The Story of Christmas

The story of Christmas begins, not with the manger of Bethlehem, but many thousands, perhaps millions of years before, in the mind and heart of God. “I’m lonely,” James Weldon Johnson has God say in his play, God’s Trombones. “I think I’ll make me a world.” That’s exactly what God did. God made a world . . . a beautiful garden world with birds singing and flowers blooming, mountain streams flowing and mighty oceans glistening under a bright golden sun. In the midst of that garden, God placed a man and a woman, His highest creation, with every good thing to sustain life.

That first man and woman should have lived happily ever after. So should we all. But it was readily apparent that there was a problem in paradise . . . a problem within the heart of humanity. For, you see, God created man and woman in His own image. God created man and woman, not to be puppets in a paradise, but to be God’s partners.

Maybe James Weldon Johnson was right. Maybe God was lonely, for God created humans to mirror many of His own attributes. He created these beings with the potential for spiritual communion with Himself. The critical attribute that he gave to humanity was the ability to choose. . . life or death . . . good or evil . . . darkness or light. What a gamble God took in order to create beings with whom He could have fellowship . . . for He gave these new human creatures even the ability to reject His own eternal love.

Every parent knows the risk. We would not make robots of our children even if we could. Love without the possibility of rejection is not love at all.

And so God gave man and woman the power to choose. Thomas Carlyle once summed up our nature like this: “There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven; Are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is?”

As soon as human beings appear on earth, the struggle for their identity begins to surface. Would they strive for the stars or would they be content to grovel in the mud from which they were created?

There is almost immediately within the first human family jealousy, resentment, and even murder. Humanity’s record does not improve from there. Each generation is as bad as the first.

But the Hebrew prophets could see that God was not finished with His creation. God’s love and desire for fellowship with humanity had not changed. He would complete the work that He had begun at the creation of the world

That our story should move at this point to a stable in Bethlehem of Judea is one of the deepest of human mysteries. There, waiting patiently, is the soon-to-be mother, perhaps no older than sixteen years of age. Her name is Mary. An angel had appeared to her in a dream and asked her to believe something incredible: That she was to be a mother and yet remain a virgin and that the son she would bear would be the Savior of the world. That would be too much for the unbelieving heart to contain, but Mary believed the angel and answered without hesitation, “I am the Lord’s servant, may your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1:38).

There beside Mary in the stable stands her husband, a patient and loving man named Joseph. Joseph believes in his young bride nearly as strongly as he believes in God. Some sheep and oxen and a lowly donkey complete the scene. Later they will be joined by some unruly shepherds who will claim to have been serenaded by angels as they guarded their sheep on a hillside. And still later will come magi from the east bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. “We have seen his star,” they will say, “and have come to worship him.”

What does it all mean? The writer of the Gospel of John tries to tell us in beautiful, but somewhat deep, theological language: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God . . . 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 . . .  The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish theologian of more than a century ago, gave us a simple parable to help us more easily understand. He tells a story of a prince who was riding through a rather poor section of a certain city in his kingdom. Looking through the curtains of his royal carriage he caught a glimpse of the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen. Soon he found excuses to drive near the spot where his eyes had beheld her on the chance that he might see her again. Before long he was strongly infatuated with her. He desperately desired to ask her hand in marriage. But how should he go about it?

Of course, as the prince, he could order her to the palace and command her to be his wife. But what kind of marriage would that be?

Finally he hit upon a solution. He would lay aside his kingly robe. He would move into her neighborhood. He would take up a vocation . . . say as a carpenter. He would live as she lived. He would get to know her friends, learn to talk their language. Hopefully, then, in the natural course of things, he would meet his beloved and gain her friendship, then her trust and admiration, and finally, her love. This the prince did, and, finally, when her love was won, his beloved came to know his true identity.

Is this not the true meaning of Christmas? Out of the loneliness of God a world was born. Out of the love of God a Savior was born. When we in our fallen state could not come to God, God came to us on our own terms, speaking our language.

So you see, the Christmas story did not begin 2,000 years ago. It began as soon as God saw that human beings, in their power to choose, would rather destroy themselves and all the world around them rather than acknowledge the self-giving love for which they were created.

And the Christmas story does not end at the stable of Bethlehem. For the Savior is still trying to find entrance into human hearts. God is still seeking to woo His beloved creation. The Christmas story is God’s love being made manifest afresh in human lives each and every day.

The story of Christmas will not be finished until the star that shone over the stable on that night of nights shines in the heart of every man, woman and child upon this earth – the star that gives hope and dignity and meaning to all our lives – the star of a loving God who created us for communion with one another and with Him.

I pray that you will have a blessed and joyous Christmas.