The christmas story changes the story about death

​Dear Jesus,

It’s the fourth Sunday of Advent. A season of joy. A season when we reflect on your arrival in the nativity scene, and all that your arrival will mean and has meant to the world.

I’ve borrowed a song from Maverick City Music to help with my own personal reflections this month. They have a song, maybe you’ve heard of it 😊 - it’s called Fear is Not My Future.

In the song, the writers make four proclamations:

Fear is not my future, you are.
Sickness is not my story, you are.
Heartbreak’s not my home, you are.
Death is not the end, you are.

This morning, I want to reflect on the fourth proclamation; death is not the end, you are.

We are finally here, Jesus. After a month of anticipating your arrival, your birth, tomorrow we will celebrate just that. But the reality is, it's not YOUR birth you'd wish for us to celebrate.

It's ours.

It is our new birth, found in you, into a new life, that unlike the one we too often embrace, has no end. For the Christmas story is not about birth, it's about death.

It's about reshaping our narrative of death so that it is no longer the end of life, but simply a stage we go through to experience everlasting life.

For what is life if it has an end? If the grand results of all that we have purposed and experienced is disappearance, what is the point of it all?

And if there is an end to it all, how can all that we purpose not be interrupted by the constant fear of our own disappearance?

Of our own death?

You heard our wranglings. You sensed our fears. And so you sent a baby in a manger, you BECAME a baby in a manger, to begin the journey of assuring us that death is not the end.

Death is a calling. Like the shepherds were called to see face to face that precious child in the manger, your birth and the way you lived your life and your death and your resurrection, they are a calling to us as well.

A calling to celebrate OUR birth in that manger. OUR birth into a new life where death will never be an end, but rather a door, that like the shepherds we will walk though, and see, face to face, the creator of our life without end.

Oh, how I long for that door, Jesus. Not because I am weary of this life, but because like those shepherds, and Mary and Joseph, and all who experienced your first moments, I too long to hold the baby in a manger.

Not for a moment, but for eternity.

Because after all, that is the promise of Christmas.

The promise that death is not the end. You are Jesus.

Sweet, precious, baby Jesus.

You are.