Must be Jesus!

FYI, as I may have mentioned on Sunday, the Raffi Christmas album is one of my all time favourites.  I know, I know, it's probably only a function of when I grew up and it probably doesn't hold up at all, but just look at Raffi.

If your cockles aren't warmed by now, you'd better check your pulse, because you might be dead.

But yes, Raffi's Christmas album.  It was full of all the old classics, including 'Must be Santa.'  Here is the video, with hilariously misspelled lyrics for the song.  Make sure to keep watching until the reindeer are mentioned.  But yes, this is how to recognize Santa, by the length and colour of his beard, and by his reineys.  You know, that old chestnut.  But the unfortunate side effect is that although nobody mistakes Santa for anyone else, all sorts of other men are mistaken for Santa.  

Now this could also be said about Jesus.  You know what Jesus looks like, right?  

Who's got a beard that's short and brown?

Jesus' got a beard that's short and brown!

Who wears a prickly thorny crown?

Jesus wears a prickly thorny crown!

Beard that's brown, thorny crown, 

Must be Jesus, must be Jesus,

Must be Jesus, Jesus Christ.

Who's a white guy with baby blues?

Jesus is a white guy with baby blues!

Who gives to the people the Good News?

Jesus gives our people the Good News!

Beard that's brown, prickly crown

Baby blues, gives good news,

Must be Jesus, must be Jesus,

Must be Jesus, Jesus Christ!

Now, before you rail at me for my blasphemy, is it any less blasphemous than having an instantly identifiable picture of Jesus?  Something that you can look at and say 'yep, that's Jesus,' without any idea of what he actually looked like? That's why there are hundreds of images of Jesus in bagels or on cider bottles, even though nobody knows what he looked like.  He's never described in the Bible.  We have no photographs.  And yet we feels as though his look is so distinctive that we could identify him in a rust smear.

Now, here's what you need to know about this. That image of Jesus that you have in your head, you know the one.  Let's pretend for a moment that he did look like that.

 let's pretend that he looked exactly like that (protip, he probably didn't).  Let's imagine that this is what he looked like, so distinctive as to be instantly recognizable, different from everyone else.  Looking like Jesus.  But if he did look like this, then so did everyone else.  If you think that Jesus should have looked different, that he should have been set apart, more beautiful (which unfortunately, seems to equal more white, not cool guys), with a clearer complexion, whiter teeth, a more trimmed beard, whatever, than everyone else, then you've sort of missed the point of the incarnation.

When John speaks of Jesus in the reading we had on Sunday, he does so by saying 'among you stands one you do not know.'  It's a small detail, but it's pretty important, that Jesus fits in well enough to be not immediately recognized as the divine lamb of God, more beautiful than all the rest.  He looked like all the other guys.  For good reason.

He looks like everyone else because he's a real human being.  He's not just playing divine dressup.  He's a person.  He gets slivers in the carpentry shop, he occasionally gets the flu, or eats some bad dates.  He isn't set apart from everyone else, which is the whole point of him being incarnate.  And yet, and yet, at this time of the year, at a time of year in which we are more focused than ever on Jesus, we do a lot of looking at him.  He's in every manger scene, in every creche, he's there, in the stable, looking like a very sweet baby, and we all recognize him instantly.

But here's the thing. We need to realize that by looks, Jesus isn't distinctive. He doesn't look different than everyone else ,and that's sort of the point. He looks like the other people.  So if he's not immediately identfiable, if you can't sing the 'Must be Jesus' song about him, then how will you know him?

Well, we do so by listening to him. We do so by listening to what he says, which has always been at the centre of everything.  When the voice speaks from the cloud as it does at the transfiguration, it says 'this is my son, in whom I am well pleased.  Listen to him!'  It's funny, because at this time of the year, we do a lot of looking at Jesus, but not so much listening to him.  He's all over the place, we see little baby him everywhere, but we don't listen to his words as we ought to.  And that's why John the Baptist exists, and why we hear him in Advent. He came to be the voice crying out in the wilderness, to prepare the way of the Lord, to make his paths straight!  He came as the voice pointing to Christ, to tell us about the good news of Jesus. the Good News that this man was to take our sins upon himself, and die for us, and in doing so take away even the concept of death from us.

And this is a message the world still needs to hear. Even now, the world is preparing for a celebration that they think is about something else. And the more layers you place upon yourself, the more you think that you have to be perfect, the more difficult it is.  This time of year is depressing, where people who have very little go into debt to try to provide a party.  It could be that you've lost someone to death who was very close to you, and maybe this is the first Christmas without them.  Or the second. Or the twenty-third. It never really gets easier.  And if you're living in a world of enforced glee, of mandatory fun, then you can get really down on yourself really quickly, and feel the need to hide your humanity behind a festive holiday mask.

But the time for masks is Halloween.
The time for massive festive parties is New Years.
The time for family is Family Day.
Christmas is for Christ.

It's for Christ because at this time of year, when you are weak and broken down, when the world closes in on you and you realize that you're not has happy as you feel you ought to be, when it becomes clear that you can't afford Christmas cheer, and that you can't work your way out of things, that's when you need Christ more than ever.  Christmas isn't a time for you to do more, it's a time when things were done for you, which was always the magic of Christmas, right from when you were a child.

The voice of one crying out in the wilderness still needs to be heard.  You now have a responsibility to share that freedom to the captives, to share to those who are burdened by the weight of life and celebration, that Christ, the light of the world, has come to them.  They can rejoice even in their sorrow, not because they're going to host the perfect party, or find the perfect present, but because of Christ taking their guilt, and allowing them a new birth.

Merry Christmas everyone.