The American humourist, Erma Bombeck, once wrote:

“There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake on Christmas morning and not be a child”.

It’s a common sentiment, isn’t it?

‘Christmas is really for children’.

Especially as we get older…

we revel in their excitement and expectation––

and their sense of ‘magic’––

as we also recall our own when we were young.

But, to be honest, when I was a kid…

I found Christmas, on the whole, to be a frustrating experience.

After all of the hype––

after all of the excitement and expectation in the lead up––

to gather around the Christmas tree…

and to tear off the brightly coloured wrapping paper only to find…

by and large… 

an assortment of things that my parents thought that I needed…

rather than the lengthy list of longed-for goodies circulating in my head––

it provoked feelings of disappointment that I was never able to hide successfully.

 

In a recent opinion piece, two academics specialising in early childhood education noted…

“Both the Santa story and consumer culture promote the idea of wish-fulfilment”…

with the result that… 

for young children…

“not getting the toy they wanted” is perceived as a “failure”…

and can result in strong feelings of disappointment…

with which parents can struggle…

and from which they try to protect themselves and their children.

But, the authors argue…

“although disappointment feels awful, it is a part of life and is actually a positive and healthy emotion that’s central to children’s emotional, cognitive and social development”.

In short, at Christmas time…

it can actually be good for kids not to get what they want or expect.

And yet, in a sense, I don’t think that that cycle of expectation and disappointment associated with Christmas…

is only restricted to young children.

Perhaps in subtle ways…

as adults…

I think that it also underpins our religious expectations surrounding the Christmas-event.

Let me explain...

 

The Christmas story that we know so well––

the one that we find in Luke’s Gospel…

with its shepherds, angels, and animals around a manger––

is…

on the surface and in many respects… 

a charming or even romantic story that captivates our imaginations…

as it has done for countless people down the centuries.

But it’s also a story that is elaborately wrapped in the mythic and the miraculous––

not just in the sudden appearance of angelic choirs scaring the poor shepherds…

but, especially, in its central image of a young virgin who conceives and gives birth.

And the theological motif running through this story is that of an all-powerful God… 

who, in effect, is outside… 

and ‘other’…

but who breaks into our reality, intervening to save us from ourselves;

a God who comes charging into our world to sort out the world’s mess…

and to fix it all for us.

And, in particular, it’s a story about a God who swoops in to save us––

indeed, “salvation” is at the heart of the angelic message.

And that’s probably understood… 

by most… 

as us being saved from hell and damnation…

and being offered the promise of heaven and eternal life.

In a sense, you could say…

perhaps…

that Luke’s Christmas story presents us with a God with a messiah-complex.

But, truth be told, that’s what we expect.

That’s what we expect of God.

Like a benevolent but sometimes overbearing and interfering parent…

we expect God to sort out our mess;

to protect us from all of the unpleasant things in life––

to spare us from its hurt and pain;

to save us from ourselves and our bad decisions.

Luke’s Christmas story––

and the way that we interpret it––

effectively panders to our childish needs:

it places us at the centre…

it makes it all about me.

 

And yet, that’s not the only Christmas story that we have.

John’s poetically pared-down version offers us something quite different.

Stripped of all narrative detail… 

and starkly symbolic…

the focus, in this account, is not on us but on God;

and on what this all means about and for God.

In our reading this morning… 

the author speaks of “the Word”––

a poor translation, really, of a Greek term…

which was used by ancient philosophers to speak of the consciousness, the logic, the rationality of God;

in a sense, the personification of God.

And he boldly declares that, “the Word became flesh”.

In other words–– 

according to the author of John’s Gospel–– 

in the Christmas-event, God became flesh.

He’s not describing it as if God were wrapped in flesh––

like cheap Christmas wrapping paper covering…

and hiding… 

the really important thing inside.

No!

God became flesh.

God became human––

intrinsically…

integrally…

inherently.

There’s no sense of pretence or put-on here.

God became human––

fully human.

God shared completely in what it means to be human.

And, of course, a fundamental part of what it means to be human is to grow… 

to learn…

and to change.

In other words, the author claims that God is not impassive or immutable.

God didn’t remain outside and ‘other’.

God became one of us.

God was born into the brokenness of our world.

God grew through and into the pain of human existence.

God shared our brokenness and pain.

God embraced it.

God experienced the brokenness of our world…

and the mess and pain of human existence…

fully…

from the inside.

Rather than a God who intervenes from the outside to fix it all for us…

God was born into it––

God was born as a part of it––

in order to deal with it from within.

And the God-who-became-flesh didn’t deal with it by snapping God’s fingers…

or waving a magic wand… 

and simply, suddenly, miraculously, making it all right.

Rather…

God dealt with it by being fully and completely human:

by living and loving…

offering healing and hope;

by getting alongside ordinary people…

and understanding them… 

empathically;

by embracing them in their fear and frustration; 

by confronting and challenging their cruelty and ugliness…

and refusing to conform to it or give in to it;

by being willing to suffer and die in order to show us another way…

a different way…

a more authentic way to be human––

together.

 

According to John’s Gospel…

the story of the God-who-became-flesh reminds us that we only change things…

we only make them right…

we only fix the brokenness of our world…

by being fully human––

in the way that Jesus was.

In the end…

stripped of all the miraculous and the mythic… 

that’s the real story of Christmas:

God’s Christmas present to us…

is a model of what it truly means to be human.