A number of people have asked for my talk at the carol service last year. I’ve finally got around to transcribing and editing it. So here it is:
What would you do if you ruled the world? If you had absolute power to do whatever you like, whatever you wished for would happen.
Some of us might want to help Manchester United to win a few games! I guess for many of us, though, we would say, the old cliche, we’d bring peace to the world. I mean, this year has been terrible, hasn’t it? We’ve got two big wars going on now, Gaza and Israel, and Ukraine and Russia, and there are others going on as well that don’t make the headlines. And there are many other terrible things going on across the world, that don’t make the headlines. Wouldn’t it be great simply to snap your fingers and say, STOP! Then, maybe you’d want to, after bringing peace to the world, end poverty and suffering, so the world would be the wonderful place we’d like it to be.
What you’d actually be asking for is a world back to the way God created it! Do you remember, at the very start of the Bible we read about Eden and what that was like? It was a place with no wars, no poverty and peace. Everything was wonderful.
But moving on from that, if you were in charge of the world, and you were busy exercising your omnipotence, how would you achieve the things you want? If you had all the power to make any changes you thought necessary, what would you actually do? I think the first thing that would be really important to do would be to make a few judgments. Like it or not, some people and some things are good, and some people and some things are bad. Judgments need to be made. But on what basis are you going to make those judgments? You’d have to have some rules, wouldn’t you? But one person’s rules are another’s restriction of freedom. Would you be happy to restrict people’s freedom? You might wish to bring in internment of troublemakers like happens sometimes in war. Lock them away! But whose troublemakers? Your troublemakers or somebody else’s troublemakers? The problem is that it sounds a great ideal, but when you start to work it out, it just all begins to fall apart. I don’t think I would last very long before I was tearing my hair out and wishing I was not in control any more. There’s doesn’t seem much hope does there? But I can tell you one thing, though, that you wouldn’t do to put things right. You wouldn’t send a baby to sort it out! No. That would be ridiculous. Who would think of sending a baby to sort the world out? … Well, God did!
Now, in my garden, I have an ongoing battle with a buddleia. I absolutely abhor the things. I hate them! They just seed everywhere, and you can’t get rid of them. The one I have must be 100 years old. It’s got a great thick trunk, and I’ve been trying to get rid of it for 13 years. It’s a war! I’ve tried hard pruning, cutting it off at the stump, leaving it at ground level. The following year, it’s just as big as ever. I’ve tried weed killer, you know, the tough one. No effect. I’ve even tried hammering copper nails into it, a whole bag of them. They’re still there now, but it’s grown around them. Incredible. Then two years ago, I thought I’d got it. I used some specific tree killer. You cut it off, drill holes in the trunk, and pour this obnoxious liquid down the holes, and it kills it. It disappeared! … Until this year. It’s back again! How do they do it? It just keeps coming back no matter what I do. I am losing.
Now, the reason it keeps coming back is because I can’t get to the roots. They’re under the tarmac driveway. And I’m not going to get a JCB in to dig it up just to get rid of a buddleia. I can’t get rid of the roots. And while they are there, it will keep regrowing no matter what I do. You see, the heart of the problem with my buddleia is the roots. So, how does my buddleia help us fix the world? Well, it might help us understand the world in the first place.
Somebody has said, I think very well, that ‘the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart’. Now, I’m not talking about the blood pump, I’m talking about the heart of who we are, our desires, our hopes, our passions, our drives. That’s what your heart is, the things you are driven by. And, if I might be bold to suggest for a moment, for most people, dare I say all people, there is a drive, a desire to be in control, to run our own life. And that desire is in rebellion against God because God says, ‘live my way’. And we say, ‘no, I want to live my way’. And we see in the Garden of Eden, the fall, where Adam and Eve decided to do what they wanted rather than what God commanded. It’s no surprise, is it, that for many, many years the most popular song played a funerals was Frank Sinatra singing My Way. And we echo, ‘I want my way’.
Okay, so how can a baby help with that? How can a baby help with this heart problem of ours? Well, what if it’s no ordinary baby? What if this baby is somehow different? What if this baby actually is the creator and sustainer of the universe? The son of God. God himself entering his creation. What if it’s that baby? Could he make a difference then? Well, he then would be a baby that didn’t have our heart, that root of rebellion against God. He can’t rebel against himself. In fact, this baby is the only baby to be born that hasn’t had that heart problem. So, could he help then? Could he help deal with our heart problem?
Let’s think a little bit for a moment about this baby. Jesus grew up from being a baby, and he showed us love, truth, justice, righteousness. In fact, he showed that to such an extent that many people couldn’t stand to be around him because whoever was around him was made to look bad bby his goodness and perfection. Jesus shows perfect judgment. He shows us who we are, and he shows us by his life that, though we are not God, we sure want to be! And you see, that is the problem to which he then provides the solution. He was the perfect human being, the only perfect human being ever.
He was perfectly obedient to God. Always. He was honest. Always. Sacrificial. Always. Self-effacing. Always. Now, shouldn’t a world with somebody like that put him up on a pedestal and say, this is how we should be? But the world is in rebellion against God, and what the world did, rather than put him up on a pedestal, was to nail him to a cross to get rid of him. God became a man, and we put him on a cross because we couldn’t stand him, because we wanted to be God.
We’ve made a mess of the world, haven’t we? Humanity claimed to be God, but actually became a failed God, a caricature of God, striving to be God, but failing. And the result is the world we see.
The perfect God-man bought back the rebellious man for God. He brought back, if you like, the wannabe God, you and me, to the one true God. How did he do that? By taking our place before God’s judgment seat. That’s why Jesus came. So the world could be right. The only one able to make it right is the only perfect perfect. Jesus.
We need to recgnise this simple truth, God is God, and we are not. It’s hard to accept it, but that’s the truth. God became a man because we failed to become God. That is the wonder of Christmas. God stepping into this messed up creation, messed up by us, not by him, to put it right by his self-sacrifice so that we could be right with him and have an eternity with him in peace, justice and joy. Now, I trust that this Christmas you know that. This is the best news. A bay who can sort out the world. Starting with you.
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