Merry Christmas 2019!

We all know the story about the baby born in old Bethlehem, in a cold barn adjacent to an inn; but is there a significance and meaning for us today?  While we celebrate, have we lost the Spirit of Christmas?

Hello Family and Friends, 

Merry Christmas to all of you! This is my first Christmas letter ever. However, it is not news about our family, but about some things I have learned since the last Christmas that I believe are interesting and significant – and relevant to all of us. Also, it is a follow-up to my Easter and Pentecost letters sent on the dates of their celebration this year, and posted below. 

The Story We All Know

It seems nearly impossible for a person not to be familiar with the story of the birth of Christ – the manger in a barn adjacent to an inn in Bethlehem, with mother Mary, step-father Joseph, shepherds, angels, and wise men bearing gifts. 

The story is recounted in the Christmas services of most churches each year, as well as on TV, in popular print and media. Plus we see live feeds and news reports of Christmas sermons by prominent church leaders, and even debate and satire regarding the appropriateness of nativity scenes in public places; to wit, Jay Leno, “The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.” 

The source of this familiar birth narrative is from the books of Matthew and Luke – two of four biographies of the life of Christ, which along with the books of Mark and John are known as the 4 gospels (from the Old English for “good news”) – the first four books of the New Testament.

We all know the story, it’s ingrained in our culture, but the meaning is more elusive, often obscured and often avoided.

The Meaning of Christmas

Given this annual focus on the nativity narrative, I was surprised to learn last month that in the Church of England, it is customary to read from the gospel of John in Christmas services. The apostle John takes a different approach to what we see in Matthew and Luke. As computer scientists would say, John “abstracts away” the details of the birth scene to provide a much briefer and more fundamental perspective of the incarnation – John focuses on the meaning. 

The Book of John opens with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it….

He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.  Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…. 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us….

No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known.”

Who is Jesus?

Few people have bad things to say about Jesus. We typically hear that Jesus was a great man, a great moral teacher, e.g., like Buddha. I have heard the noted atheist Richard Dawkins, author of “The God Delusion” say as much. I agree Buddha was indeed a great man, but Buddha would not accept worship from men; and he never claimed to be God. Buddha would say, “Look at my teachings”. Jesus accepted worship, and says “Look at me. Abide in me. Believe in me. The Father and I are one. I am the Resurrection and the Life. I am the Alpha and Omega. Before Abraham was born, I AM.” We could fill the rest of this page with such claims. After all, it is for these claims that He was crucified. 

So, a great moral teacher? Absolutely, an amazing teacher! Regarding ethical questions, people often ask, “What would Jesus say?”

But if we actually read the gospels we will find something more is forced upon us: Jesus has not left us the possibility of being merely another teacher. He is either (a) who he said he was (making him God in the flesh), or (b) he knew he wasn’t who he said he was (making him a liar/deceiver), or (c) he didn’t know he wasn’t what he said he was (making him a delusional person). No one should pay any attention to the latter two.

This bears repeating as C.S. Lewis put it in Mere Christianity:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

The Christmas Spirit

Most of us are overwhelmed to even consider living out the so-called ‘Christmas spirit’ – expressing sacrificial love, generosity and kindness to others, including strangers, and especially to our enemies.

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” – G.K. Chesterton

“In truth, there was only one Christian and he died on the cross.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” 
– Mahatma Gandhi

“If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be – a Christian.” – Mark Twain

If nothing else, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a Christian – born in 1906, a brilliant German theologian, author and pastor, an outspoken critic of Nazism. He’d accepted a teaching appointment in NYC during WWII, but returned abruptly to Germany to serve the German people, and was soon imprisoned. Two years later, Hitler had him executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp a few weeks before the end of WWII at the age of 39. As a younger man he wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die”. Not meaning a physical death, but that Christ’s followers must die to self, and be reborn spiritually to live in Christ for Him and for others. This echoed the words of Jesus, “If anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me.”  At this directive, and for that matter, the whole of Christ’s calls for righteousness, I for one fall far short. How does a person in our crazy post-modern times of 2019 make a move in this direction?

Bonhoeffer asked, “Who among us will celebrate Christmas correctly? Whoever finally lays down all power, all honor, all reputation, all vanity, all arrogance, all individualism beside the manger; whoever remains lowly and lets God alone be high; whoever looks at the child in the manger and sees the glory of God precisely in his lowliness.” 

What Would Jesus Say? 

Volumes. For starters, “Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” and “all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

We talked about the Apostle Paul in my Easter letter; the zealous persecutor of Christians who did an abrupt about-face to serve and follow Christ. His devotion led to his execution by Nero in Rome. I’ll close with an exhortation by him in his letter to the Christians in Philippi: 

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:

Who, being in very nature God,
    did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
    by taking the very nature of a servant,
    being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
    he humbled himself
    by becoming obedient to death—
        even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
    and gave him the name that is above every name,
   that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
    in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
   and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
    to the glory of God the Father.”

Merry Christmas!