A man was walking along a cliff path one day when he tripped and fell over the edge. Reaching out he grabbed a tree root on the side and clung to it for dear life. He looked down but could not see the bottom. The tree root began to loosen. He looked up to the sky above and in desperation shouted, ‘Is anybody there? Save me!’ Almost immediately a voice from the heavens replied, ‘Have faith; let go.’ The man looked down, and then back up, and said, ‘Is anybody else there?’
Now you may be asking yourselves what on earth that little story has to do with Christmas. Well, unlike my joke at this service last year about the three-legged turkey, this little story has far more to do with the real message of Christmas than at first sight. Why? Well because it illustrates two very important truths.
The first truth is this. The coming of Jesus into the world that very first Christmas in order to reveal to us in human form - that is to say, in a way that we could understand – God Himself who created us, and also not only to teach us how He wants us to live and to love but also, he said, to ‘save’ us, prompts us to ask if we will ‘have faith’ in him; to have faith that he, Jesus, and he alone, provides the answers to life’s deepest and most pressing questions - Who created us? Why are we here? How are we supposed to live? What will happen to us when this life ends?
Now to the person who has not studied closely and with an open mind the person of Jesus - his wonderful life, his amazing claims about himself, and the most compelling evidence for his resurrection three days after he had been killed, asking that person to ‘have faith’ in Jesus to ‘save’ him or her – from avoidable ignorance and unavoidable death - is very much like the situation of the man clinging on to the tree root on the side of the cliff. He or she has no firm grounds on which to trust Jesus’ offer; his offer not only to ‘save’ him or her but also to give them a new life, a fresh start, a new way of living. To such a person there will seem no reason whatsoever to ‘have faith’ in him and ‘let go’.
Or again, if a person believes in the foundation of so much of modern and popular scientific faith (because faith is exactly what is needed to believe it), a miracle far greater, far more improbable – or so Nobel Prize-winning mathematicians tell us - than the miracle of Jesus’s resurrection with all the hugely compelling evidence attesting to its historical fact – and what I am referring to here of course is the theory of the miraculous so-called ‘Big Bang’ with its creating of something (our universe) out of nothing (yes, nothing); a belief system in which, so scientists admit, we are asked to believe that human life, your life and mine, has absolutely no meaning; that we humans are simply the outcomes of blind evolutionary processes with no goal, no purpose, no hope – then, again, that person will want to pay no attention to Jesus’ call to ‘have faith’ in him and ‘let go’.
Or if a person is so absorbed by the pursuit of power, wealth, success – or even just personal happiness and the enjoyment of this life, then he or she too will see no reason, no benefit, to ‘have faith’ and ‘let go’.
But here is the second truth that story illustrates, and it is this: the truth that we are more afraid of ‘letting go’ of the many ideas and things that not only blind us to the truth of Jesus but also let us down time and time and time again: we prefer to put our faith in these rather than take him at his word - that he came to ‘save’ us and to offer us ‘life; life, he said, in all its fulness’.
He came that first Christmas because he loves us more than we could ever conceive of or imagine; he came because our heavenly Father does not want us to make choices that will only separate us from him; he came because each one of us, flawed and fickle as we all of us are, are very precious in his sight, made in his image, created to live in love with him and with each other.
But to the person who has genuinely considered the evidence for Jesus and is willing to let go of all those things – personal, material, philosophical, political – which blind or prevent us from trusting him, such letting go and putting their faith in Jesus is quite simply the most reasonable, rational, and realistic thing they could ever do. Or, as the Christmas carol so aptly puts it, ‘Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.’
The true message of Christmas, the original one that is, not only reminds us of God’s saving love in coming to the earth he created for you, for me, for everyone, it also challenges those who either have not heard it or have previously rejected it to consider and examine it very carefully indeed. What greater gift could we accept than his offer of forgiveness for the past, new life for the present, and a sure hope for the future – whatever that future holds. Will you welcome him, or perhaps welcome him back this Christmas into your life as Saviour, Friend, and King? All you have to do is humbly ask him: he has promised that he will do so.
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