(A Sermon, by Kim Thoday)

Christmas is a dying art. In many ways it has become a big spending spree. It is a pseudo art of consuming. It has become the cargo cult of culture. It is a mad, orgiastic ritual of appeasement of the corporatised conglomerated ‘gods’ that have dulled our consciousness and duped our conscience. It is a frantic rush. It leaves us exhausted and frustrated like an orgasm without love. It raises false hopes and expectations, just as it raises the debts of those who can least afford it. It is carried away like a leaf in a storm. It is largely a pagan feast dominated by excess and sentimentality. It seems that not much has changed since the birth of Jesus – the reason for the season! Just as there was no room for him two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, there is little room for him, if any, in our commercialised “christmas.”

I have an old Bible Society tract that has on it a vivid traditional nativity scene with the words: The True Colours of Christmas. I treasure it because of the wording and the picture; it is an important reminder to me about the Christian art of Christmas. As the colours of Christmas fade in the Western world, may we as Christians be about reviving the saving art of Christmas. As we prepare for Christmas this year let God once again paint our lives with the wonderful colours of Christmas. I would like to talk about three colours of Christmas.

GOLD IS FOR GIVING.

If we were more honest, much so-called giving becomes a subtle or not so subtle way of controlling or “buying” another person’s love or attention. But real love cannot be bought. What a tragedy it is when people are manipulated into an endless cycle of consuming. Sadly, parents can become perpetrators, as they make gifts a substitute for the giving of time, attention and love to their children. So what is the art of giving?

Giving cannot be measured by the gift. It can only be measured by the self-giving for which the gift itself is symbolic. I often think there is no greater gift to the world than a newborn child. What a gift it is: the miracle of a human life that bursts forth from a mother’s womb. Perhaps there is no greater connection that humans have with animals (except in death) than in the birth and rearing of our young. At that moment of the birth of a child, parents are usually overwhelmed by the instincts to protect, feed, caress, clean, nurture and love. In a newborn child we are awed by the mystery and we humbled by the giftedness.

Yet the gift of children comes at the price of self-giving. The child is symbolic of the worth given to it. Pause to remember the many sacrifices parents make in the months of pregnancy. There are all the lifestyle changes in planning and preparation. There is the sickness, discomfort and stress of the woman during the pregnancy. There are the psychological and emotional changes for the parents to process. And then there are the expenses of medical care and finally the intense anxiety and suffering of labour begins. For the great gift of a child a woman endures great pain in childbirth. The corollary of a great gift is great self-giving.

Christmas is about the Saviour of the world, Jesus Christ, entering the world in the miracle of childbirth. Christian tradition asserts that Jesus was born to a virgin called Mary. The miracle of the virgin birth is symbolic of the value and worth of this child, Jesus. Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, is born to a poor, peasant woman who, like all women in pregnancy, gives of herself completely. Mary and Joseph, who adopts Jesus as his son, like all caring parents, are willing to make every sacrifice necessary for the protection and nurture of their child Jesus. This kind of self-giving helps to illustrate the giving nature of God. God gave his son Jesus unconditionally to all humankind for the salvation of every person and for the transformation of every community. The self-giving of God is also a reminder to us all that giving really makes a difference when we give without hidden agendas, when it is free and when a gift is given with human cost. Christian giving is an art and it takes a lifetime of learning from each other and from God, through Jesus Christ.

When the wise men came from the far East to visit the Christ child, they came bearing gifts. They came at a time of political turmoil and intrigue. They came at risk to themselves and at the cost of a long and arduous journey. They came with the faith that they would find the promised Messiah. They came to worship Jesus and to acknowledge this great gift of God. Amongst their gifts they brought gold – the symbol of royalty. The giving of gold reflects something of the nature of God giving his son Jesus. Gold is for giving.

RED IS FOR LOVING

The art of giving springs forth from the art of loving. Historical research clearly shows that the earliest Christians were anything but perfect. Yet they were known in particular for self-giving and love. They were called to give to the needy and their foundational mandate was to love the outcasts. But what is the art of loving?

Christian love is founded in honesty. For nothing is more destructive of human relationships than deceit. This is clearly illustrated in relationships, especially marriage. If there cannot be honesty and integrity in marriage, as in other human relationships, it is unlikely to survive in any healthy sense. Love requires honesty, because love thrives on trust. In our era it is hard to trust. Perhaps this has been the case in all eras. When trust has been broken it is hard to trust again. Love is the art of learning to trust again in a broken and often untrustworthy world. Often it is about daring to trust our selves again. The one hope we depend upon is that God is trustworthy. God is definitively a God of love and therefore is the ground of our trust.

