Christmas is for weeping people

Who is Christmas for? Happy families? Children? 

Is Christmas for those who have just lost loved ones in a bus crash? Or for those who lost parents or children in the horror of the Westgate massacre. Does Christmas mean anything to South Sudan as the bullets fly and chaos and fear escalates daily?

How can we talk about Christmas when we’re surrounded by that sort of pain and sadness and mayhem? How can Christmas and death fit together?

Well if Christmas is all about fun and family and eating and drinking and cute nativity plays then it obviously doesn’t fit with massacres and funerals and pain and suffering.

But that’s not the real Christmas.

There is NOTHING sweet about the real Christmas.  There is NOTHING sentimental or cute about the real Christmas story.

Pick up a Bible and read Matthew 2:1-18.

That is a dark story isn’t it?

There’s the nice bit about the star and the gold, frankincense and myrrh but basically it’s about a mad king hunting down a small child and in the process massacring all the baby boys in a town. That is the context for the first Christmas.  Christmas happens in the midst of a massacre. In the midst of evil and fury and blood and darkness.

Do we usually remember that at Christmas time?

Do we want to think about the mess and pain and horrors of our world at Christmas time?

Of course we don’t – we want fun and food and escapism – we want to escape the real world for a day or two and just rest and enjoy the good things in life.

But the Bible is not escapist – it doesn’t let us forget reality – it says to us – let’s be honest, the world is a complete mess – full of darkness and pain and tears.

Do you feel able to be sad at Christmas?

Look at Rachel.

"A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.”

Have you ever been with someone who is so distraught they just won’t let you near them? Have you been in that place of such grief and anguish where you don’t even want anyone to try to say anything. Inconsolable. At Christmas.

And God steps down into that pit of grief and pain and mess and mayhem.

The Light of the world steps down into darkness.

The Christian message is NOT that we are in this pit and God comes along looks down into the pit and says ‘You need to take some responsibility for yourself and get out of there – here are ten steps to get yourself out of this hole’ – No – he jumps into the pit – into the mud and the filth.

And he doesn’t go in like one of those SWAT guys with bullet proof vest and helmet, armed to the teeth – he goes in as a naked baby – defenceless, vulnerable, not even able to walk, let alone put up a fight.
He’s hunted down by hit-men, smuggled away as a refugee, for thirty years he is ‘the man of sorrows’.  He weeps, he sweats, he thirsts, and then he is massacred. He is the perfectly innocent child slaughtered on the Cross.

No-one can say to Jesus – “You don’t know how I feel” “You haven’t been there” – he does know – he has been there – he took on our human flesh – he took on our sorrows and griefs. At Christmas God fully connected himself to us, welded himself to humanity – he suffered our temptations, our worries, our pain – he suffered hell itself for us. And right now he is still fully man – he still has scars on his hands – and he is still with us – still welded to humanity.

There is no distant God.

Christmas shouts to us - Immanuel.

Where is God? There he is – in the dirt of a stable, still covered in blood and fluid, gasping for breath – God with us in the darkness and dirt and pain and tears.

Christmas is for weeping people.

Have a deeply, truly, even-through-the-tears happy Christmas...