TRISTAN SHERWIN

As per my previous post (where I shared my brief message from this year’s carol service), here’s my notes from last year’s (2021) Metro Christian Centre Carol Service.

---

‘All this happened to fulfil the Lord’s message through his prophet: “Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and he will be called Immanuel (meaning, God is with us).”’

Matthew 1:22-23 (NLT)

CRACKERS

Christmas day is less than a week away.

Children are getting excited about opening up their presents. Adults are getting excited about the afternoon nap they get to enjoy.

Maybe I’m just weird (and I’m fine with that), but one of my favourite parts of Christmas Day is when I get to pull a Christmas Cracker.

You get some strange things in crackers nowadays, like nail clippers and tweezers, bottle openers and cookie cutters, and even a very large paper clip!

I must admit, though, the mini set of screwdrivers do come in handy.

Things were different when I was a kid. Back then, pulling a cracker meant you had the chance to win a fake plastic moustache, or a flat toy car, or (if you were unfortunate) something called a ‘magic calculator.’

But the best thing—the absolute best thing, the one thing everyone wanted—was a fish.

Not a normal fish, of course. That would be cruel! This was a thin piece of cellophane in the shape of a fish. It required no assembly or batteries. All you needed to do was place the fish on the open palm of your hand and the way it curled up would tell everyone your current mood.

It was great fun… until it started arguments. People don’t like being told that they are ‘resentful’, ‘jealous’, ‘false’, or even that they ‘were in love’, especially when it isn’t true!

I grew up with five brothers—having a plastic fish announce you were in love around the dinner table wasn’t the best moment…

After many wrong predictions (and the many arguments that erupted), the magic fish usually found itself perishing by candlelight.

It was just a plastic fish; what could it know about what it meant to be human and to face the things we had to face. Yet, there we would be, every Christmas, messing with a piece of cellophane. Maybe it was just for a laugh. But could it be that maybe, if we’re honest, we were, in some way, seeking to understand ourselves.

More than this, maybe we were seeking to be understood?

I believe we are all on that journey: Searching to be understood, searching for expressions that recognise what is going on inside of us.

As one of my favourite songs says, ‘I need to hear some sounds that recognise the pain in me’ (Bittersweet Symphony, The Verve)

GOD WITH US

This evening’s carol service has exposed us to many strange sounds. Through the songs we have sung and the words that have been read, we’ve been hearing about the birth of Jesus.

All births are wonderful! If we want to understand something about the human condition, about how valuable, but also how vulnerable each of us are, then births are a great place to look.

However, in what we’ve been hearing tonight, there is something extra wonderful with this particular birth. There is the extraordinary sound that this child was Immanuel, ‘God with us’. That the Mighty God, the Wonderful Counsellor, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace becomes human, and shares in the human experience with us.

Maybe we feel that God— if God does exist—is just some distant, far off, unconcerned character. That God has no clue about us, what we have been through, or what we’re currently going facing. Maybe we feel that the plastic fish has a better chance of understanding us than God.

Yet, according to this story, God is with us: God knows us. God grasps the wonder and murkiness of the human experience because God has lived it. Jesus knew joy and hardship, he knew laugher and deep sorrow, he knew friendship. He also knew isolation, abandonment and suffering.

If we are seeking to be understood, then God knows us, each of us. In Jesus, there is no distant God. In Jesus, God places himself into the open palms of humanity, and reveals to us that God is with us, that God loves us, that God wants to help us, restore us and rescue us.

It’s a remarkable thing to consider, that God comes as a child, that God became vulnerable and helpless, and puts himself in the hands of humanity. It’s an act that is loaded with divine expectancy—God is asking us, ‘What will you do with me?’

Jesus’ willingness to be vulnerable, to lay himself open to us and await our verdict, isn’t just present at his birth. Jesus’ whole life, his death, and his resurrection, they all ask this same question: ‘What will you do with me?’

This Christmas, I want you to understand that God has placed himself, as a gift of grace, into your hand.  The gift of life itself has come to you, to us, in the person of Jesus Christ. And I would like to invite you to know, in Jesus, this God who knows you. Will you take a step in exploring this wonderful gift?