Happy Christmas Everyone!

I thought I’d get that in nice and early, after all, we all know that there will be Christmas stuff in the shops even before they’ve discounted all the unsold choccy eggs. Easter eggs were spotted for sale in the Highams Park Tescos on Dec 30th last year and I’m pretty sure (please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong), that you can buy Hot Cross Buns all year round pretty much anywhere in Britain.

I am undecided as to whether this is a good or bad thing.
Here’s why –
We celebrate Jesus’ birth because he died and was resurrected. If he’d just dropped off this mortal coil and was never heard of again, he’d be just another travelling religious nut job.
We celebrate Jesus’ death because he was born a human being. Jesus gave up a cushy life in heaven to live a life of suffering and poverty. God himself, came down to earth to have an intimate relationship with us and died so that we can all experience that relationship.

The 2 events go hand in hand – like love and marriage, they go together like a horse and carriage…

This fact is so important that a day should not go by when we do not consider his birth, death and resurrection. It should become part of our daily lives, like drinking tea, cleaning our teeth, going to the toilet and eating dinner (not all at the same time). The Jews were told to write God’s words on their doorposts to remind them what he’d done for them; so it’s great to have a reminder of what Jesus has done – on the supermarket shelf and piped on the top of our currant buns.

But then what happens when it loses its impact? When the celebration of Jesus’ amazing sacrifice becomes reduced to a melted brown smear of chocolate on the face of a small child (and subsequently all over the sleeve of their mother’s nice new top…), when people wear it as a nice piece of jewellery because they like the design or just use it to ward off the vampires that hang around on street corners after dark?

The cross was a barbaric method of torture – physical and mental. If you were sentenced to death by crucifixion you were exposed, to all who saw you, as the worst sort of criminal. You hung there and slowly died of asphyxiation as your lungs were crushed by the weight of your own body.

That is what you are eating for your tea; an ancient method of torture and execution as your afternoon snack.

That is how much God loves us; that he himself would take the punishment that we deserve in order to have a relationship with us.
Jesus was no criminal – he’d committed no crime – yet he was sentenced to death.
We deserve that death.

For Easter this year we’ll be serving ‘Hot Electric Chair Buns’ or maybe cakes with an iced gallows on the top, that way they may do the job that they’re supposed to do – be a visual reminder of Jesus’ sacrifice for us. We might even pull a cracker or two.

Happy Christmas Everyone.