Unless you are like the preacher’s family and are waiting until after church to open presents, you might have a mountain of wrapping paper to go home to today. Before Christmas you wondered what lay beneath the tree with your name on it. After Christmas you know what gifts you have received and are imagining how you can take them back without offending anyone—uh, sorry, I mean you are imagining how you will enjoy them. Before Christmas you didn’t know you needed a big silver ring on which to string your belts in the closet, but now you know your life will never be the same. Before Christmas you didn’t know that red socks with little embroidered reindeer were going to be all the rage, but now you are right in fashion. Before Christmas you didn’t know you needed a 17^th holiday CD, but now that you’ve had an Ozzie Osbourne Christmas, everything has changed.

Well, we know that the real gift we all celebrate at Christmas is the Christ child. Jesus is born. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. But what has the world really unwrapped when it unwrapped the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger because there was no room in the inn? How are things different now? When you look at the before and after of the incarnation of God, the never-before act of God taking on human flesh in the person of Jesus, what has really changed for good, and for good?

The gospel writers Matthew, Luke and John, each his own way, record the birth of this one who would be called God incarnate. But this was not the first time in history such a claim was made. In the year 9 BC a euangelion was announced in the Roman world. The Gree k w ord euangelion, from which we get our words evangelism and evangelical, for instance, meant simply “gospel” or “good news.” Before Christ it was known as an announcement of mythic importance regarding the birth of one who would change everything. The so-called Priene Inscription announced the good news of Emperor Augustus’s birth as a god. It reads in part,  and since the Caesar through his appearance has exceeded the hopes of all former good messages, surpassing not only the benefactors who came before him, but also leaving no hope that anyone in the future would surpass him, and since for the world the birthday of the god was the beginning of his good messages.

Sounds a lot like the gospel writer John and the writer of Hebrews, doesn’t it? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. … In these last days God has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.

We know now that the reign of Caesar Augustus would come to an end and that gospel accounts of his divine origin and birth were mere propaganda to prop up his rule. But the gospel of Jesus Christ is that he is the Prince of Peace and the King of Kings. He rules over the house of David forever, and his kingdom knows no end. He is the one through whom all things have come into being, and in him is life forevermore.

The gospel writers did not believe Jesus was a special messenger of God, another prophet, even the greatest moral teacher and spiritual guide of all time. They believed that before the nativity in Bethlehem, God had been at work trying to get the world’s attention, desperately working through every channel possible—nature, angels, prophets, words of Scripture. But finally God made the ultimate commitment.

As one commentator put it, imagine trying to love a woman by sending notes and cards and making calls and asking your roommate to carry a word for you. It just wouldn’t work. The woman would forever wonder who this man is and what his heart is really like. In the same way, God had to come in person to consummate this love affair with the world and dispel all false notions of who God is and what God’s intentions were. God came in Jesus Christ to woo the world in love, to romance it into submission. God came down. God bent low. God built a bridge to humanity by joining spirit and flesh, divinity and humanity, heaven and earth.

Last month Princess Sayako of Japan, the daughter of Emperor Akihito, wed Yoshiki Kuroda in simple Shinto ceremony. In doing so, she gave up all claims to royalty. She lay aside her privileged place in the royal family in order to give herself completely in love to her commoner husband. According to Japanese law, a commoner can marry royalty and thus join the imperial family, but it cannot go the other way. And so this young woman who was raised with servants attending to her every need and acquainted every day of her young life with the glory of her royal family, gave up all of that in order to join the man of her heart. She is adjusting to life in a small apartment by learning how to clean closets and organize a pantry. She is taking driving lessons for the first time and is learning how to grocery-shop. She has determined that it was not worth being royalty without the love of her life.

And this is what we learn at Christmas. God was not content to be God without us. As long as there was one whit of distance between God and the world—a distance God knew we could never bridge by climbing upward—God would not be satisfied. So God became downwardly mobile. And in doing so, God not only loved us up close but taught us that God can be God in ways we never thought possible. As the great theologian Karl Barth said: The mystery reveals to us that for God it is just as natural to be lowly as it is to be high, to be near as it is to be far, to be little as it is to be great, to be abroad as it is to be home. [Church Dogmatics IV, 1.]

Now then, what has changed in the before-after picture of the great Christmas gift of Jesus? Well, not the love of God for the world. That was true from the beginning and will be till the end. Any teaching that claims that God tried being a harsh governor, a stickler for the law, a moral judge and a angry father all through the Old Testament until deciding to love the world as a last-ditch attempt to save us doesn’t understand that the character of God never changes. Christmas reveals what has been hidden about God; it does not change the nature of God. God so loved the world before, and God so loved the world after.

