The Christmas that Truly Is…

Luke 2: 1-20

One of the great realities of life is that the human memory is incredibly powerful.  We are our memories – compiled not so much out of our experiences as from what we choose to remember and what we choose to forget.  There is so much more that happens to us than any of us can ever recall.  One of the more humorous (and humbling) aspects of Christmas season is to get with family and friends and go back home again, i.e., share those memories of our family of origin or even of our current family.  No one remembers everything – and it is quite illuminating to see who remembers what.  Perspective is everything – even in memory.

All of this is to say that when we read the gospel accounts of the nativity and see Matthew emphasizing one aspect (the coming of the wise men some time later) and Luke emphasizing another – the Bethlehem narrative as probably related to him by Mary when both lived out their later years in Ephesus – we can then say that these are not false or contradictory reports, but honest human endeavors to remember and to share the narrative of the birth of Christ.  The reality is that though Christmas has become for us a major celebration, it was not so in the early church or for hundreds of years.  The birth of Christ was so insignificant to the early church that the earliest letters and gospel say nothing about it.  Mark omits it entirely and it is nothing more than a side note in two of Paul’s letters as he refers to Jesus being the son of Mary.  What we know of the birth of Christ we know through the shared and interpreted memory of a few.

So it is with our remembering and retelling of Christmas past.  If we are what we remember, then what do our memories of Christmas tell us about ourselves?  For some of us our Christmas memories are warm and wonderful, hot chocolate or cider, cold nights, relaxing days, giving and receiving gifts – but mostly taking the time to share with our family and closest friends.  Some are shared with extended family and friends while others, separated by insurmountable miles, build these with our immediate family.  Some of us remember bath-robed pageants with aluminum foil stars, stumbling and bumbling recreations that inspired as much laughter as sentiment.  I’ll never forget when, as a 5 year old boy, my father would not let me walk barefoot into the church so I, out of all the magi, had on my bathrobe and my favorite shoes, which happened to be boy’s work boots!  Or the time the donkey bit the church custodian’s hand and would not let go until the custodian bit the donkey on the nose!  

Garrison Keillor, in one of his reports on life in Lake Wobegon, was describing all the activity that occurs in the mythical Minnesota town about this time of the year. Keillor admits that many of the pageants and special services are a bit silly, some of them ridiculous. Why would these ordinary people, who have no acting training, not much acting or musical ability, join in these Yuletide theatricals?  "Because," says Keillor, "it's a great story and we just want to be part of it."

Yes, it is a great story – it is the seminal story of our culture and faith – and we do wish to be a part of it – and we wish for others to know and feel it as do we.  These powerful images burned into our psyches and souls inspire us to make memories for our children and/or grandchildren.  We long for our family to have the same images of Christmas as do we.

For others of us Christmas is not so memorable, for Christmas is not immune from human tragedy.  When I was a boy there was a family who attended our church whose father was an alcoholic. One year the father came to see my father, the pastor, a couple of weeks before Christmas.  “I have stopped drinking,” he announced.  “I am not going to ruin another Christmas for my children.”  Sure enough, he did not, for on Christmas Eve he dropped dead from a heart attack.  Years later I talked with his sons and heard horror stories of what had transpired in their home before his demise.  I wondered, how do they see Christmas?  How do they look at this season and have anything more than painful memories of childhood?  That they were anywhere close to normal was a testimony to their mother and to a church which helped and nurtured them to adulthood.

If we are those for whom Christmas was more of a crisis than a celebration, it is not only o.k. to admit that, it is necessary for our emotional and spiritual health.  When we say that Christmas is not always “Hallmark card-perfect,” we are touching upon the essence of the gospel. The coming of Jesus is good news to a world where bad news is always just below the surface – and sometimes reigns.  The birth of the Messiah is about the love and grace of God to a world in need of both.  Maybe the gift most needed this Christmas is to be released from images of Christmas that never were so that we can celebrate the Christmas that truly is.  

