Rob's message for January
I get a bit confused at this time of year. I am writing this before Christmas, but you are reading it after Christmas, so I have to remember to talk about Christmas as if it has already happened. Also, you are probably reading it in January, so I have to remember to say Happy New Year and not Happy Christmas, even though most of our Christmas things in the churches, let alone Christmas Day, haven’t even happened yet. It’s probably a bit easier from your perspective, a few weeks down the line, when Christmas has definitely been and the New Year is just beginning.
All this trying to remember whether it has been Christmas or not has got me thinking about the fact that, of course, Christmas has come. It doesn’t change from one year to the next, whether it is December, or January, or even June. As I was saying to a friend recently, we can’t be sure when Jesus was born – Christmas is more like his “official birthday” but we do know that he was. It happened, once and for all, and whatever we say every year about waiting for Christmas, or even looking forward to Jesus’s birth, actually we are talking about something that has happened already. I’m writing this in the middle of December, but that’s still after Christmas.
When I was preaching a couple of weeks ago, I was thinking out loud about all the build-up to Christmas – which makes it difficult for different people for various reasons – can also cause us to lose sight of how suddenly Christmas appeared. Lots of people had expected it for a long time, but it was still such a surprise. You spot it in the appearance of the angels to the shepherds: “Suddenly” they are there. God had done this extraordinary thing, and it was up to everyone who saw and heard it to decide what to do about it.
And that’s still where you and I all are today. We are suddenly confronted with the truth of what God has done, and we have to decide what to do about it. Often what happens is that God is already at work in people’s lives, perhaps almost without being noticed, and then a moment comes where everything happens very suddenly. Like the new birth of Jesus to Mary and Joseph, people experience new birth into faith in Jesus by the Holy Spirit. A story that was once just for Christmastime becomes the thing that we live for, and by, every single day. The same Jesus who was born into the chaos of a busy Middle Eastern home comes to live in our hearts.
It's a moment in someone’s life which changes everything, forever, and replaces any confusion about whether or not Christmas has happened yet with the glorious certainty that God has come near, and that everything has changed. It’s an invitation which God makes constantly, from Christmas to New Year and at every time in between, as he shows us what Jesus has done for us, and invites us to believe.
Happy New Year, everyone.
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