If you're anything like me you roll into church twice a year, Easter and Christmas (with maybe a wedding or funeral thrown in for good measure at some point). I was raised Catholic, consider myself a Christian, and while Easter makes me think more about about whether or not I truly believe – that whole resurrection thing gets me every time – it's Christmas when I enjoy church the most. Everyone seems relaxed at Christmas mass, you've made it through another year, and it's summer and more likely than not you've got some time off ahead off you. Even if you're expecting the same old sermon you heard last year, the chance to belt out a few carols and catch up with a few neighbours and wish them peace is a fine thing.
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I attended the school carols service the other week, sang with gusto, saw a few friends I hadn't caught up with all term, it was a lovely night, despite being packed in shoulder-to-shoulder across the pews. Peace be with you, now move over.
Hoping that there's always a Christmas message to take home if I've made the effort to get to church, I was very glad I actually listened to the sermon from young associate chaplain Andrew Robinson. My son assures me Andrew is a cool dude, and any young man who can capture the ears and minds of young boys while talking about God must be a cool dude.
So rather than me ramble on about the meaning of Christmas, here's an abridged version of Andrew's sermon. His idea of the most important Christmas word is what hooked me, and I hope it touches a part of you as well. No matter what your religious views are, even if you have none at all, the idea of with is what Christmas should be all about.
Why is Christmas sometimes such a struggle?
The rhetoric around Christmas is great: generosity, peace on Earth, togetherness, yet so much of the time we just want to get it over with. It's a set of hoops to be jumped through, a whole lot of sticky tape and tinsel and flat batteries and cracked iPad screens and complaints.
But the funny thing is: Christmas has no shortage of good intentions. Does anyone ever think: I want to make Christmas as stressful and intricate as possible, maximising the disappointments and exacerbating family tensions?
No: Christmas is hard because we want it to be good. To be meaningful. To be a place of connection.
So what's going on?
In one of his Christmas sermons, Dr Sam Wells, then chaplain to Duke University, suggests that we need to remember 'the most important Christmas word' – with.
He reckons that part of the problem is that all the stuff we're doing for people at Christmas can get in the way of actually being with one other, and worse, can totally distract us from reconnecting with God who reveals himself to us at Christmas in this surprising way.
If Christmas is going to be a place of true connection, with each other and with God, it needs to be a time of with rather than just for. It is surprisingly easy in life to be so focused on doing things for that we never actually get to be with.
You can do for without a relationship, without communication. But it may not leave you with much. And the truth is, being with is often a lot harder.
This is such a tragedy, because the Christmas story is the story of God wanting to be with us. "The word became flesh and dwelt among us," as the first chapter of St John's gospel says.
At Christmas God comes to us in the most disarming, unbelievable way: as a child, born in scandalous circumstances in a back shed in a small town in a far-flung province of the Roman empire.
The heart of Christmas is a baby, the baby called "Immanuel" – God with us. God comes to be with us, and he calls us to be with one another, together, as his children.
Of course, with doesn't eclipse for. Jesus doesn't stay a baby: he grows up, he teaches, he heals, he comforts, he calls for justice for the oppressed, and at the climax of the story he dies for us and defeats death for us. These are things that we need God to do for us.
But the point of all that, the point of all that Jesus came to do and suffer was so that we could be with God and each other. All of our doing for others, in whatever way, needs to remember what it's all about, in the end: being with one another, together as God's children in God's good world.
My hope for all of us is that this Christmas might be one where we are reminded of God's bizarre but beautiful desire to be with us, and for that chance that gives us to truly be with one another.
May peace be with you all.
