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Well, we are at the beginning of Advent!Again! So soon? Weren't we here just a couple of months ago? But the decorations at the local shopping mall together with the unmistakable music of Christmas make the imminence of the season undeniable.
My one and only problem with the Christmas season can be summed up in a single word: familiarity. In a sense, I know the story too well. I am not saying that because I am a Pastor and have probably thought about and preached about the Christmas event more than most. Rather, I acknowledge that I am in danger of letting familiarity rob me of the mystery and the marvel of the Christmas event.
One doesn't have to be a Pastor before familiarity will attempt to deprive us of a fresh encounter with the new-born Son of God. Christians young and old can be 'familiarized' and thus robbed of the wonder of Bethlehem. The biggest challenge I faced as a Pastor at Christmas time sounded something like this:
"How can I present the richness of the Christmas event in a way that outflanks the barriers that familiarity has erected, that overcomes the sense that there is nothing new to be anticipated this year, that surprises each of us with an unexpected dimension of revelation that we have never seen before?"
Maybe we need to change the physical setting in which we celebrate the meaning of Christmas? Perhaps if we were to change the context we might look at the content in a new and fresh light? By this I mean that we seek to present the Christmas story using more than sermon to do so.
What if I was to re-write my sermon as a drama and involve some of our Church members as the actors? Another possibility could be to prepare a series of devotional readings for the members of our Church family to use during the weeks of December leading up to Christmas. Those who commit to using these readings would surely find their hearts made ready for the Holy Spirit to reveal more of the great invasion of heaven to earth that happened at Bethlehem.
The very idea of Christmas being an "invasion" fires my imagination with the realization that heaven invaded earth when Jesus came into our world. The supernatural world invaded the natural world. Heaven and earth collided, if you like. From the very beginning of Genesis until the last chapter of Revelation there has been interaction between these two worlds. Angelic visitations. Divinely inspired dreams. Voices. Visions.
Of course, not everything from the supernatural realm is from the Kingdom of Light and Life. The Kingdom of Darkness is well represented in terms of malevolent activities and strategies. It is this reality that made the divine invasion we call Christmas necessary.
And so the battle was engaged at Bethlehem which became the beachhead. The Kingdom of God came that day in a new, different and unexpected manner.
Hey, that familiarity I mentioned earlier? It's gone!
