What is Christmas?
Message Description
Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund asks, "What is Christmas?" in hopes of sharing God's truth for all mankind during the Christmas season.
Message Transcript
Good morning, and welcome to our caroling service. This is one of our traditions, and that is usually when we come into December, we take a weekend and do Message and Music, then we start our Christmas Eve services. And wherever the Sunday falls, after we've started Christmas Eve, we do what we call our caroling service. And just to be really honest, our initial idea was this would be an easy service for the worship team to produce. But if you notice, they did not take the easy way today. Yeah, they just went for it, and we so appreciate them and their efforts. I was here last night for the Christmas Eve gathering and it was spectacular, new music, beautiful music, and a few traditional things as well. I know you'll love being here, but we're just so thankful for them. And then last weekend, if you were here, again, that was just amazing what they did to help us celebrate Christmas, and the team in the Chapel did a phenomenal job as well. So, I had a chance to be there for one of the gatherings as well.
And part of just recognizing the way the schedule fell this year, by the time Christmas Eve ends, which is on Friday this year, the team will get out of here after 14 gatherings here in Wexford, the worship arts team, the operations team, kids ministry, all of it. Then they go home about 11:00 on Christmas Eve night, Christmas day. And we thought, rather than having them come back on Christmas morning, we'd do a virtual service, so we have prerecorded virtual service for you. And I just encourage you on either Christmas night at 6:00 or Sunday morning, the 26th, at 9:30 or 11:15, gather your family. We made it a little shorter, but have a time just to say, we're going to worship here today together, as recognition of what we normally do. And then as you heard Russ talk about earlier, on January 2nd, we'll be back on our normal schedule, and so that's what's going on.
Let me take a moment and pray, and we'll jump into what we're doing here today. God, I thank you just for this time where so many people, who often are not around the church, come, turn their attention toward spiritual things. And God, I pray this next week would be filled with great moments for people of discovering your love for them. God, I pray that you would just let the logistics and the issues around the pandemic and everything else stay at bay and that to gather, this would just be a great time of proclaiming what is true. And God, this morning, as we're gathered, I asked that you speak to each of us, that my words would reflect your word, in content, tone, and emphasis. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
What is Christmas about? Now, I would guess that because we're in a church service, many of you would go, "Well, it's about Jesus." you know that that's what you should say. But if we were to really push and say, what is Christmas about? Many of us, if we were honest about what it's about for us, we'd say, "I know it's about Jesus, but it's really about family time. It's about gathering with family." And for some of us, that's a wonderful thought; we can't wait to get with family. And for some of us, it's this obligation, nightmare thought where it's like, I've got to get with family again, but you know what I'm talking about. There's a sense in which this is about family.
For some of us, it might be about time off. We might say, "Every year at Christmas, I know I get a week or two weeks, I get some time to slow down." For some, maybe this time ramps up your schedule. Maybe you work in a church like Orchard Hill, maybe you work in retail, maybe you're in the food industry, and so all of a sudden, this ramps up. You're in healthcare right now. It is ramped up overall. Maybe it's about gifts or foods, certain traditional foods. Maybe it's even about religious observances. But here's what probably most people, even if you're not particularly religious or churched, what most people know is that there's something about the religious observance, there's something about this time of the year that's more than what it appears, that's more than the time off, the family, the gifts, the food. There's something that we sense that's bigger than what it is that is just happening.
I was thinking about this the other day, and my wife and I have been married for 30 years. We celebrated 30 years this last summer. So that makes us old, but it also means that we've had some ongoing discussions in our house for decades. And so let me just give you one that we've had for decades. We've had a disagreement about throw pillows in our house for 30 years. And here's how the discussion usually goes: My wife will come home from a store, usually HomeGoods, with the little bag. I know the bag; it has the little red stuff on it. I can see it, and she comes in and says, "Yeah, I just got a couple throw pillows for the house." And I'm thinking, you got more throw pillows? How could we possibly ever need another throw pillow? There are so many throw pillows in this house, we don't need another one. But evidently, different seasons require different colors, and color palettes change from year to year, and so there's a consistent need for new throw pillows. I'm on the other end of the continuum saying, "We don't need to spend any more money on throw pillows."
Now, I mentioned this, this goes back. The reason I told you it goes back a few years is, when we were first married, there was no money in the budget for throw pillows. And my wife would come home and say, "I got this and it's okay." And here's what I came to realize, our ongoing discussion about throw pillows is not really about the throw pillows. Do you know what it's about? For me, it started with economic wisdom; for my wife, it's about creating beautiful environments. So, we had two different ways that we were looking at the throw pillow discussion. And we would have these conversations about throw pillows, and we were both talking past each other until we came to see that, even though it was about throw pillows, it was about something else.
