A Reflection on the Meaning of Christmas

As I have been thinking about Christmas over the past couple of weeks and considering its real meaning, the word that keeps coming to me is accessibility.  At the heart of it, what Christmas means is that in it, God became accessible to us.  You know, as I have talked to hundreds of people over the years who have struggled to connect with God, the most common theme I have heard is that for many, God is just too totally other.  He is too awesome, too powerful, too holy, too mystical, or too whatever.  But Christmas is about God bridging the gap between us and Him and connecting with us in a way that we can relate to.  As Paul says in the letter to the Philippians:

2:5 Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.  8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

By becoming one of us, God made Himself accessible to us.  As C.S. Lewis said in Mere Christianity, “God. . .extended Himself to communicate on our level so we could respond.”  Now that is an amazing thing if you think about it—that Jesus would give up all of His divine powers and take on all the limitations of humanity.  Lewis goes on to offer an illustration of what would be the equivalent for us to do such a thing.  He says,

Lying at your feet is your dog. Imagine, for the moment, that your dog and every dog is in deep distress. Some of us love dogs very much. If it would help all the dogs in the world to become like men, would you be willing to become a dog? Would you put down your human nature, leave your loved ones, your job, hobbies, your art and literature and music, and choose instead of the intimate communion with your beloved, the poor substitute of looking into the beloved's face and wagging your tail, unable to smile or speak?

That, in essence, is what Jesus did for us.  He gave up the unlimited knowledge of the universe.  He gave up the power to speak and have those words create substance.  He gave up the freedom of living outside of the time-space continuum as pure spirit with no physical limitations.  And He gave up total equality with God the Father.  Instead, He willingly made Himself subordinate to the Father, He took on the limitations of a physical body, and He became dependent on the Holy Spirit for knowledge and power.

Now, in my opinion, that is even a greater sacrifice than it would be for one of us to become a dog.  But that is the sacrifice we celebrate on Christmas.  Yes, I know we don’t think of the birth of Jesus as a sacrifice.  To be sure, we recognize His death as a sacrifice and we focus on that as we celebrate Easter, but Christmas is about new life—the birth of a baby.  We tend to not think of that in terms of sacrifice.  We view the sacrifice as coming later on the cross.  But the truth is that the sacrifice begins with the baby in the manger.  It was then that he, “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.”  On that night in Bethlehem, Jesus gave up His status and power as God and made Himself vulnerable to His creation.  It was then that He gave up the perfect, unimpeded communion with the Father—not just when He took all of our sins on Himself—but when He took humanity on Himself at His birth.  To be sure it was worse on the cross when the Father turned away, unable to commune with the sin of humanity that Jesus had taken upon Himself, but it began at His birth when He lost perfect, direct communication with the Father and became dependent on an intermediary, the Holy Spirit, for that interaction.

So why would He do such a thing?  Why would He make such a sacrifice?  Because He loves us, His creation, so much that He was willing to do all of that in order to bridge the gap and enable us to connect with Him, that is, to make it so that He was not so utterly other.  And in so doing He met the most basic needs that we have as humans in the area of our relating to God.  God made Himself accessible to us by becoming one of us, and as one of us, living in a relationship with God the Father in a way that demonstrates for us how to do the same.  And not only that, but Jesus lived in a way that invalidates people’s excuses for not relating to God.  Lee Strobel, in his book Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary, lists the four main reasons that irreligious people give for not getting involved in Christianity.  They contend that Christians are boring, hypocritical, irrelevant, and money grubbing.  But the fact is that whatever Christians are or are not, Jesus was none of those things.

To begin with, Jesus was certainly was not religious.  Most people do not want to be religious because they see religion as irrelevant to their lives.  And to a large extent that is true.  Religion relies heavily on out of date rituals and traditions that do have little relevance to contemporary life.  But Jesus was not at all religious.  In fact, He seemed to take delight in flouting the religious traditions of His day.  He broke the rules and acted in ways that made the religious people of His day tear their hair out.  But Jesus understood that religion is completely irrelevant to peoples’ lives and more than that, it simply does not work.  So He lived a life that was non-religious and that connected with people where they lived.  And He spoke words of truth that were powerfully relevant to the lives of spiritually needy people.

Not only was Jesus not religious, but He was also not hypocritical.  What I think people are really bothered by when they talk about Christians being hypocritical is that they resent it when people who are obviously flawed, judge them and act like they are superior because of their alleged relationship with God.  Well, Jesus never came off as holier than thou.  He hung out with real life, sinful people and those people seemed to enjoy His company.  Now the religious people who were, in fact, hypocrites could not stand this and called him a glutton and a drunk and a friend of dishonest and immoral people.  But Jesus did not mind because He knew that, as the old Sprite commercial on TV said, image is nothing.  What really matters is relationship and accessibility.  So Jesus ignored His image and did what was necessary to connect with the people.

In addition, Jesus was anything but materialistic.  He understood the emptiness of materialism and hated the way the religious people exploited people for money.  Jesus never asked people for money and, in fact, got so upset once at the business going on at the temple that He went in and tore up the place, kicking over tables and driving the money changers out with a whip.

And as the last example illustrates, Jesus was certainly not boring.  Whether He was tearing up the temple, or miraculously providing more wine for a wedding reception, or walking on water, or controlling the weather, or exorcising demons, or healing sick people, or multiplying food, or raising the dead, hanging out with Jesus was anything but boring.  Amazing, sometimes dangerous, but never boring.  Life with Jesus was a constant adventure.  And do you know what?  Nothing has changed.  Jesus is still not religious, hypocritical, materialistic or boring.  And hanging with Him is still an adventure.

Even though He is no longer personally physically present on Earth, He is still accessible.  The Holy Spirit is still here and able to get us connected with God just like He did for Jesus.  And also, the church is still here.  To be sure, full of undeniably flawed people, but people, if they are living as Jesus called them to do, who will be just as down to earth, just as relevant, just as un-religious, just as non-judgmental, and just as loving as He was.  And that is what we celebrate at Christmas time—a God who loves us so much that He became one of us and made Himself accessible so that we could connect with Him and have maximum possible life, not only in this life, but also in the life to come.