The Nativity - If you won't come to me; I'll come to you!

Isaiah 2.6-end; Titus 3.4-7; Luke 2.1-20

The Nativity According to the Flesh of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ

The Nativity

I'd like to begin with some words from a sermon of St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

St. Gregory of Nazianzus

 'Christ is born: let us glorify him. Christ comes down from heaven: let us go out to meet him. Christ descends to earth: let us be raised on high. Let all the world sing to the Lord: let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad, for his sake who was first in heaven and then on earth. Christ is here in the flesh: let us exult with fear and joy - with fear, because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that he brings us......This is the solemnity we are celebrating today: the arrival of God among us, so that we might go to God - or more precisely, return to God. So that stripping off our old humanity we might put on the new; for as in Adam we were dead, so in Christ we become alive: we are born with him, and we rise again with him.....A miracle, not of creation, but of re-creation. For this is the feast of my being made whole, my returning to the condition God designed for me, to the original Adam. So let us revere the nativity which releases us from the chains of evil. Let us honour this tiny Bethlehem which restores us to paradise. Let us reverence this crib because from it we, who were deprived of self-understanding, are fed by divine understanding, the Word of God himself.'

It's good, 2,000 years since the first Christmas, to read again what the early Church Fathers said about the birth of Christ. They are nearer in time to the event, yes, but that's not the only reason for reading them. They are a prime source, an original reference to bring us back to the original, and I would dare to say, real meaning of this festival of Christmas. So much has been said over the last 2,000 years, expressing so very many opinions, views and indeed, beliefs about the birth of Christ and of its significance, that, even if we are on what we might call the 'believing side', we can at best be confused and at worst come away feeling that because nobody really knows, if not the 'why', then the 'how', then it's probably all pure speculation anyway. And so St. Gregory who lived in the 4th century and who is also known as Gregory the Theologian, for me, sums up what Christmas, the Nativity of Jesus Christ is all about.

It's good too to remember, I think, that although we, living in time as we do, might have seen many Christmases, for God, who is outside of time, there is only ever one Christmas. And as such we should consider each of our Christmases, as if it were the only one we've ever experienced. So that, we really should come to it with the same sense of awe, wonder, mystery and joy as the shepherds and the magi did. We should try to cast off that sense we are bound to get, that we often do when things are repeated, that we've seen and heard it all before so it has nothing new for us. Most adults do that when they say that Christmas is for children. And it's such a pity that they've lost that excitement and sense of wonder as they look at the crib, or unwrap their gifts. So we get, 'oh, just another pair of socks;' been there, done that, worn the tee-shirt, eaten the pie! What a huge shame and pity.

So, let's try and look on Christmas each time as if it were the first and only. For God shouts down from heaven to us 'If  you won't come to me; I'll come to you' (and I have to attribute that phrase to a story told by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware) And He does. And as St. Gregory says, at that we should 'exult with fear and joy - fear because of our sins; with joy, because of the hope that he brings us.'

You can't understand Christmas and find any meaning in it, without knowing something of the whole story of God and creation. Trying to make sense of Christmas on its own is like reading a single chapter from a book without reading the whole book. It won't make sense. It doesn't make sense on its own. So as we read the Christmas story, it only makes sense if we go right back to the beginning of creation, as we read it in the book of Genesis and where we read of the Fall of Adam and Eve. And even at this point and especially at this point, down the centuries people have forgotten or misplaced the meaning of events and interpreted them in a way that's been so destructive to life's meaning and purpose.

Listen to any atheist and especially the contemporary celebrity atheists that you hear vilifying the Christian faith; and immediately you hear that most seem to have a picture of God who is an evil tyrant, who created human beings as sick and needing Him; human beings who are depraved and no matter what they do they can never be right with God. And that same God looks down upon humanity seeking to find them out and punish them at every available opportunity. What a wicked travesty of the Truth this is. If there is a God delusion it's just that.

For the God of ancient Christianity, the God of St. Gregory of Nazianzus and all the other Church Fathers, the God of Jesus Himself, is quite the opposite. God is a God of love, who created the universe and all humanity out of love; who out of love, gave humanity the whole of His creation to care for, who living in the way God prescribed had face to face conversation with Him and an everlasting life of joy and wholeness, of freedom and peace.

But it was humanity, in the form of Adam and Eve, created by God in His image and likeness, that chose out of their own free will to disobey God, to go against what He'd asked of them. And the consequences of their disobedience was a falling into sickness of mind, heart, body and most importantly, sickness of soul. And with that, they died physically too. And if we've inherited anything from Adam and Eve it's that sickness of soul. And because we are spiritually sick, of our own free will, we sin, time and time again, that sin at its deepest being a continuing to turn away from God, to reject Him and walk away from Him; to abandon Him.

The Fall

Read the story, listen to the story as we've heard it through Advent, as we've lit each of those candles on the Advent wreath week by week, and you can see that time and time again God, out of love for humanity, pleads with us to return to Him. Even though we abandon Him, He never abandons us. But every time, we turn away. Time and time again. Until finally God says well, 'if you won't come to me, I'll come to you' and He does that by being born as one of us in the form of Jesus Christ, as a baby born in a manger in Bethlehem. Out of time and space He comes into time and space to meet with us and grow with us and die and rise to bring us back to Himself again so that we could readily and freely have that relationship we had with Him before Adam and Eve fell into sickness and death, spiritual and physical. The Uncreated comes as created, so that we, made in His image may grow into His likeness again.

And this is what St. Gregory is telling us. This is how this great saint, through the Holy Spirit working in him, sees these events, and so he proclaims 'Christ is born: let us glorify Him!' St. Gregory says that, in the light of God's coming in Christ we should fear, because of our sins. God is always a God of judgement, and we should live in the light of that fact. We know that our sin has consequences, we see that in Adam and Eve and we also, if we care to look, see that in our own life story. But we must always remember that we sin of our own free will. It's as simple as that. God gave us that free will out of love; and look how we abuse it. So we bring judgement upon ourselves.

But more than that and much more, God is a God of forgiveness and love, and so the other side of the coin to fear, because of our sins, is the 'joy, because of the hope that He brings us.' We have hope in the everlasting love and forgiveness of God. And that's why on this day, we have a smile on our faces. That everlasting love and forgiveness of God is the cause of and meaning of our celebration today, without an understanding and knowledge of which our celebrations are empty and devoid of anything worth.

Today, again, God reaches out the hand of love to each and everyone of us in Jesus Christ, a baby born in Bethlehem; He reaches out to offer us again the life He intended for us right at the beginning, a life of joy and wholeness, of freedom and peace, a life in continuous and everlasting communion with Him. What greater gift could we desire at this or any Christmas? 'Christ is born: let us glorify Him!'

Christ is born: let us glorify Him!