In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to be children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. John 1:1-5; 10-14 (NRSV).
The story of Christmas is a story of miracles. The Gospels tell of the stunning announcement to Mary that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bring forth the Son who would be the Savior of the world. Luke tells of angelic hosts singing ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ as they announced the arrival of the miracle child. Indeed, the entire Christmas event is from start to finish a supernatural one. The Gospel accounts of the Nativity make this clear, but it is John who proclaims it most strikingly. For while Matthew and Luke record the details of what happened, John strikes at the heart of the matter: the mind-boggling reality that Christmas is about nothing less than God becoming human. The author of creation stepped into his story, became one of the characters, that each of our stories might be enriched by his. John, more than any Gospel writer, was able to capture the wonder of the event, as he wrote of how the Word, God himself, became flesh and dwelled among us.
Where did he ever find the words? Surely, they were God-breathed, but we shouldn’t miss John’s own sense of wonder. John was, apparently, the kind of man who wondered about things. His was not a matter-of-fact intellect; his was the kind that could soar into the heavens and grasp starlight. In the mystical prologue to his Gospel, he writes of believing in the name of Jesus, and believing seems to have been what John was all about. It is the stated purpose of his Gospel: ‘these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31). Over and over, this theme is repeated. ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe‘ (20:20). ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him, might not perish but have eternal life’ (3:16). Yes, John was a believer. Not, mind you, the gullible sort who accepts every cock-eyed story that comes down the pike, but the kind who looks at the world with critical yet wondering eyes, thinks deeply, and allows his heart to guide him. Nor was he the kind of believer who simply gives a vague intellectual assent to some propositional truth. No, John was a BELIEVER – the kind who, once his heart was in line with the subject of belief, was willing to believe with the entirety of his being. The kind who would not simply believe a story, but would take his place in the story, and live it from his heart.
Tragically, that kind of belief is a rare commodity these days. Ours is a world that has lost its sense of wonder. We live in times where to believe in anything is considered childish. We are conditioned to doubt what can’t be seen, heard, touched, or tested. Science, once a tool used by thinking men and women who sought to understand and marvel at God’s creation, is often wielded by skeptical reductionists who break things down to their simplest parts in order to dismiss the wonder of the whole. Unlike the ancients, starlight holds no mystery for us (if you can even see it that is – light pollution has blinded us to its wonder). We look at panoramic mountain vistas and talk about plate tectonics. True enough, children still have a sense of wonder, Christmas morning is ample evidence of that, but they too are quickly conditioned to lose it in favor of a more ‘rational’ way of looking at things. And as far as becoming part of a story bigger than us, well, who has time for that? Our treadmill lifestyles keep us busy and preoccupied with the mundane and the trivial. We live at such a hectic pace that we no longer have time to take Ferris Bueller’s advice to stop to look around once in a while, let alone to become part of a greater story.
And so we lose out. We lose out on living with a sense of wonder, and we lose out on living a life of meaning. The beloved apostle John would only have wept, for as Albert Einstein said, ‘the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the true source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’
The tragedy, I fear, is that there may be some reading this to whom such a quote applies (if so, I thank you for making it this far, and hope you will keep going). You want to believe, you wish you could become part of a bigger story, in fact, that may be the very reason you are visiting this blog: to have belief rekindled. But having come of age in a world without wonder, such a thing seems impossible at best and ludicrous at worst.
But friend, it’s Christmas, and Christmas is our chance to regain a sense of wonder. The Nativity story takes place in a time when people, in a sense, lived on the verge of disbelief. They lived under the brutal hand of the Roman Empire, and God had seemingly been silent for centuries. The age-old longing for the Messiah who would deliver Israel had grown a bit thin, and many at the time simply accepted that things would never change, at least not during their lifetimes. But then the light of Christmas broke through. Zechariah and Elizabeth discovered they would have a son in their old age. Mary received the news that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit. Shepherds, living at the margins of society, were invited by angels to celebrate the Messiah’s birth. Wise men from the East, astrologers who didn’t really know Israel’s God, trusted in starlight to guide them, and found the place where life could begin again. All of these people had been struck by the light of Christmas, and all became believers. All became part of a story bigger than themselves.
Wouldn’t you like to believe like that? To wonder again, and become a part of something big?
You can.
Like many of you, at this time of year I read and watch many classic Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol; A Charlie Brown Christmas; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Elf. And of course, The Polar Express, the Robert Zemeckis film based on the classic Chris Van Allsburg book. That too has become a classic in my household. My daughter insists on watching it multiple times every year. You may be familiar with the story, but to recap, it is the story of a boy who has lost his ability to believe in Santa, who nonetheless takes a magical journey by train to the North Pole, where he discovers a remarkable truth: ‘Sometimes seeing is believing; and sometimes, the most real things in the world are the things you can’t see.’
There is a scene in the movie that really gets to me. The boy, standing at the center square at the North Pole alongside Elves and other children, watches the celebration begin as Santa strides forth to take the reins of his sleigh and begin his annual Christmas ride. Alas, the boy can’t see Santa because of the crowd. The reindeer go wild, and the chain of bells that links them together jingles with a sound that the other children adore. But the boy, who still struggles to believe, can’t hear them. Suddenly, one of the bells breaks from its string and bounces to his feet. He picks it up, almost with tears in his eyes, and begins to repeat, ‘I believe, I believe, I believe.’ And as he does, he hears the bell. Suddenly, Santa appears next to him and asks, ‘What did you say?’ and with eyes full of wonder, the boy says, ‘I believe.’ Santa goes on to give the bell to the boy as the ‘first gift of Christmas,’ and explains, with words that tell us clearly that The Polar Express really isn’t about Santa Claus, ‘This bell is a wonderful symbol of the spirit of Christmas, as am I. The true spirit of Christmas lives in your heart.’ You see, the bell represents the boy’s newfound faith, his renewed sense of wonder, his recaptured ability to believe. It represents that sense of wonder we long for, that ability to become part of something bigger than ourselves. That sense of wonder the world tries to take from us, but deep down, never fully goes away.
I love the way the story ends. The boy, having returned home, discovers that only he and his little sister can hear the bell. His parents, having been dulled and worn down by the cares of the world, have lost their ability to believe. And so, with the boy jingling the bell and listening to it with his renewed sense of wonder, a voice – the voice of the boy, now an old man, says something important: ‘At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.’
So here’s the question: does the bell ring for you? When you hear John’s words of indescribable mystery, or the story of the shepherd and the angels, or when you listen to the songs of Christmas, doesn’t your heart just ache to believe? How wonderful then, that we have something to believe in. How wonderful that there really is a first gift of Christmas, and it isn’t a bell from Santa’s Sleigh. It is Jesus, the Christ, the Word made flesh, God with us, come to teach us how to live and love, to infuse us with wonder, and to make our lives part of the remarkable story he is telling.
For those who long for something to fan the flames of faith, who ache to fill the hole in their heart, who hope to take Christmas magic back from a world that has virtually dug its grave, who yearn for a story to believe in – let the words from the theme song to The Polar Express, words that could well have been written by John himself, speak to your soul:
Believe in what your heart is saying, hear the melody that’s playing,
There’s no time to waste, there’s so much to celebrate.
Believe in what you feel inside and give your dreams the wings to fly.
You have everything you need. If you just believe.
Under Christ’s Mercy,
Pastor Brent