The “Christmas that truly is” is based not in glitter and lights, but in the wonder of a God who loves us.  Christmas reminds us that, in the words of an ancient church theologian, "the Lord did not come to make a display ... [God came] to put himself at the disposal of those who needed him and to be manifested according as they could bear it." ( Athanasius, On the Incarnation. ) 

Most of the inhabitants of Bethlehem saw neither star, nor angels, nor did they hear any singing.  It was just another night like any other night, with the wonder of God’s incarnational presence lost in the ordinariness of human existence. The Christmas that truly is resounds around a feed trough, a newborn baby, and the wonder of simple folk who witnessed it all.  That they were never quite sure of what they witnessed is beyond debate – as is the truth that in that moment they encountered the fullness of God such as they or the world had never known.  This “fullness of God” is grace beyond grace, forgiveness, love, and compassion such as the world could not and still does not comprehend.

Another has put it well: Because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit - but surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him we may depart from our anxiety into His peace. ( W. H. Auden, For the Time Being.)

So, join me in celebrating the Christmas that really is.  Gather round the nativity and gaze in wonder and awe before the sacred mystery of life.  Sing carols at the top of your lungs – on key or not – and rejoice that God chose to come among us as one of us.  Rejoice that the last word from God is not judgment but grace, not condemnation but commutation, not death but life – and life eternal.  The “Christmas that really is” ends not in Bethlehem but in Gethsemane where an empty tomb and the promise of angels completes the story.  Nay, the “Christmas that really is” ends not – rather it continues in the hearts and minds of believers, in the multitude of churches with their bath-robed pageants, aluminum foil stars, those stumbling and bumbling recreations of that night when Jesus finally shows up.  The Christmas that really is – no other Christmas can compete!

“To Guide our Feet in the Way of Peace”

Luke 1: 78-79; 3: 1-20

Well – it’s December again and once more we find ourselves wondering what to do with these days from now until Christmas.  Centuries ago the church discovered that these days could best used as a time of preparation for the celebration of the birth of Christ – and so we have the Christian season of Advent.  These Sundays are often used to focus on four themes: peace, joy, hope and love.  So it is that this morning we find ourselves looking at the theme of peace and reflecting upon how we can know the peace that Christ promised.

Most of us come to worship these days with the expectation that the worship service will relate to us and enable us to handle the day-to-day world in which we live.  If a message of peace were ever appropriate, this would seem the time.  Internationally tensions are boiling over, Covid 19 threatens us all, and wars linger around the planet.  Then there is the matter of our own national peace – or lack thereof.  We have greater divisions in our country than many of us can remember, dating back at least to the 1960's.  How can we have peace when we feel so threatened and uneasy?  Many of us come to church hoping and praying to receive a word which will calm our souls, ease our tensions, and allow us to live a somewhat normal and stable life.

The last person we expect to hear from or feel to be relevant to our having peace is John the Baptizer.  Oh, to be sure we know of him.  This kook from the hinterlands shows up preaching repentance and demanding that people give up their soft and comfortable lives in anticipation that the Messiah is coming.  His role is that of the prophet, the one who challenges the status quo – especially us good religious folk.  We've heard those verses where he enumerated what his hearers ought to do: share your coats, share your food, and treat others with justice and equity.  Hmph.  What does John know of peace?

Maybe more than we think.  If we go back to the first chapter of Luke we find the end of his father Zechariah’s song/prophecy which he gave upon hearing that Elizabeth was pregnant with John: “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”   John’s role, it seems, is to prepare for the coming of Jesus by guiding us into the way of peace.  John the Baptizer is the one who is to know what makes for peace.  In other words, we are told that in listening to John we can know how to achieve peace. 

There’s just one slight glitch:  instead of John being soothing and nice, telling us how much God loves us and how valuable we are to God, John strides forward and preaches sermons that sound more like fire and brimstone than they do love and mercy.   The one who is to come, John says, will baptize with fire and will winnow the chaff from the wheat.  To be sure, Luke does take up for John: “With many other exhortations he proclaimed the good news to the people…”  It’s just that what John seems to be saying doesn’t seem to be good news to us – it really seems to be bad news…news of judgment, of fire and burning...not peace at all.