Now, here's my point, and that is that how we approach Christmas might be about all kinds of things, but it's about something grander. In a way, it's about escaping death. Because if what Christmas proclaims to be true is true, it means that you can know that when you die this world is not the end of your existence. It means that Jesus died for our sin. Because if the story, the account, is true, it means that you and I don't have to work to make ourselves perfect for God. It means that you and I can commune with God, with the Divine. It means that God is with us. It means that God has overcome evil. It means that God rules in this world. That's just the surface of what it means. It's about more than what it first appears.
And what I'd like to do, just for a few moments today, is point you to one of the best-known stories or accounts of Jesus' birth and look at three assertions about what Christmas is about. So, here's the first, and this is in Luke chapter two, and I'll read the text in just a moment or part of it. Here is what we see, and that is Christmas is historical. Now the account I'm talking about is in Luke two, this is where the angel appears after Joseph and Mary find out they're pregnant, and Joseph says, "This is impossible. This shouldn't have happened. You haven't behaved," kind of a thing. And the angel says, "No, no, no, she's good. This is God's thing." It's all in the text, Luke two. And what he does is he the angel shows up and says to Joseph, "Listen, I want you to understand that this is God's hand."
And then you move a little farther forward, and what you get... And actually, that's Matthew one, part of Luke. Luke two now, you get the shepherds and now you get the angel appearing to the shepherds. And when the angel appears to the shepherds, what you get is, you get this statement. This is Luke 2:10, "But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior's been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.'"
So why do I say Christmas is historical? Because it is set in history in the town of David, a Savior has been born. And the reason this is important is that Christmas is speaking to us about actual history, actual events, that God became a human being in the person of Jesus Christ. And the way that this has been explained over time is, some people will say, well, that's just a myth. It grew over time. Some people will say, well, the disciples or the shepherds or the people were mistaken. Some would say it was propaganda of his followers, and so there are a lot of different ways that people go about explaining it. And for some, they say, "Well, the Bible is not a reliable source to even tell us about such things."
But here's what's true. And that is if you go to college, or your kids go to college, friends go to college, you may go to college someday. One of the things that happen when you get to college is you'll probably, at some point, study Aristotle or Socrates, philosophy. And do you know, those writers are from the same period as the New Testament. And here's what almost nobody does when they're reading Aristotle or Socrates, almost nobody says, "Can we really believe Socrates wrote this?" And the reason we don't do that is that there's this manuscript evidence from the time. Now you may disagree with Socrates or Aristotle, but nobody says, "Oh, this isn't really them." And the New Testament has infinitely more documents that give evidence to its time period. And what I'm saying is simply this, and that is, the New Testament is a good historical document that speaks about this. And so, the way out of it, my point here isn't to say, well, the Bible, who can really take it seriously? Unless you discard anything that's historical.
That doesn't make it true, but what it does is it says, this is speaking to a time period and an event. And the reason this matters is because if it's true that God became a human being, that an angel appeared to these shepherds, that God walked this earth lived a perfect life, went to a cross. If it's true, it has all kinds of implications for you and me. It means that you can say with confidence that Jesus is the only way to God. It means that you can say that Christianity is the one true religion and that salvation is by the grace of God, not by my merit, not by my works. But I can't save myself, and so it's important to say, this is historical. Christmas is historical.
But there's something else here, and that is, I'm going to say Christmas is personal. It's not enough just simply to say that this is good news for all people, although it is but he says this, he says, "The angel said to them, 'Don't be afraid. I bring you good news that will be a cause of great joy for all people. Today in the town of David, as Savior's been born,'" what? To you, to you. And so, he says, "I want you to know that this is for you."
And here's what's true if you understand the Christmas message. The Christmas message is actually bad news for good people. And the reason I say that is because if you're good, what Christmas tells you is that you're not good enough; that Jesus came to die for your sin, and that all of your goodness doesn't amount to enough that don't need Jesus. But conversely, it's incredibly good news for bad people. And what the text tells us, Romans three, ultimately, is that all of us are sinners. All of us need the good news of what Jesus Christ has done for us. But it is personal in the sense that it isn't just universally applied, we have to make an apprehension of it.
