The Best Way to Spread Christmas Cheer
We called our Christmas Eve service this year “Believe.”
I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the word “Believe.” On the one hand, it is a really good, really Biblical word. A big part of being a Christian is believing. I’ll talk about that in a little bit.
But on the other hand, it seems like the word “believe” has become a code for some sort of non-specific, generally merry attitude we’re all supposed to have every year when Christmas-time rolls around.
I’ll give you some examples:
Last Christmas I went into a public bathroom and somebody had put up a Christmas decoration that simply said: Believe.
It was strange—not the least of which because you don’t usually see decorations in men’s rooms (I had to go back out and make sure I hadn’t gone into the ladies by mistake). But it was also strange to me because that’s all it said: Believe.
It didn’t say what I was supposed to believe in, or who. Just that I was supposed to believe. Believe in Santa. Believe in Frosty. Believe in Jesus or Muhammed. Apparently it didn’t matter. So long as I believed.
Or, another example: A couple of years ago our family went to San Antonio over the Christmas break. And while we were there we visited Sea World, where most of their animal shows were still using a Holiday theme.
And the name of the killer whale show was simply “Believe”. Just like we’re calling this service. And while we waited for the show to start a group of extremely happy young people worked the crowd singing secular Christmas carols.
Then, when the big show started, they played this video on the big screen where various people talked about the “magic” of Christmas. Little kids talked about getting presents and seeing Santa, young parents talked about having their first baby, an older gentleman talked about seeing the grandkids around the Christmas tree, stuff like that. There was a lot of soft focus and pretty music in the background.
Then, for reasons that weren’t entirely connected to the video, the whales came out and started jumping and spinning while they played the Mariah Caray song that goes:
There can be miracles, when you believe
Though hope is frail, it's hard to kill
Who knows what miracles you can achieve
When you believe, somehow you will
You will when you believe
Now, I have to say, the whales were really, really cool. Those were really big animals that were doing some very complicated tricks. They could have read from the phone book while the whales were jumping and I would have been entertained. We went to the show twice.
But the whole production also left me scratching my head. They talked about how important it is to “believe” at Christmas time. They talked about Christmas miracles and the magic of Christmas. But there was nothing particularly miraculous about the stories they told, and the magic of Christmas was nothing more than a warm fuzzy that comes from believing in some vague idea of togetherness and peace. I left wondering: what do they want me to believe in? Shamu?
Or, one more example: pick just about any Christmas movie and in the end it is going to come down to the importance of believing. You’ve got to believe in Christmas. You’ve got to believe in Santa Claus. You’ve got to believe in the wonder of life.
Take the movie Elf. At the end of the movie Santa’s sleigh is crashed in Central Park and the only way it will fly again is if enough hard-hearted New Yorkers get over their grinchiness and believe. As Buddy (Will Ferrell’s character) says: “The best way to spread Christmas cheer/ is to sing loud so all can hear.”
It all leads to the idea that Christmas is a time for non-directed cheerfulness and vague notions of goodwill.
The truth is, believing has no virtue by itself. We do not achieve Christmas “miracles” just because we believe we will. That’s nonsense.
Christmas is about believing in something. It means believing that something very specific has happened and that it makes a difference in our lives. At its root, I’d say Christmas means believing that God Himself has broken into our world. That’s what we celebrate at this time of year. That’s what we believe.
God exists. He’s the creator of the universe. And He became one of us. God became human. That’s the miracle of Christmas.
Here’s how the Bible puts it, in a verse that has been the focus of our attention here at Hope for the past month:
16 Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:
He appeared in a body,
was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels,
was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world,
was taken up in glory.
Jesus is God’s Son. He was conceived in the womb of a virgin, born as a human baby, was heralded by angels, and is the Savior of the world.
And the point of those dramatic presentations, the point we really want to make tonight, is that this is not just some quaint story like the Polar Express or How the Grinch Stole
Christmas.
No matter where you find yourself tonight—whether Christmas is just one more duty you have to check off your list, or if you are lonely and down and would rather you were just left alone, or if it has all become so routine for you that it no longer means anything—the story of Jesus is real, and it applies to you. Jesus Christ is God’s Son, and He came to earth to make it possible for you to know God.
Christmas isn’t about some abstract activity of believing in non-specific ideas of peace and love. It’s about believing in Jesus. It’s about believing the story of the Bible.
That’s what that fifth line is getting at in this verse: “Jesus was believed on in the world.” I’d like to invite you, tonight, to believe in Jesus.
Believing actually has two parts. For one thing, we need to believe that. We have to believe that God exists. Believe that Jesus is God’s Song breaking into our world at Christmas. Believe that Jesus died for us on the cross and earned salvation from judgment and sin. We need to know facts about God and accept them as true.
But just believing that certain things have happened and that they are true is not enough. There’s a second part. And that’s to believe in. We must trust. We must commit ourselves to trust in what Jesus has done for us, we must hand our lives over to him.
I heard a story once about a little boy whose daddy took him to an airshow. There was a pilot there, with a little two passenger airplane, who was offering rides for a couple of dollars. The little boy had never been flying before, so his daddy paid the price and he got the chance to go up and make a loop over the town.
When the plane got back, the little boy was wide-eyed and smiling from ear to ear. His daddy asked him how it went and the little boy said: “Great! But I never let my full weight down.”
The point of Christmas. The point of Jesus coming is that you can (and must) put your full weight down in Him.
We should believe at Christmas. We should believe that God Himself has broken into the world. We should believe that He came out of love for each and every one of us.
And thus, we should believe in Him. We should put our full weight down in Him, in order to be saved.