How to get to the heart of Christmas in conversation

Here’s some good news: this month, for one month only, conversation about the incarnation of Jesus is socially acceptable with pretty much anyone!

Of course it’s not quite that simple, but it’s a huge opportunity that throughout December it’s normal to talk about Christmas. Let me offer two questions and one story that might help those conversations go a little deeper.

First question: ‘How do you celebrate Christmas?’ This is no more socially intense than ‘what are your plans for Christmas?’ but it pushes the door ajar to the religious dimension of things. Then as you listen to what they’re saying here’s a follow up that might take things a bit deeper: ‘Does Christmas feel meaningful to you? Or does it just feel like a good excuse to get people together?’ I can’t promise it will lead anywhere in particular, but it might generate a more thoughtful interaction than just chatting about how much holiday they’re taking from work. 

A true story that gets to the heart of Christmas

If things do get a bit deeper, and you’re asked a question about what it all means to you, I’d encourage you to simply be honest about why you love it, share whatever is most precious to you about this time of year. But describing the message at the heart of Christmas isn’t always easy – so let me offer you a story that might help. I came across it many years ago in Bob Goff’s lovely little book Love Does and it seems to be completely true.

Father Damien was a Belgian priest, who sensed God calling him to serve overseas in Hawaii (poor him, right?). As he ministered there, he learnt that whenever someone contracted leprosy, they were being sent away to an island called Molokai. For fear of contagion, people were being quarantined on this small island and left to fend for themselves.

So Father Damien moved there. He served the lepers as a mixture of priest, makeshift doctor and friend. Before long he threw caution to the wind and began touching his friends to dress their wounds, to share food with them, to embrace them. After 11 years, he looked down at his feet one morning to see that they were badly blistered, but he couldn’t feel any pain. He knew what that meant. The next Sunday in the church as he preached he didn’t say 'you lepers' anymore, he said, 'we lepers'.

He kept serving his friends as the condition worsened – helping to build homes, roads, schools and hospitals, treating illnesses and digging graves, teaching them in words every week and in actions every day that however much the world might ignore or despise them, they were precious in the eyes of God. And on 15 April, 1889, he died.

The heart of Christmas is the heart of God

Christmas means that God cares about us that much. We are so precious to him that he became Emmanuel, God With Us, even though He knew exactly how it would end. He wasn’t afraid to reach out and touch us. He took on our frailty and our mortality, became a baby who did cry (whatever ‘Away in a Manger’ might say), grew up as refugee in Egypt and knew the pangs of hunger and grief, anxiety and exhaustion. He spent his time with the outcasts, the marginalised, the forgotten, the shamed. And in the end he was betrayed and abandoned to a godforsaken death.

God cares about us that much.

I love Father Damien’s story because it’s such a profound and personal window onto what Christmas shows us about the heart of God. So why not pray for an opportunity to share it this December? Let’s pray that God would give each one of us chances to ask good questions, listen well to what others make of Christmas, and to share why it is so meaningful to us. Christmas shows us just how much God cares.

You can see and share Mike telling this story in the form of a spoken word poem at tiny.cc/fatherdamien