What exactly do we want out of our faith, anyway?  Do we expect it to make us feel good – or do we expect it to challenge us?  A colleague overheard two students having an animated conversation:  “Well, I’m a Methodist, you’re a Catholic; but the main thing is whatever works for you is right, right?”  The other replied: “You don’t know much about Catholics, do you?  My faith is working on me but not necessarily for me.”   (From William Willmon, God Drawing Near.)

“My faith is working on me…but not necessarily for me.”  Ouch.  We’re not Catholics…we tend to be Baptists around here…but we get this.  Real faith, true faith, is not about making us feel good all the time – chocolate bars or exercise work real well in doing that.  Real faith is about transformation, about changing us from the inside out so that we are ready to live in the world that comes with the Messiah.  Real faith is not about a repentance which is remorseful and backward focused, but about a repentance which is about decision making and future oriented.  Real faith understands that it is through transformation in Christ that I am able to become the person who can have peace of any kind – or who can become a peace maker of any kind as well.  

Interestingly enough, Jesus did not tell those whom society labeled as “sinners” to repent.  Jesus told the “sinners” that they were forgiven.  It was the religious people that Jesus called to repentance.  Why?  Could it be that Jesus knew that the sinners already knew that they were sinful…they were reminded of that fact daily.  What they needed was forgiveness.  However, the religious people were a different matter – they did not see themselves as sinners, but as God’s chosen.  They needed to know that repentance was expected and required if they were to be acceptable to God.

How does all of this relate to peace?  Peace is not the absence of hostility, nor is it living life in an “anesthetized state” where in we are immune to the stresses and pressures of the world.  One philosopher has put it well:  “Peace is not the negative conception of anesthesia.  It is a positive feeling which crowns the ‘life and motion’ of the soul.”  Then he adds, “The experience of peace is largely beyond the control of purposes.  It comes as a gift.”  (Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 367-8.)

When we aim at peace we rarely if ever hit it.  However, when we try to be the kind of people and have the kind of society which fosters justice and fairness, then we know peace as the gift of God. Thomas Merton put it best: “A man who is not at peace with himself necessarily projects his interior fighting into the society of those he lives with, and spreads a contagion of conflict all around him.”  If we find ourselves living in the midst of continual turmoil and conflict, maybe we are spreading our interior conflict onto others – rather than being the peace-makers Christ has called us to be.

Both Jesus and John the Baptizer took a similar approach in dealing with matters of peace:  they began with the personal rather than the corporate or international.  This is quite surprising given the situation that they were living in a country occupied by a foreign government.  Yet, this is a truth which has been recognized the world over – through out all times and cultures.  600 years before the time of Christ a Chinese philosopher penned these words:

If there is to be peace in the world, there must be peace in the nations.

If there is to be peace in the nations, there must be peace in the cities.

If there is to be peace in the cities, there must be peace between neighbors.

If there is to be peace between neighbors, there must be peace in the home.

If there is to be peace in the home, there must be peace in the heart. ( Lao-tse – 6^th c. BCE.)

 The only way to achieve personal, soul-full peace is to surrender ourselves to Christ and in so doing allow Christ to fill us with his person, his purpose, and his peace.  Only in self-surrender – of our images of our self, of our desires and goals and wishes, of our hopes and dreams, i.e., of all that we want for our selves and those we love – only in surrender of those that we discover the acceptance and the peace for which we seek.  Tension and stress are mere manifestations of our striving, of our controlling, of our desire to have life be “the way we want it to be.”  It is when we loosen our grip and broaden our hearts that we know the peace and love which come through Jesus the Christ.

When we have the peace of Christ we are then able to accept and love others whom we may have once perceived as the “enemy” or at least as in opposition to our views and way of life. Whether the issue be racism, sexuality, economics or social justice, the answer is clear: when we accept others with the love of Christ we open the doors and smooth the paths that lead to peace, both personal and social.

The path of peace reaches beyond my intellectual beliefs to the person, to the soul of the other and says that relationship is to be valued over our individual perceptions of the “truth.”  Ultimately that is the only way of peace – whether it be in the Middle East, in Africa, in the gangs of our cities, or in our own hearts. For only in our acceptance of the other will we find the “peace” for which we yearn.

Amen.