Let's put the Christ back in Christmas!

First week in December - time to get out the Christmas Decorations.

So all across Britain baubles are being dusted off, the old nativity set on mantel pieces above fires,attics being raided for tinsel and other such things. Everyone sings the same songs - white Christmas,Rudolph and of course Santa baby. Somewhere in the mix is the carols: silent night and the like, amongst them is away in a manger sung as if you were five again and an angel in the school's nativity complete with tinsel halo and cardboard wings. An excuse to share those old Christmas stories: we've all got those stories the one where at nursery school; I aged four was Mary and  somehow I swapped Joseph's half way to Bethlehem because the boy supposed to be Joseph wanted to be a shepherd. Everyone has their Christmas traditions and who are we to argue with them but the oldest of them all somehow gets sidelined.But amongst it all; there is two thousand years gone, there is one dirty manger, teenager mother and one sleeping baby who would one day change human history forever Christ is missing from Christmas. 

Thing is so many people use it as an excuse to have a party and to give stuff to people to send cards and sing the same songs. Few might venture into church because that is what they do and grandma likes it so why not. But all to often Jesus is forgotten, he's just a bauble on a Christmas tree. so many people gloss over the Christmas story, its just the same as singing bring us some figgy pudding or  a cracker or card part and parcel of a holiday To them he will never be more than a baby in a manger - another old bauble on a traditional Christmas. He will forever be 'the little lord Jesus asleep on the hay'  what happened to the big lord Jesus hung on the cross? Why is it so easy for people to accept the harmless baby and not the man saviour? Its almost like Santa just another magical part of a secular holiday - a baby was born to a virgin two thousand years ago so what?

Jesus is not a bauble, and he's not just for Christmas.

 My favourite story as a child was Ballet shoes by Noel Streatfeild: its a bout a man whom almost by accident adopts three girls for his Niece and then disappears travelling, the book charts the course of their lives whilst he is away at the end of the book he comes home ( after not having said how long he would be away) to find three teenagers standing awkwardly in the hallway and when he asks them who they are and they say Pauline, Patrova and Posy his response is ' but you were babies, I collected babies." to which one of them responds ' But GUM, babies grow up.' I think its something people often neglect about Jesus; as if as a baby he is something of an ornament; babies have no opinions except for feeding times and nap times (none of these the gospels record) Babies are safe, babies are understandable. A baby isn't religious or going to say anything to push you out of your comfort zone.

But in viewing Jesus this way they are missing out, missing out on a man, the son of God who lived as he loved who showed us how we could live then died so we could have eternal life. He is the Christ, 700 years before he was born they knew how and where he would be born and even who his earthly parents would be. So this year its time to say he's not just for Christmas he is for life and For life.  Don't just see the a baby in the manger - see the man on the cross and the man risen who wants to have a true and meaningful relationship with you. Put the Christ back in Christmas. 

Grainy black and white or in super High definition

Same Jesus. 

This passage in Hebrews really strikes me, not because of my fondness of the Vicky Beeching song. Jesus is the same always he was in the past and he will still be in the future. I am afraid to say that I struggle with this! how can Jesus always be constant?

Being rather fond of the past and interested in science fiction of the future, This image of Jesus being constant interests me. It only takes a rudimentary study of history for anyone to discover that nothing except natural laws stays the same even when it seems so for as anything in its first era it is new then it is accepted then it is old. things have their lifespan. Jesus had a lifespan.. He was born he lived and loved he died he rose he's now with the father. So here is the kicker St. Paul how is he the same forever? what kind of Constancy is he trying to say here? His Grace? his love? his character? his nature? all of the above? but hold on a minute Paul is talking in a post resurrection world, Jesus has already risen by the time he is writing this.

As humans constancy is comforting we live in an ever changing world. God himself is Constant- he has to be because he is God, it would make much more sense to say God is Constant. perhaps he is alluding here to Jesus' divinity that as part of god he is therefore of God's nature. To me this passage is comforting not bceause of the constancy of Christ itself  but the fact that therefore the Jesus in the Gospels is the same Jesus we can know now. My sheep know my voice... this makes the word of God all the more important because it is a window on Jesus Character in the Gospels and God's character. This is why the image I had for this passage was that of the bible the king James Version of the past, the message version in the present and the tablet version in the future, because ultimately there is prayer and there is God's Word, to truly know his nature.