon from the first three chapters of the Book of Luke. Ten thousand families hang ten thousand ornaments in ten thousand homes with ten thousand traditions.
All of which begs the question: What exactly is Christmas all about?
What comes to mind when you think of Christmas? Childhood memories. Sugar cookies. Sleigh rides and snowflakes and stockings by the fire. Family gifts. traditions. “Silent Night.” All the wonderful things, all the important things (some more important than others), but none of the above answers the question. What is Christmas about?
Last night in church we sang “Angels We Have Heard on High” and I thought of the shepherds on that first Christmas, so many years ago: I thought how they saw and heard such wonder, and yet they did not. fall into the trap we have fallen into. They didn’t go home and decorate angel trees; they didn’t bake angel cookies or sing angel carols. They knew that Christmas was not about angels. The angels knew it too: they came for a reason, to point the hearts of men to a child in a manger.
Christmas is about Christ. It is about that Eternal Child who still brings light in the darkest of nights (“…on the other side of the Jordan, in Galilee of the nations… The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light: those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them the light has dawned” Isaiah 9:1-2.)
I love the tinsel and decorations of Christmas. I really do. But the moment they make me lose sight of the Lord I love, they have done me a great disservice.
Up to this point, I’m sure everyone agrees with me. But I don’t want to stop just yet; This truth, that Christmas is not about decorations but about Christ, goes beyond the festivities in the whole way we live our lives. You see, just as Christ is so often swallowed up by Christmas, so often has Christ been swallowed up by religion. Too many times our religion has become a song in which the music drowns out the words, a life that is all body and no heart.
What is your faith about? Try to talk to people about the Lord and you’ll find yourself talking about prophecies and healings, programs and events, preachers and singers and services and denominations and mission agencies and the Christian next door who just doesn’t understand Christianity. The fact is that God did not love the world so much that he sent the First Baptist Church of Whereversville. He “so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” Neither is the message: “Come to the great Christian concert with sixteen Grammy Award-winning singers and you will find rest.” Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Religion, with its traditions and observances, is not bad in itself. We need it to help us frame the truth, to help us understand what is too high for us. We kneel because it reminds us to pray; we sing because singing makes us think of freedom and beauty, and the Lord of both; we light candles to remind us of the light of the Spirit within us. There is nothing wrong with any of this, until we stop using religion to bring us to Christ and start using it to bring us to herself.
When the children of Israel sinned against God in the desert and were poisoned by snakes, God instructed Moses to make a bronze snake and tie it to a post, and those who looked at it would be healed. This strange statue was a symbol of the coming of the Messiah (“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but have life eternal” John 3:14-15). The Israelites kept the serpent for many years, until the time of King Hezekiah. In those days, people had turned away from God and had begun to worship the serpent itself, turning a reminder of God’s grace into an idol. Hezekiah, in his zeal for the Lord, had the bronze serpent destroyed.
Throughout history this pattern has been repeated. People look at religion instead of God. Those of us who come from a Protestant tradition think of the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages and shake our heads, but our religious trappings have just as much potential to lead us astray, if we put our faith in them and not in Jesus. History shows this to be true. Those whose faith is in Christ live in love; those whose faith is in religion must live judging others, for how else can they justify themselves?
My brothers and sisters, we must return to the author and finisher of our faith, to our Messiah. We must fall at his feet and worship; we must walk in his footsteps. It is his voice that we hear. The character of him we pray for. His grace by which we live. When you say the words “I am a Christian,” what do they mean?
Enjoy the beauty of Christmas with all its decorations, because they make us all children. But don’t let the tinsel overshadow the child in a manger. When Christmas is over and a new year begins, don’t disparage the established church and all it stands for, but don’t forget why we’re here, don’t forget who we’re here for. Christ must be all in all.
Join the angelic host and proclaim it: “For a Savior has been born to you today in the city of David, who is Christ the Lord.”