The horrors of Advent and the celebration of Christmas

The old world must be put to death so that the new world can come into being. Dying is an awful thing, which is why it is framed in terms of war and pestilence and the hand of God. The old world does not give up easily. It refuses to surrender. It is evident all around us - in the strife among nations, in our own society and even in our own dear selves. Its slow death continues to permeate our daily lives.

But together with its dying, something new is bursting to emerge: the new creation of God in which the powers of sin and death are being banished. With every neighbour breathing threats and bent on murder there is another reaching out in love and compassion. For every person ground down by poverty and injustice there is one who is lifted up and nurtured into life. This is the way history goes for us.

We are warned in advance of the coming of Christ: his coming will be hard and we will not know where to turn. For the baby Jesus we celebrate at Christmas is more than the cute child born in a romantic setting among farm animals. This is the babe that sets fire on the earth, that separates the members of families, that claims Lordship over all of our allegiances. This is the burning babe, destroying religion and confronting the powers of death.

It is no wonder that the lectionary gives us such wild readings before Christmas. For the Christ child is the hinge of history about which everything turns. Such a turning is bound to be ridden with strife. I know this does not go down well. It bears the smell of sulphur and of the ranting of the cultic side of Christianity. In a time when the church is very much on the back foot we cannot afford to offend the punters, better by far to concentrate on the God of love than on judgment and the end of the world.

We are alarmed because we have lost touch with the crisis that Christ brings to our society and to our lives. We have selected the charming and the sentimental, separating Christmas from Easter. It is no accident that Christmas has become the primary celebratory season because it looks, on the surface, to be unalloyed joy. Whereas Easter is to do with betrayal, suffering, dying and abandonment, Christmas has become a fairy tale.

But the infancy narratives give clues to the destiny of the child whose birth we celebrate. There was no room for him at the inn so he was born in a stable surrounded by shepherds and animals. He barely escaped the slaughter of the innocents. He was born an outcast, and his life ended similarly. The manger is a pointer to the cross. The wood of the crib is related to the wood of the cross. Our problem with Christmas is that we have romanticized it and given it to children. We forget its deep liaison with Easter.

Christmas seems like the beginning of the Christian story, but that is all wrong. Easter is the beginning, Easter is the origin of our faith. Christmas is the result of Easter and not the other way around. It relies on Easter and is the filling in of the story after the main event.

Another problem we have, if I may be bold, is that we have eaten fully from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We know what is good and what is evil. We see this in the protest movement. War is bad, we must have nothing of war. So is nuclear power. Old growth forests are good and must be preserved. So are families. Billions of dollars should be spent on health care, that is good. The World Trade Organization is bad and must be stopped. And on and on.

All childish simplicity. We miss the moral complexity because simplicity is seductive. So when we hear the Christmas readings we are horrified, and we ask ourselves: how is it possible that the prince of peace can be the harbinger of such despair? We want a saviour who will come and set things right by introducing us to the good. As if we had not already made up our minds what that is.

We are liable to want our religion without the hard bits, all peace and love. But we must remember that the peace and love that Christ brings was hard won in his body. That is why we must eat and drink of his body and his blood. Thus, he will live within us and we in him. He did not come to teach us to be good but to put our old selves, which were in thrall to sin and death, to death, and to raise up a new creation in us.

But we would rather have the tinsel and the Christmas cake. Preachers have had a go at the tinsel for generations, it is almost a church tradition. It can feel as if all celebrations are soured and that we are have to return to Puritan seriousness. However, our celebrations will be empty unless we understand and hold close to us their ground. Our society is full of empty celebration that begins to look more and more like desperation that is overhung by the big question: Are we alive? If we are having a good time then we surely are.

This can never be the ground for celebration for the Christian community. What we celebrate is real and a real cause for celebration and we know that it was hard won through blood and humiliation and death. The celebration of Christmas has something akin to the celebration of Anzac Day. Something was born through awful death and suffering, a new nation, a new people? But, whereas Anzac Day is celebrated by silences, and tears in a funereal setting, Christmas is celebrated with gifts and joyous hymns and rich food. That is as it should be for we celebrate the source of our freedom.