Month: December 2016

What does Christmas mean? Why do we go to all this trouble, every year: piling up the roads with traffic, putting up the decorations, stressing at midnight to make sure we’ve bought all the last gifts…

Family? Is Christmas about family? For many of us, that’s a double-edged sword. For many of us, meeting with family is the deepest challenge of all. There are 365 days to meet with family: but on Christmas day, everyone comes together to feast, and to gift, as if everything is okay – as if the tensions of the rest of the year don’t exist at all.

Yet, the tensions do still exist: we are but human. Strained relationships, unresolved conflicts, losses from the past…for some of us, these realities abound and intensify in pain at Christmas time. Family isn’t picture perfect, for these! Family isn’t joy and peace: family is pain.

Yet there is another dimension to Christmas.

Two thousand years ago, a child was born in Israel. The circumstances of his birth were unusual: there was talk of angels, and of God. A teenaged mother, at risk of being ostracised even to death by her own people. An engagement to a man not the father. Who was the father? To answer this also was to risk death.

The Father was God.

Her pregnancy grew. Her husband had to travel, for a census: so they travelled together. There were no cars or buses: there was only their own two feet, and maybe a donkey. They walked: a long way. A bit like walking, or riding a donkey, from up north to Auckland. Pregnant. That’s pretty uncomfortable!

They went through the big city, Jerusalem, and on to the town Bethlehem. She went into labour, but there was no accommodation available, so where did she deliver? Maybe in a stable, or shed. She wrapped the baby boy up in strips of cloth, as was the thing to do back then, and laid him in an animal feeding trough. Better than the floor!

This baby boy was born in animal accommodation.

Who was this child, proclaimed by angels, born amongst animals: considered of such little worth by some to have to be laid in a manger, a feeding trough, and yet later to be visited by wise men from distant lands? Who was this one, who was later to transform the very foundation of the Roman Empire that had ordered his father to travel to Bethlehem in the first place?

This is Jesus Christ. Jesus, Yeshua, in Hebrew: the son of Joseph/Yosef, the son of David, of Nazareth. Christ, ‘the anointed one,’ the Hebrew Messiah, king and priest, awaited, but also rejected.

So what’s all this mean for us?

A light came into the world, 2000 years ago: a light that has been strong enough to remain, to this day. Light is for darkness: his light is to illuminate our darkness. This child grew into a man. He shared about God, and about humanity: he challenged the religious leaders of the day, and was killed for it.

Yet death could not keep him down.

What does Christmas mean? A mass of people gathered around Christ. Why are people gathering around him? Because of his words, because of his actions: because of his power, greater than our weaknesses – even greater than death itself.

Why not find out about this man, who dared to speak out, who dared to die, in order to shine Light: in order to overcome the darkness with his Light?

Christ is born, and is still being born, in the hearts and minds of people today. Turns out Christmas is about family, after all: Christ’s family.

Whether you know Christ, or do not, whether you wish to, or do not, I wish you a happy Christmas. And to those of us who want to know more, then, come. Feast on the spiritual food! Join us! Join the mass around Christ.

Come, let us adore him.