Advent 09- Jesus

I guess this was the obvious one that was going to come up at some point.  I want to thank God for the ultimate Christmas present, Jesus, his son.

A few weeks ago there was an event at my church where church members were asked to share what Christmas meant to them with visitors to the church.  I wasn't asked to be one of them, but if I had been I would probably have said something like this.

One of the names given to Jesus is Emmanuel, which means God with us.  That is perhaps what I find both wonderful and awe-inspiring about Christmas.  God's own son chose to come to earth and live a life like us, full of problems and issues.  No wonder the apostle Paul, wanting an example of how we should serve others and not take our status as God's children for granted, points us to Jesus Christ;

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,

but made himself nothing,

taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself,

and became obedient to death-

even death on a cross!*

Crucifixion was about the most horrifying, agonizing, humiliating death that humanity has ever misused its intelligence to devise.  The idea of God himself- for that's what the idea of the trinity tells us, that the fully human and fully divine Jesus suffered- going through this is something amazing, something which those who accuse God of  'child abuse' or of being unable to understand human suffering would do well to think about.  God knows what it is like to suffer.

And why did he go through all this?  Why suffer?  It wasn't just so he could empathise with our sufferings- though of course he does- but to save us.  And why?

Love.

Happy Christmas!


*Philippians 2, vs 6-8.  Probably one of the earliest recorded Christian hymns.