The four words of Advent do more than remember Jesus coming into the world. They speak of what he brings. These are words filled with action and purpose.
The words are: Hope, Peace, Joy and Love. And they were carried into our world by Jesus. He calls his followers, today, to continue to carry them with us.
Sundays December 1, 8, 15 and 22.
This Christmas we will follow Matthew’s story.
Writing to a Jewish readership, Matthew endeavours to explain how Jesus is their long-anticipated Messiah. However, his arrival is nothing like they expected and indeed quite curious.
Yet we celebrate Christmas amid festivities that have become more and more commercialised and full of materialism. It is curious how the celebration of God emptying himself of what it meant to be God and becoming a human being (Philippians 2:7) has become an excuse for us to consume, spend and focus on ourselves. Such consumerism has very little to do with the birth of Christ or the celebration of Emmanuel – God with us.
Looking at some of the more curious aspects of the Christmas story as told by Matthew will hopefully help us to take our minds off shopping list and on to the things God has done for us. Being curious may just enable us to give less room to commercialism and materialism and more to the eternal. The curious just may help us ‘do’ Christmas differently this year.