A couple of weeks ago I volunteered to share on Advent at my place of work. As I studied the passage where Elizabeth greets Mary, I was reminded that the story of the birth of God is not a nice story. We have sanitised it beyond belief – literally. We sing carols like Away in a Manger with lines like ‘no crying he makes’. Really? He’s a baby for goodness’ sake. Babies cry. Don’t get me wrong; Away in a Manger is a beautiful carol but some of it betrays the smelly, shocking, subversive story of the birth of the Saviour.

A colleague of mine has recently spoken about Mary becoming pregnant and the dread she must have been feeling, thinking ‘how do I tell Joseph about this?!’

She probably ran off to her cousin Elizabeth with mixed feelings. She would have had the typical joy of being an expectant mother, but probably more so the dread of how she would explain this to everyone.

I reckon the scene in the picture opposite wouldn’t have been when they first saw each other. If this was a photo, it would have been taken well after Elizabeth had comforted Mary with her sense of joy at the whole occasion. Mary wouldn’t have been smiling much when she first turned up to see Elizabeth.

When we look in a bit more depth at passages like this, we soon see that the whole Christmas story speaks of scandal. As I mentioned, this is not a nice story. The images we have of the nativity are of gentle baby Jesus in the manger with fluffy farm animals gathered around. But consider the story. An unmarried young woman, a virgin, gets pregnant. And then we have the story of her cousin, an older woman, known as being childless. The Jewish culture of the time regarded being childless as a misfortune; it showed that you were cut off from God, and it was therefore grounds for divorce.

Despite all this, we have the joyful outburst from Elizabeth, followed by the even more amazing cry from Mary, known as the Magnificat. Their response was quite different from that of their menfolk. Joseph must have been thinking, ‘what do I do with Mary, now that she’s pregnant?’, and Zachariah was quite literally struck dumb at the news of Elizabeth’s pregnancy. Us blokes tend to be more skeptical than our women and we can learn alot from them.

So, it is into this setting of scandal, disbelief and unspeakable joy, that we have the birth of God. Born in a horse’s trough because there was no room at the inn – rejected from the day he was born. Some years ago, Joan Osbourne asked the haunting question, ‘What if God was one of us?’. She was dead right in her lyrics – ‘just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus trying to make his way home…nobody calling on the phone’. The God who is rejected and crucified by a brutal Roman regime is the God who is resurrected and defeats the powers of evil to establish his kingdom – creation reborn. This is what we celebrate at Christmas.

J.R. Briggs has written a very thoughtful and practical piece on avoiding the seduction of consumerism at Christmas. I don’t think we can get enough of this sort of advice. Anything to keep us alert to the real reason for the season.

There’s some great stuff out there on the web if you’re tired of the consumerist madness that characterises this time of the year we call the ‘silly season’. I recently came across the website of a group called Advent Conspiracy. They are a group of concerned pastors in the US who want to take us back to what Christmas is really about – the birth of the Prince of Peace, the One who gave himself for all. I love their logo on the left. Such a prophetic message, showing a shopper with a trolly full of goods coming face to face with one of the 3 wise men, come to worship the King. The Advent Conspiracy movement is catching on, as you can see from a map on their website showing others who are doing what they can to celebrate Jesus at Christmas. Here’s what they say about themselves:

The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

Welcome to Advent Conspiracy.

They want to take us back to giving in the real sense, back to relationship and love. The slogan at the bottom of their website is quite brilliant. It says ‘give presence’. This clip will give you more of an idea of what they’re about:

I feel inspired when I hear about groups like this, people who want to steal Christmas back from the ‘Grinches’ who would have us believe that it’s all about how much you can buy. A Galaxy survey in 2008 showed that

“Gen Y[ers]…would spend an average of $245 on their partners, $264 on a child, $65 on a friend and $220 on themselves [and] other Australians said they would spend $189 on their partner, $196 on a child, $35 on a friend and $107 on themselves.”

The same would be true this year, and maybe even more so as business confidence is on the rise again.

I love Christmas. I love it because, despite our addiction to stuff, it gives me hope that there is a better way, a more excellent way, as the apostle Paul put it. The way of love inspires me to subvert what Christmas has become and try to live in a way that honours the babe in a manger who grew up to walk and talk the way of the cross, and then the way of resurrection, the life that is truly life.

My wife and I recently saw the movie, What Would Jesus Buy? It’s a brilliant spoof of all that Christmas has become for millions of people trapped in the shopping frenzy that is the silly season. The film follows Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir throughout the United States as they try to help consumers open their eyes to the madness that they are participating in every December.

One of the scenes that captured me the most in this movie was when the choir would roll up to the front door of unsuspecting families and start singing their carols. How nice you might say, until you heard the brilliantly farcical take on some well known lyrics. Take their version of Joy to the World:

“Joy to the World!

In the Form of Goods!

Consume! Consume! Consume!

Bright Plastics This and That’s!

For Screaming Little Brats!

Take the SUV to the Mall

Take the SUV to the Mall”

The unfortunate truth is that these words are a more accurate description of Christmas for most Australians than the traditional lyrics of this beautiful carol.

I’m not even sure if Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir claim to be Christians but they sure get the message across that we have done something terrible to this wonderful time of year when it is all about clamouring all over the person in front of you to get that special bargain.

What Would Jesus Buy? shows how far we have digressed from, not only what Christmas is all about, but also the origins of Santa Claus, or Saint Nicholas. How ironic it is that Saint Nicholas, a young man raised by Christian parents in the 3^rd century in what is now Turkey, was known for taking literally Jesus’ words to “sell all you have and give the money to the poor”. It is documented that

“Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist the needy, the sick, and the suffering. He dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children”.

