As I child, I remember the excruciating wait for Christmas. But it turns out – that leading up to the very first Christmas – there was also an excruciating wait. People were waiting…..for something, someone …

I remember this time of the year when I was a kid, that sense of anticipation. Christmas was just around the corner, the Christmas tree, the smell of that pine tree through the house. Mum would be baking this bread that she always baked at Christmas time and my Dad, well he always baked this six layer chocolate torte that was truly stunning. And as each day crept by, time seemed to slow.

Those last couple of weeks heading into Christmas, they seemed to pass at an excruciatingly slow pace. When would the presents finally be there? When would the time finally come? How could this be going so slowly?

I guess for a child that excruciating and delightful sense of anticipation is so much of what Christmas was all about. But then, then we grow up and somehow Christmas becomes just, well part of the routine.

How’s it feel to you, this time heading into Christmas? Excruciating yet delightful anticipation or just well, get through to the end of the year so I can have a bit of a break.

For most people it’s the latter, it doesn’t matter what we believe, Christmas seems to be a heavily commercialised, advertised, homogenised experience. Presents that nobody needs, food that nobody can eat, at least that’s the case for privileged people who can afford all that stuff.

For the poor, for the needy, for the family starving in a refugee camp and the lonely widow and the sick and the disabled, you look at all this western Santa Claus Christmas hype, that sort of thing that Christmas looks like, well it must look, from that angle, disgusting.

If God is God, if Christmas is Christmas, if Jesus is Jesus, I want God to deliver me from this place. God promises so much, why doesn’t He deliver me? There are people today, listening to this program in Sierra Leon in Liberian refugee camps, in Cape Town in a prison and when you look at this Christmas thing all that God promises, from their angle, it must feel like “well why doesn’t God deliver for me?”

Let’s hold onto that thought because it’s really important as we go back 2,000 years and look at what was going on for the people of Israel in those weeks and years and in fact in the centuries leading up to the first Christmas because just like the child today, those people had a sense of real anticipation. Just like the poor and the oppressed today they were looking for God to deliver them.

You see, Israel had had an amazing history to this point. It all began with Abraham who had a son called Isaac who had a son called Jacob and Jacob had 12 sons who were the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel and they found themselves in slavery in Egypt and eventually God went to Moses and said:

Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go.

And then the plagues came and Moses led them through the Red Sea that parted and they spent 40 years in the desert and finally they made it to the Promised Land, the land we know as Israel today, the land flowing with milk and honey that God promised Abraham centuries before.

When they got there, over the coming centuries they went through a lot of things; good kings, bad kings but they strayed from God and so God in 586/587 B.C. allowed the Babylonians to come in and destroy Jerusalem, destroy the temple, take what was left of the Israelites as slaves in captivity in Babylon and there they spent 70 years in slavery until the Persian king, Cyrus let them come back to the Promised Land.

The whole of the Old Testament God spent sending His prophets, men who call Israel back to God, sending His prophets to Israel and the whole of the Old Testament, Israel rejected the prophets and went their own way.

So all of a sudden God stopped talking to them through the prophets and for four or five centuries before that first Christmas, God stopped sending prophets. Now four or five centuries rolls off the tongue really easily but by jingo that’s a long time.

God just stopped speaking, dead silence from God and that time in Babylon, 586/587 B.C. and the 70 years that followed was a turning point because before then, Israel was ruled by it’s own kings, all be it that Israel had split into 2 nations, Israel in the north and Judah in the south but they had their own kings but after they returned from Babylon, except for a short period, Israel was always under occupation by someone.

In fact that was the case right through until the modern State of Israel was declared after World War 2 in 1948. Two and a half thousand years occupied by another country and when they returned from the Babylonian exile in 518 B.C., the Persians and then the Greeks desecrated the Temple and did pagan sacrifices and then in 164 B.C. there was the Maccabean revolt and for a brief century they were free and then came the brutal oppression of the Roman Empire.

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people, what a mess their lives were and the nation was in but they remembered God’s promise to King David centuries before, their greatest king and you can read it, I’m going to read it to you now, in the Old Testament in 2 Samuel chapter 7 beginning at verse 12, God made this promise to David:

When your days are over and you rest with your fathers I will raise up your offspring to succeed you who will come from your own body and I will establish his kingdom.

He is the one who will build a house for my Name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I’ll be his father and he will be my son. When he does wrong I will punish him with a rod with floggings inflicted by men but my love will never be taken from him as I took my love away from Saul whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure before me, your throne will be established forever.

