Transcript excerpt:
And this morning, just to think a little bit about the Christmas season as we live through it again this year, what comes to my mind is how enigmatic Christmas is, how paradoxical it is, how contradictory Christmas is.
I looked up the word “paradox” knowing that it comes from two Greek words: doxa, which essentially means “a fact,” “a truth,” “an idea,” para, “alongside.” Paradox means “two truths laid alongside each other,” which are both realities, and yet are somewhat contradictory. One classic Old English definition would be this, that paradox is something seemingly absurd and yet true.
And there are some serious paradoxes around Christmas; it has a split personality for sure. There is Santa Claus, a mythical, supernaturally-empowered, fat elf who slides down chimneys, and whose entire verbal contribution to the world is “ho-ho-ho.” I’m not sure how he’s managed to have such a lasting impact. And juxtaposed to him is none other than the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is supernatural, the God-man whose words are profound and deep and eternal and life-giving. And somehow this culture is caught somewhere between those two very different characters. Mass confusion seems to exist: furious rushing everywhere, traffic madness, crowds; impossible schedules, while we all celebrate peace on earth, find very little of it, so that even suicide rates are at an all-year high at Christmas season.
Two thousand years ago one star lit the sky over the spot where the Lord was born; and now so many houses have lights, and so many lights shine in so many places. We’re almost drowning in lights around the Christmas season. And many stores are lit up, you know, places where you can go and buy what isn’t needed and won’t fit. There’s just a kind of Christmas chaos.
The first Christmas was a poor one: a manger, a stable. Christmas today is a display of wealth as millions of people spend billions of dollars to indulge in temporal things. First Christmas, wise men came to worship; and today, fools worldwide ignore the One the wise men worshiped. Santa Claus gives you what you want because you deserve it; Jesus Christ gives you what you need even though you don’t deserve it. Very different.
Read more: https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/81-17