Inform Your 'Faith'

    I have been ministering on the subjects of the supernatural conception and virgin birth over the past two Sunday's in anticipation of Advent; or Christmas depending on the phraseology preferred. (I prefer to use the word advent but will employ Christmas herein).  My aim was to prepare and equip the congregants with a biblical account of the very occasion we are suppose to be celebrating...the birth of the Christ child otherwise referred to as the incarnation. 

    In so doing I have given much preponderance to "how" we actually celebrate and memorialize that most incomprehensibly stupendous historical event this side of creation ex nihilo.  I must say as I mulled this over the disappointment was unavoidable and overwhelming.  I fear the Church has incorporated so much extraneous family "tradition" in the name of being festive that Christmas has been reduced to a reason to indulge in vanity and meaningless gift giving.  I would even say it has devolved into an occasion of nostalgic gluttony.

    Christians have become so consumed with unwrapping their newest toy or material craving that the most invaluable gift of all has been virtually displaced from their "seasonal" consciousness.  I am not sure that what most households now acknowledge each year around the 25th of December constitutes a "holiday" in any sense of the word.  I say this with much antipathy.

    C.S. Lewis expresses his dissatisfaction with this very dreary business we have made Christmas to be through an excerpt of Herodotus titled "Xmas and Christmas..A lost chapter from Herodotus".  In so doing he evinces the absurdity of blending practices or traditions associated with "Exmas" with "Crissmas".  The latter tradition had integrated so much of the former tradition into its practice that the two were said to be the same, or at least indistinguishable.   The piece concludes with, "But what Hecataeus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For first, the pictures which are stamped on Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas.  In much the same way the Church has busied itself with exchanging "Exmas" cards along with its unrelated sentiments instead of exchanging or highlighting the sacred story of "Crissmas".  In so doing  the "Crissmas" story has been rendered irrelevant or is treated as an antiquated narrative/mythos

    The Church (by Church I do not mean the visible church "institution" but the respective confessors of Christ who comprise the Church; i.e. all Christians) needs to recapture and reclaim the historical and spiritual significance of the birth of Christ. We should be "gifting" the meaning of the incarnation and bringing this to mind as we celebrate Christmas. This birth signifies the movement of divinity amongst mankind; the very movement prognosticated by the prophets of old finding actualization. It is the very event that alters history essentially dividing all of human history into two prolonged epochs respectively....A.D. and B.C.

    Who is this child and what does His advent concomitantly mean?  As Luke records in his gospel account, " For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Saviour, Christ the Lord."  This is no trivial or mundane statement by the angelic figure.  This "child" is nothing less than the four titles just ascribed to Him: King, Savior, Christ, Lord. This "child" is acknowledged by the angelic host as establishing "peace" for those in whom He is well pleased. This is what should be "unwrapped" at Christmas as it were.  The celebratory and reverential posture of the angelic host, the shepherds, the wise men et cetera should be what we aim to emulate and exemplify.

  Our Christmas traditions, reflections and priorities should revolve around these two aforementioned questions....................Who is this "child" and what does His advent concomitantly mean?  Albeit in much more detail.