A question that I’m sure we’re all going to be asked over the next few weeks, and perhaps have already been asked is,
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
And we know what people mean in asking that question; have we made all our plans for Christmas dinner, arranged to meet with our family to exchange greetings and gifts, have we indeed bought the gifts we need to buy, and have we written and sent the Christmas cards we need to send. Because for most people doing all these things is what being ready for Christmas is all about. If you have done these things, you’re ready; if you haven’t done them, you’re not. And most people will be busy during these next few weeks getting ready for Christmas in those ways.
Today we begin the season of Advent which is the Church’s time for getting ready for Christmas. But what does being ready for Christmas mean from the Church’s point of view? We, in the Church, know that being ready for Christmas is about being ready to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that being ready for that isn’t about turkey and tinsel, cards and presents or any of the other paraphernalia that people usually mean when they talk about being ready for Christmas. But what does it mean for Christians?
For many Christians, being ready for Christmas will mean coming to Church during Advent, perhaps especially for a Christmas Carol Service, getting involved in the various Church activities that go on at this time of year, things like Christmas Fairs, putting up the Crib and decorating the church, and doing all these in readiness to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ either on Christmas Eve, at Midnight Mass, or on Christmas morning. But as nice and good and necessary as those things are, is that really what it means for a Christian to be ready for Christmas? To answer that question, we need to think first about just what it is we’re getting ready for. Christmas, of course. But what is Christmas, what is it we’re celebrating?
In fact, we can answer those questions very easily by turning to the Gospel reading we read at the end of Midnight Mass and as the gospel of the day on Christmas Day; the prologue to the Gospel of St John:
‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made… And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…’
This is what we’re celebrating at Christmas, and this is what we’re getting ready for during Advent, the coming into the world of God himself in the person of his Son. The coming into the world of a child who would go on to reveal to us, in person, the very words and ways of God. And when we think about just how awesome a thing this is, we really do have to think afresh about just what it means to be ready for Christmas.
Awesome is a word that gets bandied about a lot these days isn’t it? For example, it’s awesome that Manchester United’s new manager has got off to a good start, it would be even more awesome, I’m sure, if they could beat Manchester City in a couple of weeks’ time. That said, it would also be awesome if Manchester City could win any game at all the moment! People use awesome to describe things like this. What they actually mean is ‘good’. An awesome thing is something that is mind-bogglingly unbelievable. Something that is miraculous, out of this world, something that’s so wonderful and impressive that it defies belief and explanation. And Christmas is awesome in that sense because it truly is something out of this world that has come into this world.
Perhaps we can begin to understand just how awesome a thing this is by comparing it to another truly awesome thing, the cosmos. The Universe is truly awesome, the distances and timescales involved in trying to understand and explain the universe are mind boggling. In spite of our best efforts, there’s so much we simply don’t understand and can’t explain about the Universe and the more we find out, the more we realise just how much we don’t know and don’t understand. But as Christians, we believe that all this was brought into being at God’s command, at his word. So if the Universe is awesome, how much more awesome is God and God’s word which brought it into being? And it is this awesome God, and word of God, the word that brought everything into being, that came to earth at Christmas. And when we think about Christmas in these terms, we really do have to think long and hard about just what it means to be ready for Christmas, and to rethink what being ready for Christmas means. But we’re not without help in doing that.
One of the great figures of Advent is John the Baptist, whom we’ll read about over the next few Sundays. John was sent by God to prepare the way for the Word and his message was a simple one; repent and be forgiven. Turn away from all the things we do that are contrary to the word of God so that we can be forgiven for all the times we haven’t listened to his word and followed it. And if we want to be ready for Christmas, that’s what we have to do. And if we don’t do that, or don’t at least try to do that, anything else we do is simply window dressing; humbug as a well-known literary character associated with Christmas puts it.
One of the great difficulties we have in getting and being ready for Christmas in a meaningful way though, is our tendency to justify our disobedience to God’s word by distorting his word. I’ve spoken about this many times. We do have a tendency to absolve ourselves from any guilt of disobedience to God’s word by saying what amounts to, ‘Well, I know Jesus said this, but what he actually meant was…’ and then say that what Jesus actually meant suggests that we’ve not done very much, if anything at all, wrong. Or we say ‘Well, what Jesus said was, but that can be interpreted in more than one way’ and then we put an interpretation on Jesus words that, again, absolve us from any wrongdoing. But when we’re tempted to do this kind of thing, we need to stop for a moment to consider whose word it is we’re twisting to our own ends. These are the words of the incarnate Son of God, the Word who brought all things into being . When we distort his words, we’re distorting the very word of God. How dare we have the effrontery to even consider doing such a thing?
Some of you will perhaps be familiar with a photograph known as the Pale Blue Dot. It’s an image taken form the outer reaches of the Solar System which shows the Earth as a barely visible, pale blue dot in the vastness of space. But the vastness of space in the photo is an unimaginably miniscule part of the Universe which was created at God’s word. And we are an unimaginably miniscule speck on that pale blue dot. How dare we call into question God’s Word or think that we know better than God?
If we’re going to be ready for Christmas we need to think about just what it is we’re getting ready for, and we need to listen again to the Advent call of John the Baptist. We need to prepare for the coming of the Lord by repenting for all the things we’ve done that are contrary to God’s word so that we can be forgiven for those things.
We can’t look to absolve ourselves from guilt or justify our disobedience by distorting God’s word, and Jesus doesn’t allow us that option.
Just think about the quite staggering things Jesus said.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Not this is God’ way or that is God’s way, but I am the way. And on many occasions he spoke in these terms;
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”
Which is an answer to those who would distort the meaning of God’s word to justify their own disobedience. And Jesus claimed the authority to say such things like this:
“If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.”
So Jesus does not leave us the option of arguing about his words or their interpretation, he only commands us to listen to his words and keep them. And he does this because he is the Word made flesh; he is the Word of God that brought all things into being come into the world so that we might hear and understand that Word, and how to live that Word in our own lives. That is what we’re getting ready for at Christmas, and we can’t prepare for that with turkeys and tinsel, cards and presents or any of the other accoutrements of the ‘Festive Season’. We can’t even prepare by what we do in church if what we do in church doesn’t bring about that change of heart, that repentance, that John the Baptist urges us to.
So are we ready for Christmas? Probably not. But we do know what it means to get ready and what it means to be ready so let’s use this Advent season to prepare so that we are as ready as we possibly can be to celebrate the awesome event that we call Christmas, the coming into the world of the Word made flesh in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Propers for Advent 1, 1st December 2024
Entrance Antiphon
To you, I lift my soul, O my God. In you, I have trusted; let me not be put to shame.
Nor let my enemies exult over me;
and let none who hope in you be put to shame.
The Collect
Almighty God,
give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and to put on the armour of light,
now in the time of this mortal life,
in which your Son Jesus Christ came to us in great humility;
that on the last day,
when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge the living and the dead,
we may rise to the life immortal;
through him who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:4-5, 8-10, 14
1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2
Luke 21:25-28, 34-36
Post Communion
O Lord our God,
make us watchful and keep us faithful as we await the coming of your Son our Lord;
that, when he shall appear,
he may not find us sleeping in sin,
but active in his service and joyful in his praise;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 