Now in this text, it says right here that they were in great fear. And in the original language, the way it reads is that they were afraid, afraid they were greatly. Okay, so three words come together that gives this idea of great fear, and so if you remember the old Charlie Brown Christmas special where he read the King James, they were sore afraid? The King James was trying to capture this three-word phrase. And it is right to just simply say they were terrified, but when you actually read it in the original, what it does is it takes you to say they were. Now, of course, you'd be terrified. If you were out in the middle of the woods and an angel appeared to you, you would be sore afraid.
And what happens, though, is they go from this moment of being afraid. And then the angel says, "I bring you," what? Good news of great joy. Same word, great fear, now it's great joy, and there are a couple of words here about the good news and joy. And what he's doing is he's saying when you encounter Jesus, you go from being afraid, maybe of your future, maybe of an angel, maybe of the divine, to having great joy. But when it isn't personal for you or me, then there isn't great joy. In fact, I would say if, for you, Christmas has become mere observance, going even to church is just a matter of a social obligation and it isn't great joy, that maybe this has either never been personal for you or has ceased to be personal because you haven't understood that there's a reason for a great fear of God, but there's a reason for great joy, and it's because of what Jesus Christ has done.
There's a sense in which you understand what it is for something to be personal. I don't know if you've ever played video games or had kids who played video games, and I have all kinds of theories about when you should or should not play video games. I think, as a young man, you should probably stop at a certain point. I won't put a number on it, but then you can play again when you have kids in order to play with them. But either way, if you have some kids or people who are playing video games around you, and let's just say they get into a tennis video game and they get really good at it, and they get convinced that they're so good at this game of tennis that they belong competing with the people who play at Wimbledon in the US Open. You would know intuitively that your experience of the video game is not the same as somebody who actually plays tennis.
And if you've ever played tennis, tennis is one of those sports, those games, that when you play against somebody a lot better than you, or even just a little better than you, it is humbling, because you can't even return a serve from somebody who knows what they're doing. And it's not necessarily somebody that's even at a high end, I'm not talking Wimbledon or anything, I'm talking somebody who's taken a few tennis lessons can just smoke you if you've never hit the ball.
And what happens is we tend to want to say, oh, if I'm somebody who's had this experience on a video game, then I can really do it. Now, we don't actually think that, but what if everybody who played a video game went around and said, "I won Wimbledon"? Everybody who wins a video game, maybe it's Madden. Everybody who wins the Super Bowl on Madden's like, "I'm a Super Bowl winning coach." You'd be like, "No, you're not. You played a video game in your basement, in your parents' basement." That's what you would say, not you've had the experience. It's not the same.
Here's a different way to think about this. So now, last weekend I was here at our Wexford Campus, I was out in our lobby, and somebody came up to me and said, "Hey, did you get the nut roll that I made for you?" I said, "I didn't, I'm sorry." And this kind person said, "Huh, I gave it to Pastor Russ to give to you." Now, if you don't know Russ, Russ is the guy who was up here a little bit ago with the red t-shirt, the cardigan. He worked in our student ministry for about six years, he's now working with adult ministry, men's ministry, small groups, great guy. I want to know what happened to my nut roll, Russ.
So, I asked him, I said, "Russ, what happened to my nut roll?" And he said, "Well, I didn't realize it was for you. I was just told it was for the pastors, so I put it out on the counter in the staff office and I presume everybody ate the nut roll." So, here's my takeaway. What happened was, Russ said, "This isn't for Kurt. This is for the team." Maybe. I still think one less nut roll may have made it to the staff counter than was given. But here's my point, I did not experience the nut roll personally, because Russ took it.
Christmas is personal. You have to encounter it. You can't just say, "I know there's nut roll. I played Madden; I played a tennis game." You have to actually encounter Jesus Christ by coming to it with your own soul and self and saying, "I'm a person in desperate need of a savior, and there's a historical person, Jesus Christ, who came to this earth to be a sacrifice for my sin." Until you get there, until I get there, Christmas is just about the food and the parties, and it isn't about what it really is about.
And that leads me to one last thing, and that is Christmas, I'm going to say, is invitational. And here's what I mean. Again, it says this: But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people. Today in the town of David a Savior's been born to you. He is the Messiah," to you. Now, do you notice what it says here? I will bring you good news that will cause great joy for who? For all people. So, in a sense, you could say Russ had it right by saying, "The nut roll, for everybody."
Christmas isn't just personal; it is for everybody. If you were around kids’ sports at all, there are often track meets or wrestling meets or gymnastic meets that they call invitational. And it used to be that an invitational meant you qualified somehow, you had run fast enough, you had competed at a high enough level that you got invited because of your skill, but now they use the word generically to say, "Invitational just means that we invited three other schools, so it's an invitational now." Do you know what I'm talking about? You're like, "Don't trash on the invitational." I'm not. What I'm saying is, Christmas is God's way of saying, "I want you to know that this is an invitation for absolutely everyone."