Marriage is perhaps the highest human attempt to give ethical expression to love. It is an expression deeply embedded in all cultures. When people marry they make promises to each other to bring the very best out in each other. Some of the most magnificent words in human language are used: to honour, to comfort, to cherish, to uphold for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. This language strives for the true colours of love. For me the hues of real love mingle and bind. They are colours of struggle, pain, friendship, understanding, acceptance and joy. They are also the colours of both dark and light: the paradox of mystery. The mystery of true love, embodied in the ideal of marriage, is that human fulfilment is found in the mutual submission of a man and a woman to each other. But the vulnerability at this point must be mutual. If it is not then love is lost in the distortion. Yet that love can be recovered, for true love has the power within it to forgive and reconcile that distortion. Marriage, based upon the art of mutual vulnerability, at one and the same time, respects individual difference and yet forms a new identity, a communal existence of interdependence, a microcosm of humanity, a truly human being that would otherwise not be possible.

Christmas is about the vulnerability of God. It is about a God who trusts what he has created. It is about a God who sent his heart, his flesh and blood, in the form of his Son into this world as a vulnerable baby. We can only stand in awe of such love. God loves us, you and I, so much that he became one of us, to show his oneness with us, to accept us and befriend us and yet paradoxically to save us and to redeem us for his higher purpose. This great love of trust, vulnerability and mutuality is also how Jesus, in his adult ministry, taught us to love each other. By the power of God’s love, so we are to love each other. Love cannot be an abstraction. Love needs the other. In a sense, the love of God is only possible because there is a humanity to love. Love is the heart of God mingling with the hearts of human beings. In the baby Jesus, miraculously, two hearts became one, human and divine. Red is for loving.

GREEN IS FOR LIVING

Christmas is about a celebration of life and love. It is about the miracle of birth and human existence. Christmas defies the odds. Christmas is a powerful reminder within an often dark and unforgiving world that life and love will ultimately triumph. Christmas declares that good will overcome evil. What then is the art of living? The birth of Jesus occurred against the most difficult of circumstances. His birth was hardly an ideal situation by any standards. And it was certainly not a good start for any budding Messiah. He was conceived out of wedlock, to a poor girl, who, after a sudden marriage to a poor man called Joseph, ended up on the run from a seemingly neurotic king intent upon killing their child. The family ended up as refugees in Egypt and then eventually found their way back to a backwater town known locally as Nazareth. It is a powerful story of the human tenacity to overcome, of the struggle of millions of poor people in this world who are determined to fight on, to have hope for a better life. The art of living is to come to terms with the hardships, unfairness and tragedy of life and yet live pro-actively with the hope that things do not have to be this way and that the longings of the human heart will be realised in God’s future dimension.

Our Victorian forebears in many ways were a pompous lot, but they did not think it offensive to speak openly about death, which is one of our problems today. When all our quests are over for money and material things, for monuments and epitaphs, it is the cemetery that is the lesson for living. Even to the cynical and to the atheist, the cemetery is a reminder of our mortality and perhaps ought to become once again a quiet place for reflection upon how we live. The art of living begins with a balanced view of life and death. The art of living is the journey of gratefulness for the gift of life and to make it count in the face of death. It is the journey of discovery that life and death are part of a greater purpose for which God gave Jesus to live and to die and to live again that we can have life now and for eternity.

Is the art of giving dying? Is the art of loving dying? Is the art of living dying? Yes and yet in dying, Jesus tells us we will discover true life. In sacrifice of self for the other and for God’s higher purpose of the salvation and redemption of this world, like a seed that is buried in the ground, new life emerges. The colour of this way of living is green, like the evergreen of the Christmas tree. Green is for living. The colours of Christmas make a grand picture of hope amidst the turmoil and darkness of our world: stokes of gold, red and green. These colours will never die because the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will last forever. In light of the gracious gift of God in Jesus, may we continue the art of giving, the art of loving and the art of living. Let us begin these great Christian arts again in this Christmas season.

Blessings in Jesus’ name,

Kim Thoday, Hewett Community Church of Christ, South Australia

http://www.hewett.com.au