Lloyd Douglas authored several novels, including the highly regarded one about the garment of Jesus, The Robe. He tells about living in the same boarding house during college as an elderly and invalid music teacher. On one morning, the young Douglas was making small tal k w ith the older gentleman and asked flippantly, What’s the good news? He got more answer than he expected. The old man tapped a tuning fork on his metal wheelchair and said, That’s middle C! It was middle C yesterday; it will be middle C tomorrow; it will be middle C a thousand years from now. The tenor upstairs sings flat, the piano across the hall is out of tune, but my friend, THAT is middle C! [David Matthews, “Before Bethlehem,” in Sunday Worship Helps (Dec. 2005): 8.]

You are the same, your years will never end, says the writer of Hebrews about God. While all the world declines, God remains the same. Christmas does not change the character and dependability of God. On the contrary, it makes it known all the more clearly. The Word through whom all the worlds were made is still the Word of God at Christmas. But the selfsame Word that was the reason of the world, the wisdom built into creation, the mind of God only hinted at and whispered in this way and that across time has now been spoken plainly and declared to be good news. The selfsame light of the world that flickered in the darkness has shone in the face of Jesus Christ. As a document of the early church states the matter, This is he who was from the beginning, who appeared as new, who was found to be old, who is ever born young in the hearts of the saints. [Epistle to Diognetus, ed. J. J. Thierry (Leiden: Brill, 1964), ch. 11.]

But something has changed for God and for us because of it. Like Princess Sayako, the eternal Son of God did lay aside his own glory in order to join us in our inglorious state. Mild he lay his glory by,/ Born that man no more may die,/ Born to raise the sons of earth,/ Born to give them second birth. He became one of us—the uncommon God becoming a common man. And in doing so, something changed for us, yes, but something also changed for God. Nothing changed about God, but something changed for God.

Have you ever thought about the fact that for the very first time, God put on the uniform of the flesh personally and experienced our lives? Some years ago the sports journalist George Plimpton realized he was writing stories about athletes from the outside, so to speak. He had never experienced himself what it was like to be an athlete competing at the highest levels. His book that became a movie was called Paper Lion. The Detroit Lions football team allowed him to go to training camp and join the team as a quarterback. He learned up close what it was like to put on the uniform, to walk onto the field, to manage your fear, to take a hit, to feel the pain, to suffer victory and defeat as part of a team. It changed the way he wrote. He moved from being an observer to a participant, from being a sympathizer to an empathizer.

In the same way, God took on our plight, and never again could the world say that God does not know what it’s like to be us. But now we too know more precisely what is like to be God. If we want to know how God experiences the world, we look to Jesus, who is the perfect reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being.

If we are to look to Jesus to experience the way God experiences the world, we must no longer look to the heavens or even back to the Jesus born in Bethlehem; we may and must look around us. We must look at how the living Christ experiences the world today. We will find him now as he was then, among the poor and the needy and the lonely and grieving and the sad and the helpless. He is sharing their lot and bringing them himself.

All our Christmas gift-giving can be traced to the new thing that God did in giving us Jesus. This has been an extraordinary year for charity. People have opened their hearts and their wallets to tsunami and hurricane victims. They have volunteered and worked to make life better for others. 

Just this morning at 5:45 in the Albertson’s parking lot, I prayed with about two dozen Santa’s helpers who were heading to the projects with 150 bicycles and to nursing homes with other gifts. Jeff Patton and friends have organized the group, which wants to make sure that people who were sure Santa Claus wouldn’t come this year would be wrong. They will know there is a warm and friendly presence in the universe that cares for them.

How did that get into the hearts of people? Well, you can say that it’s just part of being human, that God put such a spirit of altruism into everyone and they are only responding according to their nature. But I would argue the opposite. Human nature needed healing. It had become distorted by sin and self-centered at its core. The coming of God in Jesus is the crucial act of self-giving love that has opened up the hearts of people for others. Ask yourself, how would the world be different if there had been no before and after of the incarnation at Christmas?

In a Christmas pageant somewhere, a little boy was playing the part of the innkeeper in Bethlehem. When Mary and Joseph knocked on the door, all he was scripted to do was to say, No room. But when the time came, the usually unruly child became tearful and impetuous: Wait, he said. You can have my room!

If you have room for others in your heart and life, if you would welcome Christ to make his home with you, something has changed because of Christmas. Maybe someone. Maybe you.