I’m not going to wish you a merry Christmas yet even though this is probably my best opportunity to infest the whole diocese with my festive cheer. As I write, the thoughtful season of advent has not even begun so I don’t want to sing gloria at you, or bellow ho-ho-ho. Expressions of seasonal enthusiasm have changed, and I wonder how many people today really understand the original language of Christmas anymore. “To us is born a saviour” What does that mean and why should it matter?
Advent is about looking at ourselves and at the world and realising just how much we need that saviour. Christians understand that Christmas would be pointless if we didn’t - just a marketing ploy cooked up by sellers of toys and frozen party nibbles to get us all to spend as much money as possible. But what if you have never been told? If a fire engine screeched to a halt outside your house with sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, you might wonder what it was doing there if your house was not on fire. You might be mildly interested but you would hardly celebrate your salvation! In the same way this baby whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day and who we hail as Saviour is presumably similarly underwhelming if you cannot see anything that we need saving from!
Sometimes it feels easier to believe in evil than in God. But if you do believe that evil exists- if you see it in all its brutality in our daily news, if it touches you in grief, loneliness, hatred, jealousy- then you perhaps may dimly begin to understand why we need our Saviour. If you look at the impact of individual and corporate greed or the priorities and conduct of those who run our society you may begin to understand why we need our Saviour. If you look at crime, war, corruption and oppression, then you may perceive our deep need of salvation
Perhaps we all vaguely sense the need for a Saviour because we can all see some of what is wrong. It is only a step from that yearning for things to be better to realising that science and virtue-signalling won’t deliver and that our only hope of real and change is in God. Whether we recognize Him in the Christmas story repeated every year by those persistent folk in the churches and our tiny children with their tea towels on their heads is another question altogether.
Perhaps this year it might be time to look a bit deeper and see what all the fuss is about. Coming soon to a church near you.
Dean Sarah