Hebrews 2:14-15
I’m sitting on the couch in our living room in the spot where I read my Bible and looking at a glass rooster filled with hot sauce. He’s perched somewhat precariously atop a maple and cream latte candle – a square candle with a wooden lid that seals along the edges and would normally make a sturdy perch. But the candle is resting on a box of Burning Questions – 80 Cards to answer all the juicy questions and it’s hanging slightly off the edge. If a rouge toddler or a careless hound bumped the table, our vitreous vessel of volcanic vinaigrette would careen off the table and cause a minor calamity. It’s ok. I just moved him. Crisis averted. But the collection remains on the table, artifacts of a White Elephant gift exchange a few days ago when our Life Group celebrated Christmas.
Believe it or not, we’ve upped our gift game since ages past when the same person who gave me the Burning Questions also accidentally gave our then 10 year old a People of Walmart Adult Coloring Book which led to the formal separation of kid and grownup gift exchanges known still in the annals of our group as “The Schism”. It’s a funny story which we bring up every Christmas to make that beloved person red-faced by reminding them of their harmless transgression while we laugh and remember. It has become part of our story, part of the record of us gathering in community, but it points to something deeper: We celebrate Christmas.
For most folks, Christmas is a delight. For some, it is a misery, or at best a burden, a season weighed down with the heavy fog of the past. But today we’re talking about the delightful parts. We decorate. Light up our house, haul tubs and totes full of décor from the attic. We have special music! There’s everything from the broadly secular “Christmas Music” that they play on the radio (for those who still listen – did you know the first public radio broadcast was in 1910? 115 years ago!) to the Christmas Carols we sing in church, to the Cozy Christmas Jazz playlist I’m currently enjoying. We have an entire season of music, clothing styles (Christmas sweaters!), candle scents (Christmas candles!). We have social events (Christmas parties!), all the way down to the uber nostalgic zeitgeist of Christmas Spirit, that somewhat undefinable know-it-when-you-feel-it sense that yes, this now feels like Christmas. And what Christmas feels like for most of us is pretty darn great. And it should be.
Christians, those who follow Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life, should be the best celebrators on the planet because we understand deep in our souls what freedom really looks like. We understand that Jesus came to save us from the power of death. We read in Hebrews 2:14-15:
Therefore, since the children share in the flesh and blood, he likewise shared in their humanity, so that through death he could destroy the one who holds the power of death (that is, the devil), and set free those who were held in slavery all their lives by their fear of death.
We celebrate Christmas not because it makes us feel good but because Jesus shared in our humanity. As John Piper so beautifully put it, “The incarnation was God locking himself into death row.” Jesus came to die for us so that he could destroy the devil and deliver us into freedom. Jesus defanged the roaring lion, the great dragon, by stripping him of the power he holds over every human: the fear of death. No one wants to die. Not really. Those who think they do only say that because they are enslaved to fear by the devil who still holds the power of death over them. That fear is real because death is real and that power over us is real.
Jesus came to remove that terrible power and replace it with freedom. Jesus removed the fear of death. It is, quite unapologetically, the greatest thing that has ever happened. That means it is worth celebrating. And celebrating big. I don’t mean you need to spend a bunch of money, although that is ok too. Especially if you spend it on other people – because that is just so much fun. But I do mean that when you give someone you love a glass rooster filled with hot sauce, when you eat fruitcake and drive to visit your people and maybe eat too many pigs in a blanket and sip too much eggnog, when you delight in the glow of lights and hear the tune that makes your eyes well up and your mouth smile and your chest fill with the warm syrup of nostalgia, that you remember that the reason you feel that way isn’t because you got the G.I. Joe Aircraft Carrier when you were 10. You feel that way because you remember what it feels like to be afraid to die and now Jesus has set you free. Free to celebrate. Free to cheer. Free to shine. Free to decorate. Free to go, tell it on a mountain: Jesus Christ is born.
Go.
Celebrate.
Jesus.
