The Christmas story we’ll tell and celebrate this week is the same story that’s been told for the past two-thousand years. Nothing has changed about it. And because nothing has changed, there’s an inherent danger presented to us—boredom.
You might be bored with that story right now. Even thinking ahead to going to a church service, listening to the same songs, hearing the same passage or passages of Scripture being read might be enough to make you wish you could just fast-forward through all that same old, same old.
But you don’t have to be bored with it, if you don’t want to. You can resist the boredom by reminding yourself of the actual story. This isn’t a rebellion against the Christmas or anything like that—I think we’re still free to enjoy all that fun. It’s a chance to remember where we came from and why Christmas has any meaning for us at all.
For thousands of years, God’s people had been struggling as they followed him. The struggle didn’t start with Moses, and it didn’t start with Abraham. Adam and Eve found that they struggled in the garden. This pattern continued through Abraham, through Moses, into the judges, kings, and prophets. God’s people had a hard time finding a consistent footing as they tried to follow keep in step with him.
The result was exile. First, a spiritual one, then a physical exile.
While reflecting on the human condition, the prophet Jeremiah said that, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV). The teacher in Ecclesiastes said that, “The hearts of people, moreover, are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts while they live” (Ecclesiastes 9:3, NIV). The prophet Isaiah, speaking a word of condemnation and warning over God’s people, made clear their fate if they continued in their folly as he said, “ ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes” (Isaiah 6:9-10, NIV).
If this wasn’t enough, God’s people continually found themselves “outside” of where and what they were made for. First, Adam and Eve were removed from the garden and prevented from returning. Next the new people of God were in slavery for 400-years in Egypt. Next, they were unable to find the promised land as they wandered the wilderness. Next, because of Moses’s disobedience—and the disobedience of an entire generation of Israelites—they were unable to finally enter the newly found promised land. From there, their exile continued as God’s people found themselves under judges and kings who treated them poorly, resulting in another exile, this time to Babylon.
Within this struggle, though, there was a hope laid out for God’s people. A hope that he would make all things new. A hope that this pattern of exile would finally end. Long before the apostle John wrote Revelation, the prophet Isaiah talked about a new heavens and a new earth. 2 Chronicles and the prophet Malachi both shared a similar hope of God doing something that he hadn’t done before—perhaps arriving to rule and reign as the true king.
After the last words of the Old Testament there were many, many years where the people waited. They knew what had been promised, and they held out hope for the promise, but it wasn’t always easy. They grew restless. They started to wonder if God was really going to do what he said he was going to do. Generation after generation would pass down this hope, reminding those who came after of what was promised. And then something miraculous happened.
Paul tells it like this:
Who [Jesus], being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11, NIV)
God stepped into this world in a way he had never done before. In the ancient past God was just a little bit removed from his people. Sure, he was walking with Adam and Eve in the garden, and he was going before them in the exodus, and he was present in the temple, and the prophets were his mouthpiece, but he was still unapproachable in some real sense. That is, until, he made himself nothing. God—the one uncreated being in the entire universe—became like those he created—you and me. He became a human being in the person of Jesus. He became what he was not, so you and I could be finally be what we were created to be—fully human.
Not only that, but as a human being he humbled himself—even to the point of death on a cross. God, himself, not only willingly stepped into humanity, but willingly stepped into death. Because of that he has been exalted above everyone and everything else. All honor and glory belongs to him.
This all happened because God became a human being. The cross, the resurrection, the ascension, the exaltation, the second coming, and the new heaven and new earth, are all a result of what happened on that first Christmas day.
How can we be bored with a story like that?
This story we’re a part of, this story that we get to tell and pass on to our kids, this story that makes everything else we believe in a reality is worth leaning into in a fresh way each year. We might be bored with doing the same things year after year, but let’s not confuse that with being bored about the God of the universe becoming a human being.
That was a miracle, and miracles are never boring.