4th Sunday of Advent 20.12.09 Change for Christmas
Keep Christ in Christmas is a common saying we hear; Christmas is about Him. But not just as a passive figure to be admired or adored but to be met, to be engaged with. He comes to meet us and from each of us He asks a response: What do I mean to you? Who do you say I am?
It is so easy to see Christmas in routine terms. Just dinners, parties, socializing, travelling perhaps. This can apply to both the believers and unbelievers, with the only difference being that believers go to church as well!
There may be routines associated with Christmas and that is fine, but we have to go deeper. Christmas is an encounter with Christ. And whenever we encounter Him it means something is likely to change in us, or at least should change.
Am I as fully His disciple as I need to be, and if not what must I change to be so? Am I obeying His commands; am I putting Him first, seeking to do His will in my state of life?
Or am I trying to keep my own ways with just the trappings of religion?
What do I need to change? If we were out robbing banks it would be easy to identify. But if there is nothing obviously wrong what is there to change?
There are lots of less obvious things: we might be jealous of someone, resentful, vain, lazy about prayer, or many other things, not obvious to the world or even oneself but which indicate a lack of passion for Christ. We can only work on these things with daily application and bouncing back stronger each time we fail. Refine the finer points.
John the Baptist: make straight His ways. This is the only show in town. Everything else is either preparation for it or distraction from it. Christ is everything and our response to Him is everything.
He was ignored enough the first time without our providing an encore in our time.
So each of us decides here and now that we are going to give Our Lord the greatest welcome ever. What about the others? All those people out there - so few will see Christmas in this light, nor for that matter any other part of the year. How can we reach them? By the fulness of our conviction.
If the non-churchgoers see that the churchgoers are just like them, with only church attendance being the difference, then they have a point. We must show them something better.
We must take up our cross; this is what it means to be transformed as His disciples.
When we do meet Him really full-on this is what will happen to us. We will be made like Him. We will be like Him in wanting to give our lives for others.
Giving life requires death. The seed must die to become wheat; a mother sometimes dies in giving birth; Christ dies to give us life; disciples die to make other disciples.
Taking Christmas seriously means we would be willing to give of ourselves for the salvation of others, whatever that might mean in actual detail.
Usually it will mean just everyday patience and kindness, not getting easily upset, not holding grudges, just being humble and generous in all directions.
Every person must make his own path to this conclusion. It is a long way from a worldly lifestyle to true discipleship. If too worldly one will not see the need to change, let alone want to. But the wanting and the achieving are in the power of Christ Himself to give – to any who are prepared to meet Him as He really is.
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