Promises, promises!
Those words are usually muttered in disappointment—when someone has placed their trust in another who has promised so much, but failed to do what they said they would: “Promises, promises.” “Talk is cheap, actions speak louder than words,” we say. We just want people to be real with us. Isn’t that what you want too—to be taken seriously, to be treated with sincerity, and for people to make good on what they promise?
It’s nice in theory. But we know from personal experience that this often doesn’t happen in practice.
In recent weeks—despite the uncertainty and fear surrounding COVID—many people made their pilgrimage to the religious capital of our Southern suburbs—Westfield Marion. I was there too, and one of the first things I noticed on the shelves was this—‘snow in a can’. It’s great—just add water, and you will have 4.3kg of “fantastically fluffy snow” that you can arrange on your doorstep and front windows, with the ability to withstand Australian December temperatures. In terms of novelty appeal for consumers, this is the item you just gotta have!
We can get a lot of things in a can these days…but snow?
Of course, this isn’t really snow. It’s some kind of engineered material posing as the real thing. There’s a lot of un-real things at Christmas time. The sickly-sweet imitation cherries that taste nothing like a cherry, adorning the iced Christmas cake. The forest of plastic Christmas trees in department stores, substituting real pines and firs. The Christmas cards depicting carollers, singing, holding hands while ice skating across frozen lakes…everyone, happy, together. That didn’t quite match the scene on the corner here last week, when a car pulled up at the lights, and a woman leaned out the window to abuse another driver, spewing forth a tirade of filth. It seemed an eternity until the lights changed, and the traffic moved on, and the air was quieted again.
Maybe it was the stress of the season that caused such a boilover. It is a stressful time, the Christmas season. Social expectations pressure us to cook the perfect lunch, buy the perfect gift, deck the house with the perfect decorations, set up the perfect front yard Christmas lights. If we do this well enough, we will make our loved ones so happy.
Society essentially says that we are all good, and if we’re all good then we don’t really need what the real Christmas is really all about: a God who saves us. Marketers have sold us the lie that the one wretched condition we need deliverance from is boredom, and retail therapy is salvation. People are led to believe they can supposedly buy their way to happy experiences, even though in the process we become deeply enslaved to finding the dollars in our ‘buy now, pay later’ culture. Hmmm…promises, promises! Forecasts for this year’s pre-Christmas spending was at 11% higher than 2019 pre-pandemic Christmas spending, coming in overall at $58.8 billion. [1] How many hungry families $58 billion would feed?
Christmas, for so many, is an experience of human making to escape reality. But the conflict and the COVID and the cancer, the abusing of substances and of people, the loneliness and the pain, the desperate need to be loved, the isolation and anxiety, the redundancy and bankruptcy…they are still here.
No matter how much stuff we buy we can’t buy lasting peace. No matter how many presents are unwrapped we can’t bury our guilt and shame underneath the crumpled wrapping. We can’t bury our failings towards others underneath the overindulged turkey, ham, pudding, and trifle…or simply forget about our health problems with a glass or three of bubbly. And when the tinsel and baubles and tree are taken down, and the snow in a can is removed, our daily troubles and the chaos in the world remain.
The irony is that the world’s version of Christmas is the one that doesn’t deal with reality. God knew we needed more than hollow promises to be able to cope with reality, and to be freed from it. He gave real promises through the prophets, which we have heard during our shared Advent sermon series with Faith Lutheran Church, Warradale. The birth of a Saviour is an event which God had promised throughout history, centuries before it came to be, speaking through real people, the prophets like Micah and Isaiah:
“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given,
and the government will be on his shoulders.
And he will be called: Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end.” (Isaiah 9:6-7a).
God didn’t just make empty promises with no intention of following through. God came to be real with us. He came all the way from heaven to earth, to take you seriously, in the Person of Jesus.
