I wonder whether you’ve ever asked yourself what it will be like to meet God?
It might be a little bit like this … (show matrix clip - the bit where Neo is taken by Trinity to meet Morpheus)
Now, for some people the idea of meeting God only fits if we’re talking about meeting him when we die.
But the whole point of Christmas is that you don’t have to wait until you die to meet God. Like Neo, you just have to wake up to reality. God came and lived on earth as a man in the person of Jesus. That’s what we are celebrating tonight.
By his Spirit, Jesus is with us now as we worship. We can know him personally in the here and now because of that.
When Neo met Morpheus in the Matrix, Morpheus said to him “Let me tell you why you’re here [complete quote]
Neo got some answers as a result of his encounter with Morpheus, but of course he had to go deeper to get the full story, and even that he doesn’t fully understand – but I’ll have to let you watch the film yourself to find out more.
And we can get some answers – perhaps answers about why we’re here tonight. What has brought you? A sense of tradition, of community? A sense of the spiritual heart of Christmas in the face of so much consumerism?
Maybe for some the reason has more to do with questions – will I still have a job next year, will I still have a house next month?
There is something wrong with the world, Morpheus was right about that. We have been tricked into thinking that everything will always be all right. It’s not malicious, but it is a natural consequence of secularism that people should forget about the fact that the world is broken. So a false world, of bright colourful advertisements for things you do not need but think you want, of celebrity fashions and gossip masquerading as culture, a world where football player’s wives get as much media coverage as politicians, and where television and the internet are how we learn what passes for the truth. We don’t live in a computer generated alternative universe, like the Matrix, but we do live in a world where the most powerful media voices get to decide what the truth is.
When Neo awakes after his life-changing encounter with Morpheus, he is greeted with the words “Welcome to the real world.”
That’s why I used that little clip at the beginning of this service. You might think that church is just one facet of life these days, but in fact this is the real world, people worshipping God together, celebrating the birth of his Son and sharing in the celebration meal he left us with. This is how it’s meant to be, not just at Christmas but all the time. This is the real world, a world where God and humanity come together, and where heaven breaks into earth.
So, where would you go to meet God? The shepherds and angels were led to a stable where a baby lay in a manger. Our church is much cleaner and neater than that first Christmas Eve. For a long time I’ve thought about bringing a bucket or two of manure in to authenticate the stable experience, but I don’t think the wardens would like it very much!
Still, a church is a good place to meet God – we call it “God’s house”, but that doesn’t mean he is only ever here. You may encounter him in the woods, the fields, by the kitchen sink or in the bath. You may even meet with God at the place of your deepest pain.
There is a book out at the moment that tells the fictional story of someone for whom that is the case. It’s called “The Shack”, and it is about a man who encounters God powerfully and supernaturally in the shack where the man’s daughter was murdered. And the encounters are no quite what you might expect.
A repeated phrase that God uses in “The shack” is “I’m not who you think I am”. I will let you read the book to get the details, but be ready for a challenge, for, while it is a fictional work, there are many things to challenge the way we feel about suffering, about how God the Trinity relate within themselves and supremely about the human habit of putting God in a box and not coping when He gets out of it and behaves in ways we aren’t expecting.
So, if you think God doesn’t care about human suffering, if you think God is remote and uninterested in your deepest needs, and especially if you think of God as a man with a long white beard, read “the shack” and find a pleasant and faith building surprise.
But then, at Christmas there are many ways in which God is saying “I’m not who you think I am.”
It is right that we celebrate the coming of God to earth as a human child, but not so right if we make him stay as a baby and forget about his adult life, teaching, death and resurrection.
When Jesus was born, people were longing for a King to rescue the Jews from years of oppression and occupation. That’s how they were reading Isaiah’s prophecy – as a purely political messiah, and as royalty. So just by being born in poverty and being laid in a manger, Christ is already saying “I’m not who you think I am”.
Yet there is a tendency to think that is all he is, the Christ-child, meek and mild, in the manger at Christmas, then put back in the attic for the rest of the year, for the rest of our lives.
But of course the New Testament doesn’t stop after the three wise men go home. So if you only think of Jesus as a baby at Christmas, his message for you today is “I’m not who you think I am”.
For the angels said to the shepherds that a Saviour had been born, so even at the heart of the Christmas message, Easter is there. Even as his birth was announced, Jesus’ death gets a look in. The vulnerable baby born in poverty grew into a wise and charismatic teacher, a worker of miracles and healings, a thorn in the side of the Roman authorities. In his three short years of ministry Jesus said and did things that would turn the world upside down – which is in fact the right way up, from God’s point of view. His sacrificial death upon the cross has been called the focal point of history, and it was literally epoch-making in its significance.
Because Jesus died, the sin and wrongdoing that plagues human relationships has been finally defeated. Because of the cross of Christ, no one need remain cut off from God or their neighbour, but all who believe in him are welcomed into the family.
But the dead Christ on the cross is not the end of the story either; if you can only picture Jesus as a dead body in art or jewellery, today he is also saying to you, “I’m not who you think I am”.
Because of course he didn’t stay dead; No event in history has spawned more words of writing or brush strokes of art than the resurrection of Jesus. His vanquishing of death itself has opened the gates of heaven to all believers. His resurrection paves the way for the resurrection of all God’s people in the new creation.
So it’s not just a story of life and death, it’s more important than that; this celebration we start tonight, around a manger in a small town in the Middle East, has eternal and cosmic consequences for the whole world.
Because when we say we believe in Jesus, we are not saying just that we believe he did walk the earth 2000 years ago and did say and do the things we read about in the Bible and sing about in hymns and carols. We’re not just giving our assent to a historical figure.
So if you can only think about Jesus as a character from the past, from history, tonight he is saying to you “I’m not who you think I am”, because as I said at the start of this sermon, Jesus is here with us now by his Spirit; Christianity is a relationship with God in Christ, a relationship with a real person who lived and died and rose again; a relationship based on trust, fed by prayer and worship, and a relationship that transforms your life.
That is what God gave us at Christmas and its what’s on offer here tonight. If you’ve never taken that step of faith, never really trusted in or reached out to the risen, living Christ who is reaching out to you now, but you want to receive the best Christmas present of all, then bring your order of service up to the rail at communion, and we will pray with you. If you still have more questions, there are leaflets at the back of church called “why Christmas?” which will help you so do please take one home with you.
Now when Mac met God in the shack it changed his life, and when Neo met Morpheus at the beginning of the Matrix it would change his life. It would not make it easier, but it would make it into a truly worthwhile adventure; that is a good summary of what it means to meet God in Christ, which is why I wanted to show that clip tonight, and why I return to it now as we close.
Morpheus said, “Let me tell you why you’re here …”
I can’t tell you all why you’re here tonight, but I can tell that this community has a spiritual hunger that can only be satisfied in knowing Christ fully; the baby in a manger that grew to be a man who would die and rise again to save humanity from our sins. The God who became a man so that we could live with God for eternity;
Welcome to the real world
Let’s pray.
