What have they got in common?
It's something I've often thought about, I doubt you have, I doubt you're as strange as I am - although maybe you are.
I eat chilli all the time but rarely at Christmas, it's not appropriate. Chilli makes your mouth hot but keeps the rest of your body cold but at Christmas what you want is food that warms you through and through. I love Christmas dinners and I wouldn't want to change what we eat, mountains of food, plenty of helpings of seconds and thirds... and fourths. I don't suggest for a minute that you substitute Christmas dinner for chilli con carne, that would be strange and I'm sure that if you suggested it you'd be laughed out of the kitchen (and quite right too!). No, that's not what this is about.
Instead it's about the point of Christmas the reason for the season (sorry). Christmas is the time when God gave as an answer to the problem of pain and the issue of suffering in our world. He didn't write a thesis about it, he didn't give us a mathematical equation that explained why certain people seem to struggle and suffer more than others, but he did give us a glimpse of how committed he is to us even in the midst of the messes we find ourselves in. God became a man.
Christmas has become a time when we remember what theologians (who insist on using strange latin words) call the
incarnation. The incarnation has nothing to do with the Queen's crowning ceremony (that's the coronation), or a carnival and I'm afraid nothing to do with pretty flowers but instead it has everything to do with chilli con carne.
Think about it, what is chilli con carne? It's chilli in mince meat with a tomatoey sauce.
'Con carne', simply means 'in meat' and that's what Christmas is all about. It's about the time that God put meat on and entered onto the world's stage.
God didn't stand back and judge the world, and he didn't wash his hands of us and leave us to destroy ourselves. Instead he became one of us, he joined us. People often say 'how can you believe in God when you've never seen him?' to which I reply that if I lived 2000 years ago I would have done. That's the startling and shocking claim that Christians make and that we remember at this time of year. God became a man.
Don't ever lose the wonder and bafflement that comes from considering how incredible the incarnation is. If it doesn't cause you scratch your head in confusion and bend your knee in worship then I don't think you've understood how world-changing Christmas is.
