Merry Christmas

Come and See

The story of Christmas is found in three of the four gospels, but not the greeting “Merry Christmas.” The festivities around the birth of the Son of God and Man would come centuries later. It would start as a religious observance and also a typical adaptation of something pagan in order to bring the unchurched into the fold. Eventually it would be co-opted by the merchant class as an opportunity to sell seasonally selective items and embraced by the working class as an opportunity to take a day or two off.

To really understand the significance of this event requires going back to the beginning. The Gospel of John puts us back there in just a few opening lines.

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. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:1-5 (ESV)

One thing about John, he knew how to pack a lot of content into just a few words. Let’s add one more verse to John’s introduction to his gospel and then summarize.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14 (ESV)

Jesus was God and with God at the beginning of the creation of everything and he became flesh to be with us. Why? Because we as humanity were in darkness and needed him to save us out of it.

When and how we humans fell into this black pit is explained in the second story of the first book of The Old Testament.

It was on Christmas Day our friend and soon-to-be savior returned to win us back in mortal battle against our enemy and his, that serpent, Satan. He came to finish a work we could not do for ourselves and that was to break the chains of sin and death with all that implies and more.

When thinking about the meaning of Christmas we automatically go to its meaning for mankind — that he came as a child to be inclusive and safe to approach. I think it is also worth considering how Satan took this event. Here a child is born into a little poor family who couldn’t even have the child in a warm home surrounded by their families for support. Instead they were forced by a foreign emperor’s edict to travel by foot and donkey to a strange town only to end up in a stable for the delivery. They were helpless to robbers and infections that routinely destroyed other lives around them at that time, and yet they always seemed one step ahead of disaster. What appears weak to us was actually demonstrating the magnificent power of God against Satan, because the devil knew exactly who this baby was and why he came, and yet could not lay a finger to stop any of it. This is a perfect demonstration of the power of God compared with the power of everything dark, discouraging, and deadly.

Keep this in mind. This story involves you too.

[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

Colossians 1:15-23 (ESV)

Merry Christmas