Having a Smashing Time?!

Jo’s:

Have you seen any of the Christmas ads this year? They’ve become quite competitive between supermarkets and others to produce something really magical and memorable. Christmas adverts try to sell the perfect Christmas. But life doesn’t really look like that for so many reasons. Not everyone has the picture-perfect harmonious family life. And even for those who perhaps do, they still exist in a world that is far from perfect. 

I wonder how this advert, from Deutsche Telekom, may speak to us. ‘Connections begin when barriers break’

It’s one of the huge challenges of this world – there are so many barriers. We hear about conflicts every day in the news – often between groups of people who are identifiably ethnically or culturally different, as in the advert (blue / pointy ears vs red / long noses).

But there are other barriers – can be within families even. Between political loyalties, between those who are hungry and those who have plenty, between those who have access to education and those who do not. It can be easy to exist within our own bubble, to live in an echo chamber, where we only hear our own views and experiences reflected back to us. But ‘connections begin when barriers break’. 

What would it take to break some of the barriers in our world? We might need to shatter our own bubble to connect with others. 

Think of the words I read earlier about Berlin, S. Africa. Those girls in the advert did something pretty devastating – began a revolution. Life for their communities was never going to be the same again!

What’s all this got to do with Christmas? Why do we even have this mythical idea of a perfect Christmas that we see in the adverts? 

In a funny sort of way, I think the adverts have a little grain of truth in them. [And the really good ones are about] putting things right. 

Perhaps in some ways the Deutsche Telekom advert gets closer than many of the others. Because Christmas is about a barrier being broken. A bigger barrier than the sort within families when Uncle George won’t speak to Grandma anymore. An even bigger barrier than when Israelis are bombing Palestinians. 

That’s the barrier between heaven and earth, our separation from God.

Heaven and earth should be one. We pray for that every time we say the Lord’s prayer: ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’ If everything on earth was as God wanted it to be, then heaven would be here. It would be the perfection that we yearn for. Maybe not the perfect Christmas dinner, but the perfection of no more war or injustice or death.

 But we can’t make that happen all by ourselves. We can’t reach the barrier, and we don’t have a big enough rock to smash it! The only way heaven can come to earth is by God breaking in for us.

And that’s exactly what Christmas is celebrating – God breaking in. Breaking down the brokenness. But God didn’t choose to do that violently. God chose something much more surprising. To quietly creep in, and gently change the world from the inside out. To be born among us, as one of us. And to keep on being reborn in each human heart that is willing to welcome Jesus in.

Are you willing?

‘How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.’ And yet it is no less powerful. No less a revolution. If we are willing to accept that gift of God, life can never be the same again.

Hils’:

 Well, it’s lovely to see the church so full for our annual Carols by Candlelight service, and I hope your Christmas preparations are going well!  How many of you have enjoyed some Christmas food already?  Or listened to Christmas music (or been subjected to it in the shops)?  How many of you have watched a good Christmas film?

All these different ways of celebrating the season – and I imagine that we all have different preferences.  I’ve been binge eating twiglets while watching the Muppet Christmas Carol and listening to Mariah Carey…  

But perhaps a more recent phenomenon is the Christmas Advert!  I think it’s probably over the last decade that the Christmas advert has become a “thing” – whether it’s the John Lewis advert, or Kevin the carrot, a good advert tells a good cockle warming story and encourages you to buy more stuff!  I wonder which is your favourite?  

This year, I came across a lovely Christmas advert, which I’m going share with you now…

Here we have two girls from different parts of town.  They long to be friends and do all those things that friends love to do together.  To connect. To play.  To be silly.  And yet there seems to be an impenetrable divide keeping them apart.  They find themselves in their own snow globes, barriers of prejudice, class. Stories that they have been told. 

 But so great is their desire to connect, that they decide to smash those barriers.    

It strikes me that the story of Christmas has so many parallels to this advert.  

This evening we’ve heard stories about God being born as a helpless baby, to an unwed mother in a family of little social significance.  Of shepherds – outcasts in society, being visited by angels, and invited to be the first to visit the baby boy.  We’ve heard of strangers from what’s perceived to be an exotic land and mysterious religion, following a star that leads them to the baby.  And we’ve heard that this baby and his family are forced to become refugees- take a long hard journey and make their home in an unfamiliar land and culture. 

Throughout Jesus’s life, he goes out of his way to break down social barriers to connect with those on the margins.  Women.  Tax collectors.  Foreigners.    People who society had given up on.  His expectation of his followers to stand firm in adversity, not repay violence with violence, and pray for those we perceive as our enemies was ground-breaking.  It seems the very heart of God is to break the barriers that separate and seek connection with one another. Fellow humans.  

And so Jesus, coming to earth in this way and breaking all these divides gives us an example about how we might live in connection with one another.  But that isn’t all.  These stories that we’ve heard this evening show us that God, the creator of the Universe, longs to connect with us.  Humanity.  Each one of us.  

The world can be a painful, difficult, and uncertain place.  And it seems particularly so during these times.  Our human tendencies can sometimes be to numb the pain or somehow try and manage these uncertainties.  We make our homes that little bit more comfortable, or safe.  We build up walls of protection to try and pretend that we are in control. We create our own snow globes, which can often be a barrier not just to connect with the world around us, but they also dull our ability to connect with the divine.  

I wonder what that image of the snow globe means to you?  

This baby in a manger is God’s brick, God’s rock, shattering the divide between heaven and earth.  And this Christmas, God’s present to us is (unwrap a rock/brick wrapped in paper) a brick. That brings with it, the opportunity to smash your snow globe.  

How can we do this?  

Well, a good starting place is prayer.  And how do we pray?  Imagine for a moment a person who you can talk to about anything.  Someone you can be completely yourself with and safe with.  How do you talk to them?  We can talk to God in that same way.  That is prayer.  We can connect with God and ask him to help us smash down the walls that stop us from being fully alive.  

And so, my message to you is:  Let’s make this Christmas one of connection.  Connection with one another.  Connection with God.  

What snow globe do you need to smash?  Because, as the advert says, connections begin when barriers break.