Sometimes people get the idea that Christianity is exclusive in the sense that it has people who become so proud that they don't want other people to be a part of it. And to be fair, there are some Christians who end up there, but if you understand what Christmas is, you understand it's invitational. It's good news for everyone because all of us need a Savior. And Christianity, when rightly understood, is incredibly inclusive because what Christians say is not, "Improve your behavior and become like us." What Christians say is what the Gospel says, which is, "None of us behave well enough. We are made right on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done." This is what the great joy or the good news is for all people, and Christmas is an incredibly natural time to share that message.
Now, I recognize that we're still in a season where maybe it doesn't feel natural to invite people into a gathering. I said this a couple of weeks ago, and I'm just going to press this again. If you're going out to eat, I don't think there's a big difference. Now, if you're staying home, if you're saying, "Hey, we got to be careful," I totally get it. That's why we have virtual church. And maybe there are other ways to do it, but what I'm saying is this, and that is, Christmas is a time to not just say, "I'm so glad I got my nut roll," but it's a time to say, "How can I share what I've been given with people around me?" Because there are things that hang in the balance, eternities hang in the balance.
And as a church, one of the things that we decided years and years ago was to say, we are going to do our best to share this message outwardly at this time of year. Now we try to do it all year long, but what I'm talking about here is saying, as a church, we want to be a place where people say, "I can come," even if it's just once a year, twice a year, three times a year, "and explore at my own pace." And so, we talk consistently about doing our best for people in the community who come, the ministry of invitation saying, "How can I help people come into this place?"
I heard somebody, recently now, who's part of Orchard Hill, talk negatively about what they called "Chreasters." Have you ever heard this term, Chreasters? Chreasters are supposedly people who come to church at Christmas and Easter, Chreasters, and their negative tone was, yeah, we're going to have all these Chreasters at our church. And it was said negatively, we don't want all these people. And I just heard that, and I thought, that is the opposite of the invitation of the Gospel. Of course, we want Chreasters. Because if you come once or twice a year and you hear the message, maybe there's a time in which you'll say, "This matters." This is why so many of you, and I thank you for this, park cars, hold babies, clean up stuff, do things during this time of year so that people can hear the message.
I was out in our lobby again last Easter, and there was a family that I knew from the community who was here, and I started talking to the little boy because I knew the boy. And he was probably four or five and I didn't know him well, but he said, "Hey." And right in front of his mom, he said this, he said, "We were here at Christmas too." And his mom had one of those moments where you could just see her. She was like, "Yeah, yeah, it's been busy," and all of this. And I wanted to say, "You don't need to apologize." Not that I don't want you to come to embrace who God is and make church a regular part of your life, I think that is God's best for us as people. But if that isn't where you are, we want you to be able to say, this is my pace, and to celebrate it.
And as a church, we want to say, "Come," until you encounter God for yourself. And that's part of what we hope to do this week, and why we set our schedule the way we do, and why so many of you serve, pray, and invite. And so today, here's my simple exhortation, encouragement to those of us who are gathered. First, if you are here, I just want to ask you if you can say for yourself that you believe that Christmas is historical, and it's become personal for you? And if it hasn't, I'd just encourage you to assess this. To say, "Do I believe it?" Because it makes all the difference if it's true.
If it's true that God became a human being, then all the other stuff that you read in your Bible becomes clear. Things that you may want to debate, may want to argue about, all of a sudden you say, "If Jesus is historical, then it's not hard to believe other things because God became a human being." And if it isn't true, then don't waste your time with church, religion, or faith. I've said this before, but the church is a really bad hobby. Because if this isn't true, then you're just playing on the edges of something. So, assess it and say, "Is this personal for me?" And if you've embraced it, decide that you will say, "How can I be a part of God's mission of invitation, not just at Christmas but throughout the year, in a way that invites people to come, to encounter this God that I've encountered?"
Let's pray together. God, I thank you that Jesus' incarnation, the word that we sometimes use, Jesus' coming to earth makes it clear that you are. God, I thank you that the invitation is for all, but it's also incredibly personal. And I ask that for each one of us who's here, you would let us live with the certainty in hard times, different times, that the historical nature of Jesus coming to earth carries us through. And that then we would have a joyfulness because it's personal, and a desire to invite others into this great story. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.