Is God like Santa?
Readings: John 1. 1-14, Hebrews 1. 1-4
I want to start if I may with an excerpt from a poem by Glen Scrivener. Full spoken word poem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFytqODSp7Q
‘They say there’s a big man, who lives far away, supposedly jolly but it’s hard to say. I’ve never seen him and neither have you, but the children believe and I s’pose that’ll do. He’s known as a loner with many a quirk, no time for a chat he’s embroiled in His work. He keeps to Himself for most of the year, I reckon we’re grateful he doesn’t appear. We send him requests for particular needs, but we never hear back, who knows if he heeds. We try to be good, give his arm a twist, to merit our place on his blessed little list. And maybe one day, if we do what we should, he’ll give us our things just so long as we’re good. I’ve had it to here, I’m calling his bluff, he’s a weird, moralistic dispenser of stuff.’
Now, neither I nor Glen are going after Santa here, Santa is certainly odd when you think about it, but actually, how often do we think of God like this? When you think of God are you thinking of Santa in the sky? A big bearded man in a far away place, ‘he see’s you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he’s watching and waiting to catch your next mistake’.
How do you picture God?
Christmas is a cry against a Santa Claus image of God, it declares an emphatic no to that vision of God. The God of the universe isn’t far off waiting to smite us; He’s here in the crib.
Those opening words of John’s Gospel are wonderfully poetic but a perhaps a tad confusing. This is John’s take on the Christmas story, no angels or shepherds, no Bethlehem or Mary. John skips over the local scale story told by Matthew and Luke and goes cosmic, right back to beginning. Before anything was: God. God existing as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. John here refers to the Son as the Word of God, there at the creation of all things.
But since then things have gone wrong haven’t they. We don’t have to look very hard to realise that the world as it stands now whilst still full of much that is good, is full of much that is not good. The world is not as it should be. And we can’t wash our hands of that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re not as we should be. Which means if God is like Santa, we’re all on the naughty list. We’re all getting coal in the morning.
But God isn’t like the caricature of Santa I began with. He’s not distant, not too busy for us, not measuring us up against a moral code to decide if we meet the requirements, because none of us do. God loves this world and He loves us, so he has come to put things right. As John writes ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’. God the Son surrenders the glory of heaven, steps down from the throne, leaves the place of perfect light and life and goodness and comes to earth. The all powerful creator of the universe becomes a helpless baby. If you look in the manger, you see the glory of God become human, God with us.
And he has come to put things right, whilst we and our world are not as we should be, whilst we are all on the naughty list, this God refuses to just give us coal and be done with it. God comes with grace, giving what we don’t deserve. He has come to save us, come to deal with our mess and brokenness and give us instead his perfection, his life.
On the cross he plunges all that is wrong with us and our world, all that we might call sin, he plunges it all down into death to leave it there. And having done so is raised to life, a life he invites us into, to share with him forever. Imagine for a moment, it’s like we and our whole universe were an out of control car skidding on the ice towards a cliff. As we careered towards certain destruction God didn’t stand idly by, He came and grabbed the wheel, pulled us into a sharp turn and set us back on course, up into life and light and joy. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.
God comes to us to put things right, becomes vulnerable and helpless for our sake. God the Son becomes God our brother. He enters into our human life with all its hardships and challenges, with all its messiness and difficulties. And in a beautiful exchange, in becoming human, in God entering our human life, humanity can enter into the life of God. To all who receive Him, He gives power to become the adopted children of God.
As we gather tonight, as we gaze upon that human family in the crib, Jesus born to Mary and Joseph, we are invited into the family of God. Not based on our merits, and on what we have done, but on God’s love and mercy and what he has done through Jesus.
Which means we can stop striving to be good enough, to earn our place in heaven, to work our way onto God’s good side and a place on his list. The 20th Century Swiss Theologian Karl Barth put it like this: ‘we have been toiling uphill, but, with the news of Christmas, of God become human, we are merrily cycling down’. We don’t have to work our way up to God, God comes down to us. Whoever we are, whatever we’ve done, God invites us into His family, not because we earned it, because we can’t, but because He wanted to, and through Jesus has made the way.
If you’re not sure about God this evening, is it because you’re picturing Him as a cosmic Santa? If you want to know what God is really like do what the writer to the Hebrews tells us. Look to Jesus, the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God. In Jesus we find a God who comes to us, who stoops from the glory of heaven to the messiness of the crib. Who stoops even lower at Easter to the cross, all out of love for you, all to bring you into the family of God.
Santa gives gifts and then goes away, he’s a fleeting visitor. Jesus is here to stop and to stay, here for all of life, not just one day. So do you want in? Do you want in on the family of God? He reaches out to you in the newborn hands of Jesus, in the nail scarred hands of Jesus. He is here for you, do you want him?
Amen.