The Christmas story really is a simple one, isn’t it? The plot isn’t complicated. A limited number of characters: Mary, Joseph, a baby, an angel, some shepherds. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that the Bethlehem story is so plain that not only the shepherds but almost the sheep could understand it!

So it strikes me as rather odd that something so plain, so simple, could at the same time be so risky.

We live in a society that I often call risk-averse. We do everything we possible can to insulate ourselves from risk:

• we buy insurance for protection from every unseen possibility
• we invest our money, trying for the highest possible rate of return but wanting a very low risk of losing it
• in so many ways we live by legislation, trying to legislate away the risks in our lives

So whenever anything difficult happens: a product fails, a manufacturer wasn’t careful, a street corner has an accident, a building permit is stretched…we end up with new legislation. The law books grow thicker and thicker, and we feel like we have reduced the risk of something unexpected and negative happening.

Sometimes we feel that to be a Christian in this time and place in U.S. history is sort of risky too. We like to think we are under persecution. The stories come out:

• last year there was the Sea- Tac Airport controversy, when the authorities yanked out the Christmas trees on display because…well, they were “Christ-mas” trees.
• this year there are many similar stories: At Southwestern Oklahoma State University, apparently an overzealous supervisor told some staff not to use the word “Christmas” in oral or written form, and to remove it from any office decorations. Some irate staff members showed up the next day wearing rather pointed buttons saying “Merry Christmas.”

Personally, I tend to think we have more important things to worry about. But regardless, these kinds of things make American Christians feel persecuted at some level, like it might be risky to be a Christian. We have no idea, of course, what persecution really looks like.

Several years ago now, I was in the interior of China. I spent an evening with an 80-year old pastor, hearing him talk about the time of the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao, and hearing how often he was arrested, jailed, beaten, and had his house taken away for simply meeting like we are right now, or talking about Jesus.

When I left the dinner that evening, it was dark outside, and I felt a little dark inside from these hard stories. We drove to the outskirts of the city, and turned off into a battered area that had no streetlights. We were going to visit a group of Christians who met “underground,” without the authority of the government. We had to cut the lights, and huddle in the car with our coats pulled up around our necks. If neighbors observed us gathering, they would phone the authorities and there would be big trouble. The car stopped in the middle of a dark alley. We hustled out, into the back of a dark building, and down a dark hallway. It was very clear that to be a Christian there was truly risky.

Finally, in the interior of this dark building, a door swung open. light streamed out! Chinese Christian brothers and sisters welcomed us, clapping and dancing and singing with joy. I will never forget the contrast of the dark and the light. For all of the oppression of dark stories, dark streets and dark fears, none of the darkness was able to dispel the bright light that was burning inside these people who followed Jesus Christ.

Sometimes following Christ is truly risky business.

But what about for God? It strikes me that the God of heaven and earth took a far greater risk than we often understand in choosing to act in the way He did. The world had become a dark, dark place. The people God had made were following after everything but Him, perverting the richness of life, serving other gods by whatever name, living in fear.

In love…not out of obligation, but in love, God chose to effect a rescue operation. To save his people. How would he act? By coming in Jesus. By living, by dying, by defeating death. Was it risky?

What if it failed? What if Herod or Caesar or something else got in the way? there was no back-up plan. If something went awry, there was no “Plan B.”

What if the very people whom Christ was coming to save…rejected Him? Many did. Many do.

What if Jesus was killed? What would happen? Would God somehow start over?

Knowing every risk…God said yes.

Christ came here, as much to save us as to save those who lived 2000 years ago. And risking everything, absorbing the worst evil and darkness the world could conjure up, Jesus swung open a great door which can never be shut. Light poured out. It continues to pour out.

Amen.