What Christmas is Not

"There is the question we cannot ignore.

It's been well said that the first question we hear in the Bible is not humanity's question to God but God's question to us, God walking in the cool of the evening in the Garden of Eden, looking for Adam and Eve who are trying to hide from him. 'Adam, where are you?'

The life of Jesus is that question translated into an actual human life, into the conversations and encounters of a flesh and blood human being like all others – except that when people meet him they will say, like the woman who talks with him at the well of Samaria, 'Here is a man who told me everything I ever did.'

Very near the heart of Christian faith and practice is this encounter with God's questions, 'who are you, where are you?' Are you on the side of the life that lives in Jesus, the life of grace and truth, of unstinting generosity and unsparing honesty, the only life that gives life to others? Or are you on your own side, on the side of disconnection, rivalry, the hoarding of gifts, the obsession with control?

To answer that you're on the side of life doesn't mean for a moment that you can now relax into a fuzzy philosophy of 'life-affirming' comfort. On the contrary: it means you are willing to face everything within you that is cheap, fearful, untruthful and evasive, and let the light shine on it.

Like Peter in the very last chapter of John's gospel, we can only say that we are trying to love the truth that is in Jesus, even as we acknowledge all we have done that is contrary to his spirit. And we say this because we trust that we are loved by this unfathomable mystery who comes to us in the shape of a newborn child, 'full of grace and truth'. "

Rowan Williams, Archbishop's Christmas sermon, Sunday 25th December 2011

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Dear Kate,

Our pastor just sent out an email to ask what we want to do on Zoom this Boxing Day, and this is going to be my answer: to face everything within us that is cheap, fearful, untruthful and evasive, and let Jesus the Light shine on us.

Well, maybe not everything.  But let's start with something.  Anything at all, as an individual, in a community, supposedly longing together for the rule of the One True King, born in us anew every morning.

The Gospel is supposed to unsettle our judgements, but how often we'd use it to settle judgements we are already making on ourselves and others.  It's a long and often arduous and meandering journey, our life in Him, but we need to begin somewhere.  So why not here, Christmas 2020?

I was talking to a couple of friends this last week and asked them both the same question: What do you long for?

They both said "To be free and happy," one quite sure what he meant by these aspirations, the other not entirely.  I suggested one of the best ways to examine an idea is to, instead of defining what it is, ask what it is not.

For example, one of these friends would always be talking to me about cats--his brother's cats, but would never have any of his own.  "Too much trouble," he'd always say, though from what I can see he's long been in a good position to brave a bit of furry trouble and rejoice in the fuzzy joy that comes with it.  So his living out his longing for "freedom" is costing him his happiness: a freedom that isn't very freeing, happiness aborted, development arrested.

This Christmas when we pray our way to the side of the manger, let's turn our eyes upon Jesus and ask what is not from Him, what is given in Him to unburden us of the negations of life, renunciations of hope, denials of our togetherness, in Him.

Yours, Alex