A big promise and now Israel, you know, is occupied by the Romans and they’re going back to this promise and thinking, “What about the promise of God?” And so they were expecting God to show up.

They had a high level of expectation, a saviour, a messiah, a king like David. You see the term “messiah” means “God’s anointed one”, it was a term used for the king of Israel. They were waiting for a king with eager anticipation and lots of people came alone and said, “Well I’m that king”. I mean the land was full of false messiahs around when Jesus was born.

David was the greatest king of all, he was a warrior, he defeated all of Israel’s enemies in battle. They wanted a messiah, a king just like David and so there was this sense of eager anticipation in those years leading up to the first Christmas.

Israel was expecting a messiah, they were anticipating what we now call Christmas. And it’s obvious to them that the messiah would have to be a warrior like David, I mean look at this whole Roman occupation, look at God’s promise. Obviously God would send us a king like David to kick the backsides of the Romans right out of our land.

If God is God, he has to deliver on His promises. If God is God, he has to show up, he has to set us free. What they got though was Jesus, not at all what they expected. They struggled to make sense of Him; He was a surprise package completely different from everything they expected of that first Christmas.

Christmas! Jesus! What do you expect?

It’s funny, but one of the things about Jesus, is that people often didn’t understand Him. In part, it’s because He spoke in riddles. But there’s another side to this misunderstanding – He wasn’t what they expected Him to be.

In these weeks heading towards Christmas I have been doing a bit of reminiscing, looking back to the Christmas’ of my childhood. And for me there were some really special times. And none more so than those weeks leading up to Christmas, with that excruciating sense of anticipation, every fibre of my being focused on that instant when we’d run into the lounge room and unwrap the presents under the Christmas tree.

Of course as we grew older my sister and I, we became a lot more adept at throwing out hints to our parents of what we wanted. A fishing rod or a bike or slot car set or, woo a transistor radio that was top shelf stuff.

Part of that sense of anticipation of Christmas was about having a picture in my minds eye of that one thing that I really wanted this year. Sometimes we got what we expected, other times we didn’t. Funny like that at Christmas, you never know what you’re going to get.

And Christmas really truly is a surprise package. It was on the very first Christmas, that very first Christmas present. There were great expectations of a messiah and God had some great expectations too but nobody really expected what God was about to do.

Israel’s history, over the centuries leading up to that first Christmas had the most incredible ups and downs, the miraculous delivery of Israel out of slavery in Egypt under Moses, the parting of the Red Sea, 40 years in the wilderness, finally crossing over the Jordan into the Promised Land, the land that God had promised to Abraham centuries before and then this up and down relationship between Israel and God.

Sometimes they honoured Him but other times they didn’t and ultimately God lost patience with them and He allowed the Babylonians to come and take what was left of them into exile. And after that, except for a brief period of 100 years or so, Israel was an occupied land from that time on, in the 6th century before Christ right through until 1948. Two and a half thousand years, the Persians, the Greeks and then finally, in the years leading up to that first Christmas, the Roman Empire.

What the blazes happened to God’s promises? Promises of the Promised Land, a land full of milk and honey, it was confusing, it was painful, what, what had happened to God? And so Israel was expecting a saviour, a messiah, a king to save them from all this stuff, to set things back to the way that they were, the way they were meant to be. Come on God, get to it, we want you to send us a king like David to kick the Romans out of this place.

You know, I just wonder whether sometimes that’s not what we expect of God. To do something that we can understand on our terms, to do something tangible that makes sense to us.

When we’re going through difficult times we look at God and think, ‘all right God, just show up and do your stuff. Wave the wand, make it all better, pay off my credit cards, put food on the table, heal me.’

Whatever it is we have this expectation of God to do, well come on God, just deliver and these people, these Israelites, in the time leading up to the birth of Christ, they wanted a Davidic warrior king to free the land from Roman rule and you know, that entirely makes sense from where they sat.

Let me ask you, what are your expectations of God? What do you think He should be like? Which enemies do you want Him to knock over for you?

But what Israel got was Jesus. Jesus comes along, God’s Son, the Messiah and what a disappointment He ends up being to the nation of Israel. Born in a stable, a carpenter in Nazareth and then, then instead of rising up an army and kicking some Roman heads, He comes out with stuff like:

Love your enemy. Turn the other cheek. Don’t judge other people. Blessed are the meek.

