Come again? Lord Jesus

This year the school nativity service had to pause.

Instead of the doll we were expecting to use as the infant Jesus, we discovered that all we had been brought was a small, furry, purple, bear.

Meanwhile, a friend of mine put on a nativity, but three young boys dressed as Kings couldn’t remember their words.

There was a pause there too, and the first boy was prompted.

‘I bring you myrrh’ he said.
‘Oh! I bring you gold’ blurted the second boy.
And Frank sents you this! shouted the third.

They say don’t work with children or animals.

Perhaps wise women would be more practical.

Wise women may have bought better gifts, arrived on time, helped deliver the baby, cleaned the stable, and made a casserole.
But no, Jesus doesn't discriminate.

God as a baby says, 'yes, there is indeed another world, and it is right here in this one!'

Shouldn’t that cause us to pause?

God as a human is called incarnation, and it says humanity is indeed good.

But some of us have celebrated Jesus’ birth even more times than I.

42 times, I have celebrated Baby Jesus being born, over and over and over and over and over again.

So I ask you - isn’t this more like reincarnation than incarnation?

Isn’t this the first coming being celebrated over and over again?

God created us in his image, says the Bible, and we returned the favour, added Voltaire.

Perhaps he had a point.

We don’t turn Jesus into a small furry purple bear or call one of the Kings Frank – but our churches do make God into a judge with all the responsibility.

Supernatural Love may indeed be a much better judge than we are, but Jesus didn’t stay in a crib.

He grew into perfect adult humanity, and he urged us to grow up spiritually, too.

So let’s pause.

Matthew 5, verses 43-48: ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy,” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.’

Jesus left the crib, faced danger, suffering, and death, and before his resurrection, he made no distinction between outsider and insider, or between good and evil.

And likewise, humankind, that’s us, before we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, couldn’t distinguish between good and evil, which was the reason this life was paradise – we treated all life as a gift.

Well, according to Genesis.
But the fact is this.

All life is a gift.
None of us earns life.
None of us avoids death.

So we do live a life that is a gift.

In daily life, we can therefore celebrate the second coming, not merely remember the first.

One Benedictine monk puts it so well: “In daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.”

In daily life, we must see that is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.

Life is gift, gratefulness is the response, an appreciation for something unearned, free and gratuitous, our existence, our belonging, the voice of our God, and they all come, literally, from a great-full-ness.

So, let us pray.

Giver of all good gifts, you spread out the world before us like a feast.

Help us to be open to your gift and alive in your presence.

Let us not attempt to give your presence back and look after ourselves, as if we were returning something we bought.

It is all gift.

In us too, realise the power of a good God, the infinite compassion of a returning Christ, the abandoned delight of the Holy Spirit, and let us practice gratefulness, every day, so Jesus will really come.

Happy Christmas Everyone.