Jesus’ birth is a real event that is anchored in human history. Just think: his birth took place during the time of a census, with historically verifiable people in real places, in a real time!! And inseparable from this event, which the youth captured so well in tonight’s Christmas Eve play, is all the real human experience of the situation: the confusion and struggle to believe, the frustrations, stresses and reaction of distrust of the shepherds’ wives. The crowds at Bethlehem at the time of the Census, the worst time and place to be looking for accommodation—let alone admission to the maternity ward. Too bad Joseph didn’t book ahead with Trivago! Looks like the donkey will be ramped tonight.
What would they do? But then, finally, a place for Jesus to be born; the only place; the lowest place: next slide a stable with itchy hay, and nostrils filled with the aroma of damp earth and sour manure. Mothers, who among you would choose such a place to give birth to your child? Yet this is the place God chooses Jesus to be born, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.
In the ancient world babies were wrapped from their shoulders to their feet with long strips of cloth 4-5 inches wide. The act of wrapping the child this way was called “swaddling” and the strips of cloth were called “swaddling clothes”. Why, then, was Jesus wrapped in cloths like any other baby? We might expect Jesus to have been elegantly attired to make him easily recognisable and unmistakably distinct…wearing something like the intricate baptismal gowns handed down through generations. Why are these swaddling clothes to be a sign by which to identify the Christ child? Wouldn’t that make him be just like any other baby…make him to be just like us?
Yes! God in Christ became human—just like the despised and displaced, the homeless and poor, the grieving, the wrongly accused, the suffering and dying, the imprisoned and tortured, sharing in our very same existence as he walked in our world―a world with all its fears, hurts, threats, troubles, pain and grief.
Yet Jesus was NOT just like every other baby. In this delicate and vulnerable bundle of human cells dwelt the fullness and might of the Kingdom of God to reign with grace and compassion, justice and truth. There, in that filthy stable, God descended into the muck and filth of our world to bring divine help and grace.
In Christ, God knows what it’s like to be hungry and thirsty, to be tempted in every way. He experienced all the emotions you do, he knows what it is like to be troubled in spirit, and experience suffering, pain and even death. He came to do what we cannot do for ourselves: to save us from a global pandemic far greater than COVID—our bondage to sin, decay and death, and the power of the devil.
Jesus was born to make us right with his Father by his own righteousness, so that no matter what happens in this life, we might have a safe and secure place of belonging in his family as his children through faith. He came to bring us the peace of God’s forgiveness, and to shepherd us all through life until he finally takes us to share in his glory in heaven.
With the birth of Christ, God has done all that he has promised his people of old. He has sent the world its Saviour.
The work has been done. The gift given—the best one ever, from God to you. Jesus came to those who could not help themselves, who could not achieve, who could not measure up to God, who did not have social approval and cannot buy their way to happiness and peace, not in any real or lasting way. He came to us. He came to save sinners that we might know the grace of a loving God who loves us—not because of what we can do, not because of what we’re good at, not even because we try our best to match up to his standards. He came to us, because God wants to share his love and life with us. And so, today, a Saviour is born for you.
Yet many people will have no room in their hearts for Jesus. It is so ironic that on the first Christmas night there was no room for Jesus in the inn. It was put so well by the character Eli in the script: “…people can be so blind at times. Even when God himself comes to earth, they’ll still find reasons not to believe.”
But God, who trusted human hands to hold their Saviour at his birth, still calls you now to trust him to hold your life in his hands.
“Glory to God in the highest!” the great heavenly host said, calling on the shepherds to join with them in praising God for the gift we could ever receive from him―Jesus!
Dear folks gathered tonight, I make a heartfelt appeal to you all: will you also join with the angels and the shepherds in giving glory to God? For to you, this day in the town of David is born a Saviour. He is Christ the Lord! Amen!
[1] This figure was forecasted by the Australian Retailers Association and strategic partner Roy Morgan. Source: https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/8817-pre-christmas-retail-trade-for-2021-predicted-to-remain-steady-year-on-year-at-$58-billion-202110180536