For goodness sakes, surely, surely that can’t be the messiah that we’re looking for can it? And the crowd saw all Jesus did and they wanted Him to turn into the messiah that they wanted Him to be. You read about it, John chapter 6, verse 14, it says this:

“After the people saw all the miraculous signs that Jesus did they began to say, “Surely this is the prophet who has come into the world.” Jesus, knowing what they intended for Him to be, to make Him king by force, withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”

You see, they wanted to put Jesus in their box, they wanted Him to be the king and the prophet that they wanted Him to be. They wanted God to do things on their terms and yet Jesus, Jesus wouldn’t have any part of that.

Something amazing you know, with the whole Roman rule and the corrupt Kings and all the oppression that was going on in Israel during the first century. Jesus almost never spoke into the geo-political situation of His day. In fact the only time He did was when other people asked Him about it. He wasn’t a lobbyist, He wasn’t a political agitator, He didn’t run for office or raise up an army. He came with a specific purpose in mind, He wouldn’t be distracted, He said:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because God has anointed Me to preach the good news to the poor. He sent Me to proclaim freedom for prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, release for the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lords favour.

Jesus came to build His Kingdom in a way that nobody expected. He came to build the Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts of men and women and children. He came to change their hearts and bring them back to God and to lay down His life on that cross so that you and I can have eternal life.

Jesus was so not what they expected From the moment He was born in that draughty, smelly stable instead of a palace, from the time He lived as a humble carpenters son in an out of the way place called Nazareth to the time He began to teach and proclaim the year of God’s favour.

Jesus just wasn’t what they expected Him to be. And ultimately Israel rejected Him. They crucified Him and put a sign up to mock Him over the top of His head, “King of the Jews”. Yeah right, and to this day He’s rejected by most of His own people.

It’s a choice for each one of us, maybe this baby in a manger isn’t what we expected God to be, maybe as we look at Christmas on God’s terms it’s not the way we would have liked it to be but what if it’s so much better than the Christmas that we could have ever constructed?

What if this saviour, this messiah is so much better than the God that we would construct in our mind and on our terms? What if Christmas, this Christmas that God created, is God’s invitation to something, well unexpected, a life better than we could ever have dreamed? You see that’s the challenge, for Christmas.

Christmas, if you and I had have done it we wouldn’t have done it God’s way but God did do it God’s way because He was trying to make a point. God is not what we expect, God never does it on our terms but when He does it on His terms it’s always so much better.

Christmas. Christ-mas. I guess a Christ-mass without the Christ is just a ….mass. Of course so many people have a Christless Christmas. My first thirty-five were just that … and somehow, they were hollow, empty.

Christmas is something of a juggernaut don’t you think? It comes hurtling towards us in all its commercial glory, through the tube and the newspaper and the decorations and all that stuff. It just hurtles towards us at about this time each year.

My first 35 Christmas’ on this planet were, well I guess you’d call them a Christless Christmas. Ever thought about that word, atheist? The “a” means “no” and the “theist” bit is the Greek word “Theo” which means “God”. It’s kind of like amoral where you don’t have any morals, atheist means you don’t have a god or you don’t believe in a god and so when you have a Christless Christmas or an atheist Christmas, then you have a Christmas without God, a Christmas without Christ.

Now some people might think that’s a bit weird but I was reading an atheists blog recently and he was explaining why he didn’t have a problem with this. This atheist in his blog puts forward this argument and I quote:

… and my response was, I don’t see Christmas as being a Christian celebration. It’s a secular festival built on a Christian adaptation of pagan traditions and there is little distinctively Christian about it. I feel no problems about joining in public and family celebrations of secular humanist values; peace, goodwill to all men is not a monopoly of Christian sentiment. In fact they’re not very good at it.

And he goes on to say:

Nothing in any of the gospels fixes the date of Jesus birth. The early Church simply did what it was very good at doing, stealing and neutralising the traditions of other religions and cults.

There were festivals and celebrations at that time, of the winter solstice long before there was a Christian Church. For a couple of centuries, at least, before Jesus may have lived.

The early Roman Church simply commandeered all the shrines and the festivals to itself. Places where pagan goddesses gave oracles became shrines of the Blessed Virgin Mary, temples to Mythra and Apollo became Churches.

Worship and festivals continued as before, only the names and a little of the theology changed. What happened in the Greek and Latin worlds also happened in the Celtic and Nordic clans.

