He Will Come

December 6th 

He Will Come

 

We stumbled across this cafe down a side street, searching for somewhere to have a moment together out of the cold. The cheery cafe owner took our order and we sat and waited in the corner, looking around us at the tinselled walls and festive decorations. 

The cafe owner soon slapped our sandwiches and drinks down beside us on the table, and pirouetting around once more, he then placed a bright red napkin by each plate. “Enjoy” He said.

He would soon be back to entertain us with stories about how his cafe lavatory kept being blocked by careless customers.

I glanced down at the napkin he’d given us…

Apparently Santa Claus is coming to town.

Actually Santa has been here a while, having arrived in late October just after the Halloween ghouls. He’s been painting the town red, ho-ho-ho-ing around endless stores on the high street, jingling his bells and wobbling his jelly-belly in endless advertisements. Santas not coming. He’s here. Big fat and jolly. 

He was everywhere when I took my children to a cafe in a garden centre for a hot chocolate last weekend. This time Santa Claus had really gone to town!  It was decorated like his north pole grotto. Literally thousands upon thousands of Christmas decorations lined the shelves, a thousand different versions of Santa, a hundred variations of elf, two hundred types of fairies, woodland creatures and lights, tinsel and baubles of all shapes and sizes.

 

Overwhelmed? I was.

I searched high and low for any recognisable symbol of the true Christmas story. Can you spot it?

In this whole enormous Christmassy-world there was just one nativity scene, tucked out of the way on the top shelf (safely out of reach of children!).

Apparently Santa Claus is allowed to come to town, but not the baby Jesus.

How tragically we’ve tinsel-twisted the story of Christmas around and around until it’s unrecognisable. 

The historical Santa Claus, St Nicholas,  inspired by his love for Jesus, gave everything he had, his inheritance and his whole life to assist the struggling, lost and poor. Our modern day version of St Nicholas is now used to replace Jesus in Christmas celebrations altogether, and has proved to be a very useful money-spinner in marketing ‘Christmas joy’ to wide eyed children. 

This world has tinsel-strangled Jesus out of Christmas, but what we replace Him with is telling.
The jolly old song ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’ depicts Santa’s “generosity” with fine print and guilt strings attached…

“You better watch out, You better not cry,

You better not pout, I’m telling you why…

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He’s making a list, And checking it twice,

Gonna find out, Who’s naughty or nice.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

He sees you when you’re sleeping,

He knows when you’re awake.

He knows if you’ve been bad or good,

So be good for goodness sake!”

 Santa is a hard task master as he makes his list and checks it twice, his version of  “Christmas generosity” is only for the nice crowd. All the rest of us get coal!

A moving advertisement for the UK charity ‘Shelter’ this Christmas depicts a little girl trying to be well behaved and ‘good enough’ so that Santa will grant her Christmas wish for a new home…

…But though the cheerful song confidently clangs “Santa Claus is coming to town” and though she tried so heart-all-in hard to make it onto his nice list. He never arrived for this little girl. She stayed stuck in her poverty. 

Santa didn’t come to town. 

And that’s the difference between the noisy sparkly glitter-lit fiction and the truth. Santa actually isn’t coming to town.

But Jesus is already there. 

“Let all creation rejoice before the Lord, for he comes, he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples in his faithfulness.” 

Psalm 96:13 (emphasise added)

The word Advent means ‘to come’. Or arrival.

Like a promise fulfilled.

Scripture, similar to Santa’s jolly Christmas song, promised that someone was ‘coming to town’…

‘I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty.’

Malachi 3:1(emphasise added)

…the difference being that He actually came. 

He was always coming. This promised hope. This person. From Genesis onwards this was always the message “the Lord you are seeking will come”. The long story of scripture has always been a story of anticipation. A story of waiting for God. Waiting for His promises to come. For Him to come. 

Jesus is not a broken promise, like an elf who is supposedly coming to town but never truly arrives. Jesus is the ultimate fulfilment of every promise God ever made: The one who would come to stamp on the serpent’s head (Gensis 3:15), the King who would come to rule (Genesis 49:10), the shoot that would come from Jesses’ line (Isaiah 11:1-2).The Prince of Peace who would reign on David’s throne with justice and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7). The messenger of the covenant- God’s promise- arriving (Malachi 3:1).

The story of scripture, our story with God, has always been pregnant with the promise of His presence. We live in a story that expects God to show up. And if we don’t see Him yet we wait in expectation. Ours has never been a cul-de-sac dead-end story. Our story brims with anticipation and spills over with sure hope.

Despite what the song says, Santa isn’t coming to own, and his naughty list doesn’t define our fate and none of us can ever truly be ‘nice’ enough. We don’t have to look long into the news cycle or our own beating hearts to realise this and to comprehend that we, all of us, are hopelessly lost in the dark. A dark that all the Christmas lights and glittery tinsel and jolly red elves can’t light. A dark that Santa and his reindeer cannot truly distract us from and jolly Christmas tunes cannot block out, despite our best efforts.

The message of Santa is ultimately still the treadmill message of the world: be good, work hard and you’ll make the nice list. Christmas is to be worked for and done right! How complicated and intricate and ‘busy’ and noisy this jolly jingling Christmas ‘story’ has become.

A Christmas story that speaks of true generosity and giving to the poor isn’t good for business, so Jesus and the real Christmas story are pushed to the obscure top shelf, out of sight, out of mind, and we have built an elaborate tinselled Christmas world without the central truth of Christmas in it. And it wears us out. It’s exhausting with its jolly fine print and sparkling strings attached.

But the true Christmas story comes quietly. Like a still small voice, grace comes simply, manger-cradle small and baby’s-breath gentle, into our dark and distracted world. Light comes silently, but burns so bright, it burns away all the guilt and shame, the ‘try harder’ treadmills,  so all that’s left is love.

Love that came.

As He promised He would.

Love that died.

To restore us.

Love that open-hand reaches for your hand now.

He has come. 

Just as He promised.

And invites you now to come. No guilt trip, no shame, no heart-all-in trying-hard to be good enough. No nice or naughty list. No strings attached, no fine print…

Just His welcome. 

Manger-cradle simple.

“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends.”  

Revelation 3:20 (NLT)