Many centuries later, the memory of Saint Nicholas and his beautiful spirit is as unfamiliar as snow in an Australian summer. The fact is that the majority of parents in this country now dread Christmas because of the stress it creates in terms of what on earth to buy the kids this year.

How different all this is to the God who came as a babe in a manger, relegated to a smelly stable out the back because there was no room for his parents at the inn. At this time of year we celebrate a God who came as a person, a God who made the ultimate sacrifice to involve himself in the poverty and oppression of what is life for much of this planet’s population. As my pastor pointed out this week, from the time Jesus was born he was hunted. Forced to flee as a refugee to a foreign land, resulting in the deaths of all boys in the Bethlehem region aged under 2 years, Jesus’ days were numbered from a very young age.

Christmas for so many is a painful time, and for many others it is a joyful time, and for others still it is a time of stress they could well do without. If it is a painful time for you, then remember the One who came to stand beside you in your pain, the One who understands what it is to be rejected, to have nothing, and to be told he doesn’t belong in his own neighbourhood. If Christmas is a joyful time for you, then thank the One who gave all he had to come and eat at table with us, to offer us grace upon grace, even when, no, especially when, that is the very thing we do not deserve. And if you can’t wait for Christmas to be over so you can relax, then allow yourself to be set free by giving yourself this Christmas. May your gift be in the form of love and community, and gifts that have meaning.  Your gifts may be in the form of a goat or literacy skills through TEAR, World Vision or a number of other aid organisations. The options are endless, and you may just find that you are giving to Jesus himself. May you have a meaningful Christmas, filled with the Spirit of the Christ who gives to all without measure.

In Australia this Christmas, we spent $1billion on unwanted presents. This further illustrates our society’s addiction to buying presents just for the heck of it at Christmas. As usual, the Murdoch press encourages people to have a whinge by prompting readers to tell them all about any shocker Christmas gifts they received. Thankfully only a couple of people have responded at the time of writing this post, and one of those was thankful for what they received.

It’s interesting that while we have returned so many presents, Boxing Day sales have been booming. One of the presents I received was Mark Sayers’ brilliant book, The Trouble with Paris. In this book, Sayers talks about ‘hyper-reality’ and the fact that, living in a consumerist society, we now believe the marketers who say that that next item is going to solve all our problems, and that retail therapy is all the panacea we need when we’re having a bad day.

This financial crisis is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the church to make a very loud statement about the failures and the lies of the promises of consumerism. In a society that values ‘having’ Jesus says that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions. In a society that values image and individualism, Jesus asks what will it profit you if you gain the whole world but lose your self in the process? It also goes back further than that, to the prophet Samuel when God reminds him that people look at the externals but God looks at the heart. Nothing has changed except that which we worship. The void in the human heart needs to be filled. Where our treasure is there will our heart be also.

Will the church take up the challenge to proclaim the good news of Jesus in these times of turmoil for so many? Many people will be disillusioned by these times, not least many in the church who have bought the message of health, wealth and prosperity. Now is the time for the church to be the prophetic, counter-cultural community that so distinguished itself in the 1st century. Jesus’ message is good news indeed for he comes to free us from our slavery to stuff so we are no longer conformed to the pattern of this world but are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

I’ve been thinking about what Christmas holds in store this year – and by ‘store’ I don’t mean Myers! But isn’t that just what Christmas has become? Every year we hear the plea from those of us inclined to a religious/spiritual view of life to bring Christ back into Christmas. My hope is that this Christmas, as the world goes through financial turmoil, we may know again that what we celebrate does not have to be more presents, that life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions.

This Christmas many people the world over are suffering, and this time it isn’t just in the developing world. The global financial situation has meant that many will come to this Christmas having to tell their children that mum or dad no longer has a job and therefore we can’t afford as many presents this year. If that is you, then this Christmas can be more meaningful than ever. Because despite the consumerist madness that still lures us, despite its clear failures, and despite the fact that with interest rate cuts and government bailouts, we are being told to spend up big, the truth is that Christmas is actually much bigger than that. This is a time when another One who suffered, the Suffering Servant himself, came into the world to relate to us in our human condition. This is a God who knows what we are going through, because he has been through it himself. This is a God who immersed himself in our world-weary lives, rolled up his sleeves and got himself dirty.

Christmas doesn’t have to be merry to be meaningful. So it was with the Christ-child. Born to an unmarried teenager in an occupied third world country, his birth was first announced to simple labourers who were herding someone else’s sheep. Jesus was associated with suffering from the beginning of his life to the end. The Old Testament foreshadows him as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. As we remember the genocide in the Congo we remember that Jesus too was the target of genocide. As we remember refugees fleeing wars for a foreign land, we remember that Jesus too was forced to flee as a refugee to Egypt. When we remember the despised and rejected ones in our own society, we remember that Jesus too was despised and rejected by his own people. And when we remember ourselves, with less money and more job insecurity, we remember that Jesus said blessed are you who mourn for you will be comforted.

The Prince of Peace came so that God’s kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven. To a world of suffering he offers hope, and to our troubled hearts he offers peace. May you know the peace of Christ this Christmas, and may he give you the strength you need to see hope in our troubled land.

As another Christmas rolls around and the consumerist madness hots up again, chocolate will be high up on the consumption list. The Don’t Trade Lives campaign has created a new call with the title, “Big Chocolate, Just Say: YES!”

To date, global chocolate manufacturers have failed to meet their own undertakings to eradicate child labour from the industry. As a result, the Confectionery Manufacturers of Australasia are unable to guarantee that chocolate consumed in Australia is free of child labour.

A new clip on the chocolate issue has been created a new clip on the chocolate issue. Check it out below and let it inform your Christmas chocolate purchases.

[youtube=http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=nVo9Gn4TPZk]