All gods had their myths and festivals stolen and dressed up as Christian festivals. Celtic heroes became rewritten as Christian saints. For most part the people, as a whole, didn’t seem to mind too much. There were still bonfires and feasts and gift giving and excuses to get drunk, the change from pagan to Christian simply meant ‘business as usual’, slightly fewer orgies but just as much tax and as many idle priests as ever.

Many old traditions and superstitions lived on and were Christianised. The people were still as irrational and superstitious as ever. The Christmas that we celebrate today is a mix of old pagan tradition such as evergreen decorations and feasting coupled with, and often neglected, Christian gloss and overlayed with more modern secular humanist and consumerist traditions.

If you’ve just tuned in, I’m reading not things that I believe, I’m reading from a person who’s an atheist and his blog and he’s talking about Christmas and to some extent, you know historically, what he says is accurate although he does put his own spin on it.

Christmas in December, well in the Northern hemisphere winter, it was unlikely that the shepherds were out watching their flocks by night. Normally in winter they took the flocks into the village and they’d put them into a sheep fold and kept them there.

And yes, the whole “December Christmas” thing with Christmas trees and Santa Clauses and candy canes and feasting and presents and all the things that you and I might associate with Christmas has evolved down through the centuries. And in fact, the Christmas celebration that we have today really only took hold in the 19th century, historically very recently.

As I said, the first 35 of my Christmas’ I spent as an atheist, without God, a Christless Christmas. When I was a kid the whole excitement of Christmas was about presents, I mean it is for a little kid isn’t it?

But gradually you grow up and that wears off, then the only real interest I had in Christmas were the fact that living in the southern hemisphere it was summer holidays, a few weeks off, a break from the routine and the hum drum and the mayhem of life. And then, then as time wore on, Christmas completely lost its meaning, any meaning that it had.

You know it’s nice to have rituals and when we were kids we used to have a real fir tree as the Christmas tree and I loved the smell of that and the smell of baking, the things my mother used to bake and it was all great but at the end of the day there’s no meaning in that, there’s no depth to that and so as time wore on, Christmas just lost any meaning it ever had for me and Christmas without the Christ was just a “mass” and that’s where the term Christmas comes from.

The Roman Catholic Church decided to have a mass every year to celebrate the birth of Christ and so the two words are put together, Christ-mass becomes Christmas and as it wore on, all that time it became emptier and emptier and emptier for me.

You know something; it should have been fuller and fuller and fuller. I was building a business, I was doing well, I had a big house and a big car and all the trappings of success. Holidays, I could afford to go to restaurants, all that stuff but the more I kept to fill myself, the emptier and emptier and emptier Christmas became.

It’s a paradox of life, the more we try to fill ourselves the emptier we feel and so I’d be happy to subscribe to the atheist version of Christmas if it didn’t leave me feeling so empty. Sure, bloated full of turkey and food and stuff but empty in the spirit and for me, “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” isn’t much of a philosophy to live by.

Then, then one day I met Jesus. I’m sorry if that sounds corny but that’s what happened in my life, that’s my story. In the midst of my mess and my Godlessness and my Christless ness, all the stuff I did in my life, He stepped in and He became real.

Not through a Church, not through a bunch of rules, not through a religion, somewhere deep inside me He just spoke to me and I knew. Somehow He chose the time and the place and the hour and the circumstances to shine His light into my heart and ever since that time, He’s been real.

Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, we don’t know what day of the year but He came into this world and all the traditions and stuff that we wrap into Christmas doesn’t make that any different. He just was born, the Son of God and when I meet Him my whole view of Christmas was transformed because now I experience a relationship with God, now I knew God and from the “baby – manger – pantomime” thing, He changed in my heart, to a real saviour.

Now we still have the family celebration and the presents and stuff and I love doing that with my family but I’m not empty anymore, I don’t feel lost anymore, not hungering after that allusive something anymore.

I peek into that stable and that baby in a manger with wonder and awe and anticipation. It’s as though finally, finally I’m complete, I’m satisfied, I’m safe, I have peace.

I just wanted to share that story with you, I actually don’t care which day of the year we celebrate Christmas, no one day is any holier than any other day for me. What I do know is that God sent His Son for me, for me and for you. He became a man, He walked a mile or two in our shoes, He suffered and He died for you and me. Christmas is a wonderful, a wondrous time. Christmas.