Sunday 22nd & 29th December 2024
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God …
The Word became flesh.
John 1:1, 14 (NIV)
Christmas is weird
In a recent interview with The Times, the Australian musician Nick Cave spoke of his experience of going to different churches: “ I find personally that after looking at churches for years and years, going to different churches and running out of them screaming, that you have to find a place that is unembarrassed about the whole weirdness of the Christian message.”
The message of Christmas is certainly weird: the appearance of angels on more than one occasion, a baby extraordinarily born to a virgin mother, and behind it all the mystery of the God who made the universe taking frail human flesh. It is unashamedly supernatural, and we should not be embarrassed by this weirdness. Not not that we should try and make it any weirder than it is, but that we should be content with the weirdness God himself has given us.
The interviewer Laura Freeman adds this telling comment to what Cave says: “I can’t help but think of the Church of England’s endless efforts to be normal, when what believers want is faith with all its weirdness.” It is not only that believers want the weirdness, but we need it. There is no faith, and no salvation, without the weirdness.
As John tells us in the prologue to his Gospel: “Yet to all who receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). But we can only become God’s sons and daughters because of what John says next: “The Word became flesh” (verse 14). There is no faith without the weirdness.
The truth is, we need something from beyond ourselves and the world we see around us, or else we will simply be left to ourselves and as ourselves. We do not have it in ourselves, even working together, to conjure up the help we need to heal the wounds and mend the brokenness of our world – let alone to build a new world.
Thankfully, God has not left us to ourselves but has come among us: “We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Prayer
Lord, thank you for the weirdness of Christmas. I don’t pretend to understand it fully, but I thank you that you made your dwelling among us for a while in this world so that I may dwell with you for ever in the world to come. Amen.