This Christmas, my thoughts. Rejoice ? or Beware?

This Christmas, my thoughts...
Rejoice? or Beware?

When the organising committee of this year’s Christmas musical asked me to write a short pastoral note for it, I remember writing “The season of Christmas has always descended on me with mixed emotions – joy and concern.” This has always been my emotions at this time of the year. Concern because the true message (of Christmas that is) is obscured by the loud sound and rumble of modern presentations of it in and by commercial entities. Joy, because of the hope that the message itself brings – a hope the world desperately needs to hear, a hope we crucially need to live in our lives.

God tells Ahaz in Isaiah 7:14, “The Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” It is a sign and the sign is “Immanuel” – God is with us! And the consequences are altogether ambiguous. Christmas is a time when we mark Christ’s coming into the world. The ambiguity is this - is it “God is coming: Rejoice!” or is it, “God is coming: Beware!”

I remember Professor Fred Gaiser (professor of Old Testament, Luther Seminary) once wrote, “Both responses are appropriate and true, and both mark the observance of Advent.” God is coming, says Isaiah, and He is bringing a kingdom of peace and prosperity, equality and justice, where all creation joins humanity’s voice in songs of praise. So Rejoice !

But on the other hand, God is coming, says John the Baptist: “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Matthew 3:7). So Beware!

The angel announces that he brings us “good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.” This is the fulfilment of the promise of Immanuel! God is with us, from heaven to earth! What this means for me is that the time has come. It means that I can now live life based on hope in God. And that is the basis of this joy – hope in God! When the wise men went searching for this Immanuel, and when they saw His star, the divine record says they “rejoiced with exceeding great joy.”

Christmas promises joy – and peace and love and nostalgia and hope and wonder; but Christmas brings God to earth in human form, which will change everything we thought about God and challenge everything we thought about ourselves.

Jesus is God with us, bringing both the wonder and the worry of that reality. God is in Christ – so close we can touch him and taste him; so real he can forgive and make us new. God is in Christ – so close we cannot escape his scrutiny; so real he cannot escape the world’s suffering. Jesus is God with us, and every day we are amazed.

Rejoice or Beware. Where do you fit in?

We should be prepared to be overtaken by the joy that is Immanuel – we can, if we accept and believe the message the angel brought.

A blessed Christmas to one and all.

Rev Robert Chew