I continue thinking about celebrating Christmas, and I wanted to wonder "out loud" about Christmas services. What is the point about coming together to celebrate Christmas? Or, better put, what do we think we are doing when we meet to remember the birth of our Savior? I imagine that, for many, simply remembering the birth of our Savior is point enough - which is certainly understandable. Just as we regularly remember the death of Christ when we partake in the Lord's table, so once a year the church has focused its attention on Christ's birth. So what about that event do we focus on? I have no doubt that there are as many different answers as churches, but I had a thought from a quote from William Willimon that I wanted to share.

I read the quote off of Michael Gorman's blog, and it is a short post, so I encourage you to read it here. I reproduce the first two sentences of the quote here: 

"I suggest that we are better givers than getters, not because we are generous people but because we are proud, arrogant people. The Christmas story—the one according to Luke not Dickens—is not about how blessed it is to be givers but about how essential it is to see ourselves as receivers."

Willimon argues that the Christmas season is about receiving - and that the Gospel accounts go to great lengths to show how radically supernatural the birth story is. We receive this child, not born of human means, but born of a virgin, not according to human understanding, but proclaimed by angels, not where we would expect, but where we are led by a star. Everything about the Christmas story is alien to our common sense. It is, in this sense, offensive to all of our sensibilities and ideologies, just as it was to theirs. In my mind, particularly with the familiarity of the Christmas story, we need to recover this emphasis. We need to understand ourselves, not as those who are secure on our own, but who are desperate receivers of this grace. It is only then that we can truly grasp what generosity truly is, as we bask in the overflow of God's infinite love sent as a child.

It is in this sense that we can and should celebrate the Christmas message all year long. The call to be "receivers" of Christ, to take the posture of reception, is to order our existence under the God who reigns. The Christmas season, and advent leading up to it, should be time to reflect specifically on the birth and expectation of Jesus - including our future expection - and should be the culmination of a year of reception.