Recently I've become involved in a debate on an online discussion board called Wondercafe 2 which has revolved around the following question (the heading for the thread):
Did Jesus Want The Church To Celebrate His Birthday?
I was giving some thought to it as I sat in my office today doing some work preparing for my Christmas Eve services as well as the services for the two Sundays of Christmas.
The appropriate question to me seems to me to be a bit more general than that. Really it should be: What did Jesus want the church to do?
A lot, I suppose. There are the ethical demands of Christian faith. Simply put, living like Jesus and loving like Jesus - which is no easy task. But if we're specifically thinking about Christmas, and whether it's appropriate to set aside a time to celebrate Christ's birth, I guess this is the answer I've come up with.
What Jesus would want us to do would be to worship God, and to celebrate God's works. Would Jesus want us to throw him a birthday party? I doubt it. I think he'd be the type who'd be more interested in having us celebrate his birthday - if we feel we should - by doing something for someone else. Providing for the needy, perhaps. Feeding the hungry. Something like that. Sounds like a good way to celebrate Jesus' birthday to me. But let's aside the word "celebrate." And the word "birthday," for that matter. Would Jesus want us to use the occasion of his birth as a reason for us to approach God - and, to me at least, that seems a no-brainer. Again, Jesus would want us to worship God and to celebrate God's works - all of them. And one of those works is surely God's choice to come to us in Jesus.
If we're in the business of rejoicing in all that God has done - well, surely that's a biggie! Surely, we're not going to ignore what the shepherds of Luke 2 called "this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."
For me, incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection (and everything else about Jesus' life) hang together. But, for me, incarnation may be the defining event. Everything else, for me, revolves around the fact that here was God Incarnate. I think Charles Wesley got it right: "Veiled in flesh the godhead see; hail the incarnate deity." These words, always sung during the Christmas season, don't invite us to celebrate Jesus' birthday, or to be sentimental about a baby's birth - they invite us to reflect again and again about the mystery and the majesty of the incarnation.
That's what I'll do this Christmas. That's what I do every Christmas.
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