CHRISTMAS MESSAGES: JUNK MAIL AND MULTIPLE MESSAGES

The world around us communicates all kinds of messages about Christmas, many of which are just inaccurate: Christmas is about getting gifts Christmas is a time to “eat, drink and be merry”. Christmas is a time to be “home for the holidays”.

Is the comfort of home so popularized in our culture the same as the comfort spoken of in Scripture? The world that Jesus was born into was a world where: Israel was little more than occupied territory of the Roman empire. the people of Israel were captives within their own nation, slaves within their own homes. there were increasingly negative attitudes towards those of Israelite nationality. The book of Isaiah was one of the most popular works among Jews at the time of Christ.

In Isaiah 40, God, through the prophet Isaiah, delivers some specific promises to God’s people, who at this point in their history were becoming nervous about the growing and increasingly violent Assyrian empire situated to the north-east of Israel. “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.” (Isaiah 40:1-2)

In the years before Christ’s birth, this passage was heralded as an immanent promise of God. To the mind of the first century Jew, this most certainly meant an end to the Roman occupation of Israel. As visions of this coming comfort proliferated Israel, the people of Israel lost sight of another equally revealed promise of God in His word. In a profound way, their hopes of freedom from Roman oppression short circuited their proper interpretation of Scripture.

A number of years after the writing of this passage from Isaiah – sometime around 600 B.C. - God’s people found themselves in an even greater heap of trouble. At this time, two Israelite men began to speak to the people of Israel about what would shortly occur, each purporting to be speaking on behalf of God. Hananiah, who confidently declared that in very short order, though difficulty would be experienced, God would bring comfort to His people by intervening and causing them to return to Israel, to their homes. Jeremiah, who spoke of God bringing comfort to His people, but rather that bringing them home, the comfort would come via God’s presence with His people while in exile in a foreign land.

“Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14). Immanuel simply means “God with us” or “God is with us”. The promise of the Messiah was not that the people of Israel would somehow be taken to be with God, but in an incredible way, God would come to be among His people. In their rush to experience a release from the oppressive rule of Rome at the hand of the Messiah, the religious leaders of Israel had misunderstood the comfort of which Isaiah had written.

In the scriptural Christmas story, we see that rather than the development of a “home for the holidays” theme, an “away from home” theme is generated. Joseph and Mary had made the arduous trip from home because of a Roman census edict. Christ’s birth takes place not in a comfortable bed in a cushy home; no, Christ was born in a cave designed for housing livestock.

Jesus “who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:6-7). Jesus somehow left the infinite comfort of His place in heaven, the indescribable safety of the eternal relationship among Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and moved into our neighbourhood here on earth. The first Christmas was an “away from home for the holidays” experience for all involved. And yet, the story is filled with peace, joy and comfort because in the midst of turmoil and struggle God was uniquely present.