It's a Wonderful Life: Celebrate it!!
IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE:
CELEBRATE IT
December 24, 2023
How should we celebrate Christmas? Even in Charles Spurgeon’s day, the 19th century, Christmas was marked with company parties, gifts, carols, eggnog, large family meals, decorated trees and gatherings. These are good things in and of themselves and we are free to enjoy them.
The idea of celebrating the coming of Christ into our world is a good one. Some might complain about the commercialization of Christmas and the materialism that accompanies it. People tend to drink too much during this holiday season prompting Operation Red Nose and police checks. But despite these aberrations, Christians should celebrate Christmas. The question is: How?
How we celebrate depends on how we understand Christmas. For George Bailey, in the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas coincided with his renewed appreciation of the life God had given him.
After George had wished he had never been born, the angel Clarence showed him what his world would look like without him in it. Slowly George began to understand how blessed his life really was and he wanted it back.
This joyful exultation is in keeping with the joy of Advent. The Christ of God has been born, entering our world as a baby in a manger. There is an interesting parallel of sorts between this old movie and the even older story of the Nativity.
Luke 2:17-20 describes four responses of those who first heard the news that Christ had been born. Each is a different response that together tells us how to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus.
1. Proclaim it
A baby has been born. What do you do? You tell people about it. You proclaim it.
How many of us fathers went to the phone when our babies were born? We went with joy to tell our families and friends that our child was born. Did anyone say to you, “Big deal”? Or, “That’s fine for you, but I choose not to believe it”? No, everyone rejoiced with you. Very few people would reject your good news that a baby has been born. That’s why Christmas is relatively easy to accept.
Now it was to shepherds that the birth announcement was given. Shepherds were out in their fields at night tending the flock. Shepherds were the least likely witnesses in all of Judea. They were considered vagabonds and shifty. If a court case required a witness, no one called on a shepherd. They were uneducated, illiterate, and inconsequential.
Yet to these “vagrants” angels appeared and gave a message of cosmic significance. “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger,” (Lk 2:10-12).
How did they respond? They said, “Let’s go see…” Likely other babies were being born at that time (see Mt 2:16). But they had a clue: the baby will be in a barn or stable, lying in a manger. And they found him!
Something about this encounter with the infant Christ so impacted the men that they felt compelled to tell everyone they met. “When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about his child,” (2:17).
The shepherds needed no authority, no permission, and no special training to share what they had seen and heard. Spurgeon wrote, “I imagine if I saw a fire, and heard a poor woman scream at an upper window, and likely to be burned alive, if I should wheel the fire escape up to the window, and preserve her life, it would not be so very dreadful a matter though I might not belong to the regular Fire Brigade.” Do you need authority to proclaim that Christ is born? Spurgeon exhorted his congregation that anyone who hears the gospel and has drunk from the water of life is authorized to tell others about it. The shepherds very naturally shared what they had seen. You need not be a preacher to share this good news. In fact, it may be better that you are not.
Good news is for sharing. Proclaim it.
2. Wonder at it
“And all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them,” (2:18).
It is safe to say that the people were amazed in a low-level sense that the shepherds actually had something to share. We might be amazed in the same sense if the Winnipeg Jets made it to the playoffs this spring. That is not the kind of amazement that we speak of here.
Rather, we should think of “Holy Wonder” and a sense of awe that God would come near to us in such a manner. Many devout people who loved God yearned for God to come and rescue them from darkness and bondage. To think that God would come near as an infant was beyond their imagination.
Here we have “Immanuel” – “God with us.” Not just “God for us” or “God in heaven” – we have “God with us.”
As George Bailey wondered at the impact of his life on his family and community, we wonder in holy wonder that the life of God should be wrapped in flesh to become a man. Christmas is a time for Holy Wonder that the King of kings was born in a stable. What sort of king comes into the world like this?
We ought to be amazed at Christmastime. If we go through this Christmas season without pausing to wonder at the Nativity, then we have missed the reason we celebrate Christmas in the first place.
