Christmas is the central time for celebration within our community Celebration is what Christmas is about. All normal activities cease on Christmas Eve and are on hold in the week following Christmas day. It is the major gift giving time of the year and a huge amount of money is spent at Christmas time. The Australian Retailer’s Association estimates that $30 billion will be spent on Christmas this year. I don’t think there is any doubt that Christmas is the central celebration time of our society.

The question is: `What do we celebrate?` And here there is confusion – both within the community generally and within the Christian community.

(1) It is first of all a gift giving celebration – a time for buying and giving. Given the amount of commercial activity at this time of the year, it can hardly be denied. Gift giving is central to the celebration of Christmas. And there is nothing wrong with this! In our self-seeking, highly individualistic `what’s in it for me` society, it makes a pleasant change to be thinking of others. I have no problem with gift giving. For many it is central to the celebrating of Christmas.

(2) Connected with this is the second aspect of celebrating Christmas – the mythology of a man with a long white beard, a reindeer called Rudolph, and a sleigh that travels through the skies. Again it can hardly be denied that Santa Claus is central to the celebration of Christmas. And once again I don’t have too many problems with this. It pretty harmless mythology. We have far worse in our society, the myth, for example, that violence is an effective way of changing behaviour. We are now saturated in this myth. The mythology of Father Christmas is welcome relief.
Gift giving and Father Christmas are two aspects of celebrating Christmas.

(3) The family is another reason for celebration. Christmas is seen as a time for celebrating the family – even if it is become decreasingly so. Family life is disintegrating at an alarming rate. The family has become for many a source of tension. One in five families is without a father and less than 50% of marriages stay together. It is a sad fact too that family violence peaks at Christmas time. Many people do, however, see Christmas as a time for celebrating the family.

(4) Others see it as a time for celebrating the birth of Jesus - the celebration of the birth of the baby Jesus. To celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus may be appropriate for primary school children but to celebrate Jesus` birthday as one amongst billions is to completely miss the point – as does an excessive concentration on the mythology concerning Jesus at the time of his birth: shepherds in the fields, angels in the heavens, conception without sex, stables and hay, stars in the sky and wise men on camels. And once again I have no great problems with this mythology. We need mythology and metaphor. It is the way we explain the inexplicable. We need to remember, however, that the earliest and most authoritative gospel of Mark has no birth stories in it. The later gospels of Matthew and Luke introduced them as a way of emphasising and explaining the significance of Jesus. I have no great problems with singing about heavenly hosts and Jesus coming down to earth from heaven. The emphasis on mythology does tend, however, to confuse the real reason why we celebrate Christmas.

What then do we really celebrate at Christmas time? If it is more than gift giving, and Father Christmas and the family and the birth of a child; if it is more than angels and shepherds and stables, what in essence do we celebrate at Christmas?

It is the emergence of a new world order in Jesus of Nazareth – a way of life very different to what we know as life today. What we know as life today is a pale shadow of what Jesus calls `life in all its fullness`. This is the essential Christmas message, this is what we celebrate – the emergence in Jesus of Nazareth of a new world order.

Let me illustrate by reference to global warming, on which subject I have been more than once misquoted. I am not against changing light globes and re-cycling and riding bicycles. Australia is the greatest polluter per capita in the world and needs to do something about it. The point that I am continually making is that if we think we are going to make a difference to global warming in this way we are fooling ourselves. It is fiddling while the earth burns. We need a new world order where people and nations co-operate instead of compete. The fact is that we will survive together or sink together. We need a new world order where nationalism is subservient to common purpose, where the welfare of all is the over riding goal rather than obscene wealth for the few. We need a new world order to survive – and if we think that politicians will inaugurate this with a piddling 5% target for emissions trading, the Church says today – think again!

A politician said last week that climate change is best tackled from a position of economic strength. What absolute nonsense! It is our so called economic strength that is the cause of the problem. God help us if we rely on such politicians to safeguard the world for our children’s children. We really do need a new world order, a new approach to life, a new way of looking at life.

We see the same thing in the financial crisis where we witness the gross fraud of public money being diverted to prop up banks and commercial institutions. Public money is being used to keep merchant bankers flying in the private jets and living in luxury. Pigeon sellers in the temple courts are small time operators compared with these guys! And if we think that we are going to solve the financial crisis by spending more at Christmas we are fooling ourselves. It needs a new world order.

The present financial crisis may be, as some would suggest, simply a glitch in the system . I am more inclined to agree with the Nobel Peace Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz who says that `the credit crisis is to free market capitalism what the fall of the Berlin wall was to communism.` For a striking statement, that is only exceeded by Warren Buffet’s comment. `You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out – and what we are witnessing today is not a pretty sight!`

If we think it is a case of back to business as usual with a credit fuelled society living beyond its means (and that is what the credit crisis is); if we think we can solve our problems by splashing money about and consuming more, we are fooling ourselves. It needs a whole new approach to life, a new world order, not the doing more of what is not working. Albert Einstein was right when he said that `no problem is solved by the consciousness that created it` – and the cost of our present practices is going to be enormous both with respect to the earth on which we live and the society we have created.

We really do need a new world order; a new world order where people are respected and loved as persons of equal worth; a new world order centred on the common good and a common God – and by God I do not mean some old guy up in the sky. I mean the life force within and among us seeking to bring love and peace and fullness of life to us and the world, the life force, the evolutionary impulse that inaugurated in Jesus of Nazareth a new world order.

And that’s all that really needs to be said today. That’s the central thing to celebrate today – the new world order inaugurated in Jesus of Nazareth. Our task for the next twelve months is to work out the implications of it.

And so, I now invite you to sing what might be called the ultimate Christmas carol, with one of its verses ending with the words `The hope and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.` It uses also the word Immanuel – a Hebrew word meaning `God with us` – a word that we can all use with equanimity. If God is the life force within and among us seeking to bring fullness of life to us and the world, if God is the evolutionary impulse inviting us to fullness of life, then God is indeed with us in Jesus of Nazareth. In him indeed are the hopes and fears of all the years. A priest in England maintains that we should not sing this song because Bethlehem tonight is far from a silent and peaceful place. He misses the point that it was exactly the same 2000 years ago It was a town full of greed, nationalism, self centredness and violence. Into this situation, into our situation, is born the one in whom the hopes and fears of all the years come together.