Behind Day 21 of my Advent Calendar is:
A WOODEN TOY FIRE ENGINE
As any self respecting Sunday School student will tell you, if anyone churchy ever asks you a question as part of an all age address, the answer is always ‘Jesus’.
And so it was that, some years ago, when I found myself asked to speak to ‘the young people’ one Sunday in late December, I decided that, in order to throw them off the scent, I would frame my enquiry in the form of a multiple choice question. That way, I thought, no child experienced in ecclesiastical etiquette would be able to blurt out the usual stock answer and expect to have a chocolate sweet thrown at them by way of reward!
The question I posed was this:
Which of the following options has the most to do with Christmas:
a) a Christmas tree,
b) a mince pie, or
c) a fire engine.
Now whether the youngster who answered my question did so on the basis of his deep theological understanding, or whether it was simply that he realised that, if one of the possible answers is vastly less likely than all the rest, then that answer is almost certainly the correct one, I do not know. But either way, he was spot on when he hollered ‘Fire engine’ and duly came close to losing an eye as a fun sized Mars bar flew in his direction with both the speed and precision of an Exocet missile.
Because, you see, the point of my short dialogue was simply to point out that Christmas is all about rescue. Or, at least, the arrival of a rescuer. Miss this and Christmas loses all of its significance.
But here’s a thought. Even if we are minded to remember what Christmas is really all about, could it be that even religious types sometimes get too excited about Christmas?
Imagine this. It’s night time and you wake up to discover your house is on fire. You’re trapped upstairs in your bedroom as the flames burn higher and higher. The heat is intense, the smoke impenetrable and the exit unreachable. All hope seems lost.
And then you hear the distant sound of sirens telling you that help is on its way. You run to the window and the glow of a flashing blue light confirms that the fire brigade is close by.
What a relief!
Sure enough, a bright red engine soon careers around the corner and stops outside your house whereupon the neighbours all gather around the crew celebrating their arrival. Everyone seems very happy. But then you realise that the firemen aren’t doing anything to rescue you and, to your horror, none of your neighbours seem all that concerned by the fact. They’re just delighted that the rescuers have actually arrived.
What a tragedy that would be.
Christmas is about the birth of Jesus but his arrival is only the start, because he came with a job description – he came with work to do. The angel who announced Jesus’s birth to the shepherds had it right that night when he said:
‘Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, who is Christ the Lord’ [Luke 2:10-11]
The good news is that a saviour has been born. At Christmas, God became man and was given the name of Jesus because he would ‘save his people from their sins’ [Matthew 1:21].
But remarkable though his arrival was, Jesus’ birth did not, in and of itself, effect a rescue. Because, essential though his birth was, it was his subsequent life, death and resurrection that went on to secure the salvation he had come to secure. By living a perfect life, a life which God graciously credits us as having lived, and dying a perfect death, one that, by bearing the punishment that we deserved, was sufficient to satisfy God’s justice, Jesus saves us from the wrath of God and clears the way for our adoption into God’s family as dearly loved children.
At Christmas, forgetting the rescue that Jesus was sent by God to bring about is as tragic, and foolish, as our delighting in the arrival of the fire brigade at our burning home but having no interest in them putting out the fire!
Which explains perhaps why, despite nowhere in the Bible being commanded to remember his birth, Christian’s are frequently exhorted to remember a certain person’s death.
And the name of that certain person was…?
Well you tell me – only please be sure to duck as you shout out his name!
*****
And so to a song. With all the airborne confectionary that’s flying about today, my first thought was to go with that song by Phil Collins that contains the line “I can feel it, coming in the air tonight’. But in the end I didn’t feel it quite cut the Yuletide muster and went instead for something similarly aerial but rather more Christmassy. So here’s Peter Auty singing the original version of ‘Walking in the Air’ from the 1982 animated film, ‘The Snowman’.
Previously from ‘A Christmas Countdown’:
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 20’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 19’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 18’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 17’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 16’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 15, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 14’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 13’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 12’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 11’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 10’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 9’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 8’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Part 7’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 6’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 5’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 4’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 3’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 2’, click here
To read ‘A Christmas Countdown – Day 1’, click here
Some musings 