3. Ponder over it
Mary, the mother of Jesus, enters upon this scene of response with her own reaction to the birth of God’s Son. “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart,” (2:19).
The word “treasured” carries the idea of counting things up, like making a list so that you won’t forget anything. When you have been through a remarkable day and you don’t want to forget any part of it, you count the moments.
And the word “pondered” goes deeper than “wondering.” It means to take the events as you have laid them out in your memory and then go beneath the surface to try to understand what it all means and why it happened the way it did.
Mary, exhausted from giving birth, almost asleep, but recounting her visit to her relative Elizabeth, must have ruminated over the birth of John. Then the visit from Gabriel telling her that she would bear God’s Son; she must have pondered how God could have chosen her.
We are called to ponder, like Mary, the wonder of Immanuel. Some celebrities are best known from afar; not Jesus though, we are to get as close to him as possible. He is to be studied, adored and considered, loved and imitated. Mary held him in her arms; we hold him in our hearts.
Mary pondered over what God was doing in her life. I believe we are to ponder, like Mary, what God is doing in our lives. This is the time of the year for reflection, to look back and count the moments where God has shown himself to us. It is a time to ask God to reveal to us where we did not notice his work of salvation and redemption in our lives. And it is a time to look ahead to what God will yet do and ponder that as well.
4. Glorify God for it
The final verse tells us that the shepherds were profoundly changed by what they saw and heard. “The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told,” (2:20).
On the day before Christ was born, they were in the fields tending their sheep. Having seen the Christ-child they rushed off to the temple to worship God, right? No, the day after Christ was born, they went back to their sheep in the fields. Only now their hearts were filled with praise and glory to God.
James Montgomery Boice said that the word “glorify” come from “glory,” which originally meant “to have an opinion,” and ultimately to estimate the true worth of something. You “glorify” anything when you recognize its true value. To say that the shepherds “glorified” God means that when they saw Jesus in the manger and beheld the awesome revelation of God’s incarnation, they were overwhelmed with his power and grace, his loving-kindness and his wisdom. They just could not stop talking about what they had seen and heard.
What is amazing and truly transforming is where they glorified God. No, they did not go to the temple to worship God; they went back to where they came from. They went back to the tedious, thankless, monotonous job of looking after sheep. But now everything was different. Joy filled their hearts so that the mundane radiated with new light.
George Bailey returned to the same life he had left but came back with a new attitude. Consider that when his life was returned to him, he was filled with a new spirit that changed his view of things:
He was excited that his lip was bleeding…
He found the dead petals of his daughter’s flower…
His car was crashed into the tree (a symbol of his old life returning)…
He ran through Bedford Falls proclaiming Christmas, a town that had been his prison, which refused to release him – now he rejoiced in it…
He blessed the Building and Loan, the chain that kept him from leaving Bedford Falls…
He wished his enemy a Merry Christmas, startling old Mr. Potter…
When the bank examiner was at his home looking for the missing 8000 dollars, he exulted in it, “Isn’t it wonderful?” he said…
The sheriff was there to arrest him and that was wonderful too…
The old drafty house, a symbol of his poverty and failure, now appeared to him as an oasis…
Christmas changed everything for George. He returned to the same problems and issues that were there before, but now he realized what was before him. That is, I think, how the shepherds felt as they returned to their fields.
As we wonder and ponder that Jesus was born in Bethlehem – Glory to God – we too, return to our routines, to our jobs, our fields, our work, our homes - following our Christmas festivities. What we want to do though, is return with a glow in our hearts having revisited the incarnation of Christ, having beheld the manger scene in our hearts. Our Savior has been born to us. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Merry Christmas!
And that is what we mean when we say “Merry Christmas!” It is a celebration that God came near. When Christians say it, we proclaim that Christ is born to humankind. So proclaim it in the stores and on the streets and in your homes. This simple proclamation is a testimony to the world that Jesus is the Savior born to set the people free from sin. Merry Christmas!
Proclaim it!
Wonder at it!
Ponder over it!
Glorify God for it!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
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