Only God ever had the idea of making a Christmas. No man would have thought of such a thing. Small wonder the idea has captured the imagination of the world, or that the nations turn aside every year to see the Baby in the tavern keeper’s cattlebarn.
What a way for God to invade our world! No royal proclamation, no fuss! It was all done so quietly! Yet, once you have the picture, you can’t forget it. A King, yes, a Redeemer, born in a cowshed! How could we help coming, as did the Magi, to visit this baby whose birth meant that the calendar was to be changed?
So, every year, we light our trees, sing carols, give gifts, and cry, “Merry Christmas!” And well we should; for it is Jesus’ birthday. However, we might ask ourselves, in the midst of our celebration, what will happen when Christmas is over.
Something did happen after that first Christmas, you know. Jesus didn’t stay in that manger. He left it. He went to Nazareth. “The child grew” states the record. He became a man. He took his gospel to the people. He healed the sick, lifted the fallen. He was flung on a cross. He rose from the dead. He sent his Spirit to the Church.
So much happened after that cattleshed experience!
Perhaps far too many folk in the church have a Christmas religion! It is full of music and poetry; it is a fine emotional thing—but it never gets Christ out of the cowbarn!
Despite all our sentimental singing during the Yuletide, the fact remains that Jesus couldn’t have done very much for the world if he had stayed a baby! Babies are wonderful, they bring us happiness; but they aren’t very helpful in building things or in tilling soil or in running hospitals.
Jesus, as a baby, couldn’t have given us the Sermon on the Mount. He couldn’t have lived his mighty life before the eyes of mankind. He couldn’t have taken his death-beam to Calvary. He had to quit the stable and become a man before he could perform his mission for God and to man.
A stable-faith is not enough. We must have a Cross-faith, a Resurrection-faith. We must do better than that. We must have a Pentecost-faith. We must have a faith that fulfills the words of the Apostle Paul: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”
Last Christmas we heard a clergyman speak on the radio. Naturally he had a Christmas theme. He was a fluent speaker. Listening, one could see the Magi’s camels plodding over the desert, trailing the new-born Star. You could hear the angel’s song floating on the night, you could see the shepherds hurrying to see the child. In dramatic diction Mary was presented to us, clasping the Babe to her heart. It was an impressive picture. But the sermon left Jesus in the innkeeper’s oxstall! It didn’t even get him as far as the temple to ask his famous question, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?”
Recently we heard a Sunday school teacher tell about an incident in the life of Jesus. She had the setting of the incident well in hand. She described the times, the customs, the mores of the people of that day. But she omitted one thing. She never did bring Christ to our day! She left him back there in history, many miles and many years away from us.
Only an incompetent scholar would suggest that Jesus never lived. We do despite to the Gospel when we discount the historical Christ. He came to this earth. He was stable-born. He was a carpenter in Nazareth. He traveled over Palestine, preaching, teaching, and healing men. He was crucified. He rose from the dead. He ascended to heaven.
But the historical Jesus is not sufficient to fulfill the mission and hope of Christianity. The Christ of the cowbarn can have little meaning unless we have the Christ of the atom age. The Master who moved among the men who straddled donkeys must move in a world of tremendous automation.
We heard one minister say, “Let’s not speak of the historical Christ as though we spoke only of the past. He is the Lord of all history, past, present, future.” Our faith requires a yesterday Saviour; but it requires a today Saviour also. Moreover we shall need a tomorrow Redeemer.
It is a far cry from the Christ Child among the oxen to the Christ Spirit among moon-bent missiles and winged rockets. But the distance must be spanned. Even the distance between an historical Easter and our time must be bridged. We must realize in human personality what Paul termed “the power of his resurrection,” which can lift men from their dead selves to “walk in newness of life.”
We must see our faith extended far this side of Pentecost. It is not enough to celebrate a day when the divine fire was outpoured. Pentecost must not end in an upper room in Jerusalem. It only begins there. God meant the action reported in Acts to be extended until the end of time.
True, at Christmastide we commemorate God’s first fulfillment of the pledge of the name, Emmanuel—“God with us.” Yet we must keep remembering that Jesus pledged to live, in his Spirit, in the Church for all ages. “Lo, I am with you always.”
We should not disparage the Christmas season, though we might flinch at some of the false merrymaking, the commercial goings on, the jug tilting and carousing. We should never mar the story of the starled men from the East, or of the angel choirs over the Judean hills. We would not diminish this scene. Yet we would not keep Jesus in the cowshed forever!
God didn’t keep him there for long. He took him to Egypt, probably before he could walk. Perhaps that journey is the symbol of a great fact. Christ cannot stay in Palestine! He must visit the nations of the earth. He must pass through many streets in the big cities, fight through the jungles, and cross the deserts. Christmas was never intended to cripple our missionary enterprise!
Let us resolve then, this Christmas not to lock Jesus up in the cattlebarn until next Christmas. Let us get him out of the manger, out to the dispossessed, the disinherited, the needy people whom he loves. Christianity was never an ox stall religion! It is a global Gospel, restless at roadblocks, fretting at boundaries.
Sing, then, at Christmas. But sing after Christmas also. Give gifts while you sing, but remember that God’s grace makes every day a giving time. Christmas is not a date on the calendar; it is a Spirit in eternity.
A man once dreamed that he was in the stable in Bethlehem and saw the child. He asked, “What are you doing here, little One?” And the child answered, “I am not doing anything, here! But I shall go from here soon. I shall speak parables that will haunt the world. I shall climb a hill, rise on a cross, and the world will not be able to forget. I will overwhelm the grave.
I shall establish the Church. I will come again some day to reign as King. My birth in the stable is not as important as the fact that I shall be born in men’s hearts around the world!”
It was never his birth in a barn that Jesus emphasized. Did he ever refer to it? His interest was in being born into the hearts, spirits, and ways of men. This is the sort of birthday he will join us in celebrating, and the angels, he said, will join him also.
Christ is satisfied only when he has moved from his cattleshed into the living room of men’s lives. END
