Bishop David deFreeseBishop Dave deFreese
Nebraska Synod, ELCA

We need Christmas!

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” (Luke 2:13-14)

We need Christmas! Not the hurried bustling of consumer driven anxiety. Not the sentimental trappings of illusional memories. Not the exhaustion of trying one more time to do it right. We need Christmas with God!

We need Christmas! The yearly celebration that stops us in our tracks, that empowers us to genuinely rejoice in the truth that our all-compassionate God couldn’t wait to come to us! Our God, who stepped off the throne of heaven, put on our earthly skin and entered our lives…God become intimate!

Jesus is God speaking to us in the only language we can understand, a human language spoken in a human life. Harry E. Fosdick said it well:

“At first they may have said, God sent him. After a while that sounded too cold, as though God were a bow and Jesus the arrow. That would not do. God did more than send him. So I suspect that they went on to say, God is with him. That went deeper. Yet, as their experience with him progressed, it was not adequate. God was more than with him. So at last we catch the reverent accents of a new conviction, God came in him.”

We need Christmas! The recognition that God came to share the danger as well as the drudgery of our every day lives. To cry with us as well as to wipe away our tears. To show us that our God no longer speaks to us from a safe distance, but that God experiences and knows us up close and personal. Our God comes with good news to give us life abundant.

Jesus entered a world that was economically harsh, where survival trumped pleasure, oppressive government was the rule not the exception, where wars and rumors of war abounded, and life seemed out of control. Yet, God came. The wonder of it all was not the amount of pain, but the amount of love. God came to us, for us.

Someone wise once said: “Bad religion answers the unanswerable: Good religion cherishes the mystery.” In Christmas, we relish the mystery of God’s love.

We need Christmas! In the midst of our over complicated living, busyness beyond purpose, and hurts that are inflicted too often, God comes with words of comfort and joy! God cares. God has hope. God is with us. Immanuel!

In Christmas, the simple and the sublime are blended. God strangely transmits the profound by the ordinary. Powerfully amazing grace flashes onto the scene and we are never the same. God is love. God is with us. Hope is ours.

A most blessed and meaningful Christmas to you all!

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