What is Christmas about and what difference does it make? Those are the questions we will be thinking about today.

What is Christmas about for you? For many of us, we might answer ‘the birth of Jesus’ or ‘getting together with family’ or ‘giving gifts’ or ‘Santa’. We know the sights and sounds and smells and tastes of Christmas. The sights – Christmas lights and Christmas trees. The sounds – Christmas carols and Christmas songs (starting already in November in the stores). The smells – Christmas cookies baking in the oven. The tastes – salty ham and the sweetness of Christmas sugar cookies melting in your mouth. 

What difference does Christmas make for you? For many of us, we might answer that Christmas makes a difference for us because we get to see our family or get to have some time off of work. We as people tend to be more generous and friendly around Christmas. The Christmas spirit, we hope at least, is infectious.

All of those answers are good things. But for the Christian, for the Church, the answer to the question “What is Christmas about” and “What difference does it make” are important and have much bigger answers than Christmas carols and Christmas cookies.

For the Christian, Christmas is about the birth of Jesus. But Christmas is not just about the birth of a baby. It is about the coming of God Almighty to the world as a human being, ‘in the flesh’, is the Bible’s way of saying it. The church word for this coming of God to us in the flesh, as a human being is Incarnation (if you know Spanish, carne, is the word for meat or flesh, think ‘carne asada’ or ‘carnivore’. So, incarnation is in carne, ‘in the flesh’, God in person).

Here is a way to think about just how mind-blowing the idea that God came in the flesh, incarnation is. Imagine the richest, most powerful person in the world. This person could have whatever they want, whenever they want it. They could live in the biggest mansions, eat whatever good food they desired, and do whatever things made them happy. Then imagine they are so taken with who you are as a person. Not what you can do for them or how you can help them or work for them. They are so taken with you and in love with you, not in a weird or creepy way, but just love spending time with you that as the richest person in the world, they move into your neighborhood so they can spend time with you, live as a neighbor to you, and spend their days as you do. That’s obviously a simple story. It also sounds ridiculous and very unlikely. But it’s like what God does at Christmas. God Almighty, Father and Creator of all things, humbles himself (meaning, he traded the glory and honor that he has as God, the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-wise One), to take on human flesh, to become one of us in our messy world to live among us as Jesus Christ the Son of God.

That’s the ‘what’ of Christmas. Christmas is about the good news that God has come to us in the flesh, in carne, as a human being. Now the second question: what difference does Christmas make?

If we use the simple example of the richest, most powerful person in the world moving into our neighborhood to be near us and to be friends and neighbors with us, then the difference that Christmas makes is that God wants to be like a neighbor and friend to us. God wants us to be a friend of God’s, to be in fellowship (another word for friendship) with him. 

We tend to think that God only cares about what happens to us when we die. Do we go to heaven or not? But Christmas, the incarnation, God in the flesh, means that God cares about every single day of our life. God cares about being in fellowship (friendship) with him when we’re young, when we’re middle-aged, and when we’re old, when we are having a good day and when we are having a terrible day. We are in fellowship, friendship with God, when we pray, worship, read the Bible, give, serve others, and spend time with other Christians.

To finish answering the question of what difference Christmas makes, we need to add in two concepts that are important: salvation and holiness. God came in the flesh in the baby Jesus who grew up to be Jesus of Nazareth to save us. To ‘save’ means at a very basic level, to make well or to heal or to rescue. Just as a doctor makes us well with medicine or when we are really sick, surgery, God makes our hearts, minds, and spirits well. He saves us from whatever sickness or illness is making our hearts cold, our minds corrupt, and our spirit out of control. The church word for that ‘illness’ is sin. God does that through Jesus’ life and death and part of Jesus’ life is living among us in the flesh. We tend to think God only saved us when Jesus died on the cross. But in reality, Jesus as God saves us with his whole life. 

The other word we talked about is holiness. The difference that Christmas makes, the incarnation, God coming in the flesh is that God’s saving us, making us well, leads us to live the kind of life, in the kind of way, that God intended humans to live. The word for this is holiness. It can sound scary and like something that none of us are capable of. And in a way, growing in holiness is a lifetime thing. But one of the differences that Christmas makes is that by coming to us in the flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, God shows us the basic ideas of how we are to live and be close to God. The question we ask ourselves as Christians is this: if the Lord were living my life, what would he do? What would he care about? Who would he care about? How would he approach things? Then we do it. The more we learn to ask those questions, and pray and study the faith to learn how to answer it, and trust in God’s Spirit working in us, the more we are growing in holiness.

Amen.