In my Bible, the story of the birth of Jesus, which we heard earlier from the Gospel of Luke, is on page 772. There are over 700 pages before Jesus even appears. Before then, there are Creation, Exodus, History, Psalms and other Wisdom books, and a whole number of Prophets. The four Gospels take up 90 pages, and then there are another 120 pages after Jesus dies, which contain the book of Acts of the Apostles, letters of Paul and other prominent Christians and the book of Revelation. Shockingly, the Bible not only does not start with Jesus, but the texts about his life and ministry are only a small part of it. And yet, we do not celebrate the birth of Moses, who may or may not have written the whole five first books of the Bible, and we do not care much about the birth of Isaiah and Elijah, who are among the greatest prophets and also feature in the Bible. We celebrate the birth of Christ, and the Gospels, which tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, may be a short part of the Bible, but they bind it together and they give it a meaning anticipated but never imagined fully before.
Today’s service includes readings from the Gospels, telling us about Christ’s birth, about the shepherds and the magi who came to recognise him as King and Saviour and about the significance of Christ’s figure who, as John tells us, was here from the beginning and came as a light to shine into the darkness of human failures. This service also includes one of the prophesies, which anticipated the coming of the Messiah – it is in the very first reading from Isaiah. No one, not even Isaiah, knew what the Messiah would look like and when he would come. The prophets anticipated a connection with Nazareth and Bethlehem and a line of descent from the great king David, someone with extraordinary power who would bring justice to all suffering people. If anything, they expected a king, a warrior, a prominent public figure. Instead, they got him who was born of a poor teenage mother in a stable just down the road from King Herod’s very fancy palace. They got him who told them to turn the other cheek, to love their enemy and to forgive those who wrong them as many as 77 times. But they expected someone with earthly qualities and got someone who was divine; and it turned out that in his divine weakness, he is stronger than any earthly warrior, in his divine wisdom, he is more just than the wisest judge, in his divine love, he is more loving than the most devoted of lovers. That is who was born on Christmas day.
His birth changed the course of history so much that our whole society, in many ways we don’t even acknowledge or recognise, is founded on his teaching. We count years from the date of his birth. But his birth also continued the narrative that anticipated his coming, those 772 pages. From the very beginning, when Adam and Eve did what they did, when God’s people disobeyed again and again and drifted further and further away from God, there was meant to be someone who could bring people and God back together, who could teach us how to live in harmony. He was a rebel, a revolutionary, who challenged corrupt authority and stood up for the weak, because it is the way of God, not of people. ‘Love your enemy’ is one of the most shocking and scandalous statements humanity, which was and still is used to fairly transactional behaviour, has ever heard, and it came from him. And it started with his birth. But as I said, there are still more pages, in which he performs miracles, heals, teaches, dies and is raised from the dead. We will celebrate that bit in Holy Week and Easter, but both his birth and death and chapters of the same book. Today we are only opening it slightly, but for the birth to have any kind of meaning we ought to keep reading. This birth, as miraculous as it is, becomes a world-changing event in the light of everything that follows it.
And once we get to the end of the Bible, even that is not all, because there are centuries of theological thought and billions of trees cut down to figure out how exactly all of these mind-blowing things, which only constitute a tiny part of the Bible, make sense. The story continues to be written but it is also written to be lived out, and our lives are also chapters in it.
There is a reason why we don’t simply celebrate Christmas as Christ’s birthday. Every year, we celebrate Christ’s birth not as a distant memory but as if he is born again and again, every year, because this story lives, because it may have been anticipated by all that history and prophecies, but it is also followed by millions of pages of lives changed by Christ’s coming. Today I would like to encourage you to open the Bible – a difficult, controversial, problematic but powerful and fascinating book. And if you start at the birth of Christ, read on, because the story continues and gets even more amazing. Amen.