St Andrews Street Baptist Church
December/January
Two or three weeks ago the front page of every national newspaper asked a similar question. So significant was this question felt to be that it was raised in Parliament, debated in leader columns in papers and journals and, I understand, was spoken about among the Cabinet.
People were divided on the rights and wrongs of this particular hot issue, feelings ran high, thousands of e-mails were sent off, the debate was intense.
“O.K. Dave!” I hear you mutter, “Stop waffling and tell us what this vitally important question was. We have to know!”
So, here’s the answer. The question was…. Should John Sergeant have pulled out of Strictly Come Dancing?
For any who have managed to escape this, John Sergeant is a political journalist who entered a popular dance competition screened every Saturday evening on BBC1. If it is possible, John Sergeant may be a worse dancer than I am and, every week, the judges made scathing comments about his ability and he was bottom of the leader board. However, the public seemed to love him, voted for him in droves and kept him in the competition.
This caused voices to be raised as those, who were deemed to be better dancers were eliminated. Eventually, John Sergeant felt that the controversy was too great and he withdrew, an act which caused even greater discussion and headline news.
One of the questions that many people find themselves asking is—”So what? Is this story really worthy of headline news and intense debate? After all, it’s only a dancing competition!”
Imagine that you had lived 2000 years ago and someone had said: “Headline news; world shattering event has taken place; read all about it; here is the hottest topic of the day—Baby born in a stable.”
If that had happened, my guess is that you would have said “So what? Baby born in a stable is not exactly what I think of as being the story of the week.”
Here is a very interesting point—”Story of the week.” The story about John Sergeant was exactly that—as a story, it didn’t even last a week. A few days later it was all over—forgotten about, barely mentioned now.
In contrast “The baby born in a stable” is much, much more than “the story of the week.” It is actually the story of the whole of history; the story, which 2000 years later is still able to fire the imagination and raise deeply important questions.
What is it that makes this story so relevant and important after all these years, whereas, as somebody put it, “yesterday’s newspaper is only good for fish and chips.”?
Here we might compare the passing fame of John Sergeant and Strictly Come Dancing with the enduring significance of the baby in a stable.
What made the dance story interesting was the person doing the dancing. A well-known, much respected political reporter. If it had been me failing to dance well, no-one would have bothered, but it was John Sergeant. It is the same with Christmas—what makes this so amazing is who the baby was—Immanuel, “God with us”. It was the eternal Son of God, the divine creator of the universe being the baby in a stable.
The second point about John Sergeant was his willingness to demonstrate his inability at dancing to millions of people week after week. His vulnerability and the harshness of the criticism he received endeared him to millions of people. At Christmas we see the extraordinary vulnerability of the Son on God as he enters our world, born as a human baby and
facing the harsh hatred of people, who eventually nailed him to a cross.
Because of his vulnerability, John Sergeant was perceived as being like us—not the dancing expert, who could do complicated moves in his sleep, but an ordinary mortal, who struggled. Jesus, too, was willing to enter the world of ordinary people, to face temptation as a man, to endure pain, rejection, sorrow and death not from a privileged position, but as a real human being.
Long after John Sergeant’s exit from Strictly Come Dancing has been forgotten, the birth of Jesus will still be remembered and celebrated. Why? Because in it we see how the eternal God made himself vulnerable by entering our world and facing all the experiences of life.
May we celebrate this wonderful and relevant event and rejoice in it’s enduring reality. A very happy Christmas to you all.
With love,
David
Office Address:
41 St Andrews Street
Cambridge
Cambs
CB2 3AR