CHRISTMAS MESSAGE: Christmas shows God’s love for the world

There’s a lot of variety when it comes to decorating Christmas trees. Synthetic tree or natural? Spruce, fir, pine? Are the decorations perfectly matching and uniformly distributed, or is the tree covered in a mishmash of homemade ornaments and haphazardly placed lights? Perhaps most controversial, yes or no to tinsel?

It seems to me that despite the diversity of Christmas tree décor there is one universal factor everyone knows, the decoration at the top is the most important! Traditionally this top and final ornament is a star, or sometimes an angel. Either way, both the angel and the star of Bethlehem announce the arrival of God’s Savior into the darkness of our world. The star that sits atop the tree is a reminder that Christmas is about more than the presents sitting at the bottom of the tree. The star invites us to explore with curiosity, just as the wise men did, what the baby in a manger is all about.

Sociologist Rodney Stark points out in his book The Rise of Christianity that some of the most radical words written in all ancient literature are a single phrase from the New Testament, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son” (John 3:16). This familiar verse to us today was originally an extraordinary claim. To a Greco-Roman audience it would have been a baffling new concept that the God of heaven actually loved people. The ancient gods did not love the world, nor the people in it, they loved themselves. The myths were full of legends about the gods’ selfish depravity. They were constantly playing tricks, jealously competing for personal gain and power, subduing or smiting whoever got in the way. To most people the gods were angry, selfish, and vindictive. They didn’t love you, and you certainly didn’t love them. Your worship was given only to pacify their outbursts, to avoid them causing your crops to fail or your ship to sink at sea. The gods of Mount Olympus were quick to anger and disapproval, far removed from the cares and concerns of humans “down below”.

And perhaps for some of us, that is still our view of God today. That he’s far removed and unapproachable, sitting up on the clouds with disapproval, annoyed by you, or perhaps even angry with you, just waiting for you to mess up and demanding that you climb a ladder of good deeds and holiness to prove you’re worthy. I would urge you today, to consider what the Christmas story in the Bible shows us about the character of God. Christmas shows us that God so loved the world, and the people in it, that he left his place in heaven to pursue them and rescue them when they could not save themselves. He is a God who comes close, right into the darkest and most broken places of our world. He is a God who is not removed from pain and grief, but who is well acquainted with it. He is the self-giving God who saves, who forgives, and who redeems us to a new path of life, promising to never leave us or forsake us.

I started by reflecting on Christmas trees, but there is one tree that shows the meaning of Christmas more than any other. At the top of this tree is not a brightly lit star or angel, but a crown of thorns reminding us that the King of Heaven came for his people. On this tree are not colorful decorations or lights, but cold iron nails marking the place where he gave himself for our sake. The cross is the true Christmas tree; a tree intended to kill, destroy, and oppress but has become for us The Tree of Life.