As preached at Albemarle Road Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, NC today, November 25, 2012.
I'll try to add the audio later.
Isaiah 40:1-5
Luke 2:4-7
I grew up in this church and in
the scout troop. A favorite pastime of camping trips was the telling of stories
and jokes. A favorite form of torture
for our leaders was joining in this time. Now and then, when we had a whole new
batch of young scouts, Mr. White would stand up and begin telling a joke about
a man who was building a house. When the
man was finished, he had a brick left over. Mr. White would then scratch his
head, look very apologetic and confess that as he was getting older it was
harder and harder to remember what that man did with the brick. The young scouts would be very confused and
feel sorry for him. Mr. Blackmon would
explain it was a symptom of “Old Timers” disease and we’d go on telling
jokes. Mr. White’s joke never went over
well.
Mr. Blackmon though, had a great
joke. He’d tell one where a grumpy old
man was riding a train with a young snarky woman with a poodle. The old man was chomping happily on a very
large pickle. The young woman became
irate as his chomping and his pickle were disturbing her sensitive poodle. He refused a number of times to discard it in
the trash. Finally, the irate woman grabs the pickle and tosses it out of the
window of the train, very satisfied till he retaliates by tossing her poodle
out. As they arrive at the next station
and get off the train, the poodle catches up.
And of course, in his mouth, he’s got the... The BRICK! Think about it.
;-)
The joke relies on your
expectations. It’s funny precisely
because it’s unexpected. God is more than anything, master of the
unexpected. The birth of Christ isn’t so
miraculous, amazing or funny because it happened and happens in the midst of a
historical or seasonal lull. It happens instead of what was and what IS
expected. The Jews prophesized,
expected, and yearned for a savior, particularly under Roman rule, but many other
times in history too. It’s why we read Isaiah each year. Christ’s coming, life, and death are foretold
long before he arrives. But as we’re
reminded so often, no one expected it in a manger or to such unlikely young
parents or RIGHT THEN. No red carpet, no royal treatment, not even a bedroom.
They didn’t expect a baby, they expected a king. His entrance to Jerusalem on a donkey much
later is no different. All the best and
most important parts of scripture can be finished not with ‘Amen,’ but with, “SURPRISE!”
Christmas
historically replaced the pagan winter solstice. It’s no accident. Church leaders wanted to replace the major
pagan parties of spring and winter solstice with Easter and Christmas. Time and
time again, we can almost hear God in the background nudging us, “See what I
did there? Betcha didn’t see that one coming.”
Wink, wink. Our God is the God of the unexpected, the interruption.
Unfortunately,
too often, we do it right back. (Pause) We love to swoop in and interrupt what
God is up to with our own agenda, our own punch line. If ever there was a human punch line that
fell flat, it’s the way we celebrate Christmas in a way in which we replace the
anticipation of the birth of our savior with the anticipation of giving and
receiving of material goods. And there’s some merit to the metaphor of the
wisemen bringing gifts to Jesus and us exchanging gifts. It’s symbolic. But much of our season of anticipation, which
we call Advent, has shifted the focus from God’s gift to our gifts. We prepare our homes for guests and
parties. We prepare a tree as a landing
zone for presents. We prepare our church
for visitors and those returning home. We prepare our minds with music we love.
And none of that is wrong or bad. In fact, Scripture encourages much of that. But
far too often, we don’t prepare our hearts for the gift that Christ is to our
lives.
There’s
a comedian who points out how much we forget how disconnected we are. As he
says, “And kids eat chocolate eggs at Easter because the chocolate reminds us
of the wood of the cross… Noooo. And the bunnies remind us of the rabbit holes
where the cross was stuck in the ground… Noooo.
And at Christmas, Jesus was born to a large jolly guy in a red suit… of
COURSE not. No fir trees in Nazareth.” He reminds us that eggs and bunnies were
pagan symbols of fertility and trees were symbols of growth and nature and
harvest, not of Jesus and resurrection and Christianity. When we find our
meaning in traditions instead of building traditions that focus on remembering
meaning, we lose something very important.
If
you really wanna start a fight in a church, forget about recent changes in the
PC(USA). I have an idea. Let’s have people sit on this side of the
sanctuary if they wanna hear Christmas music on the radio before Thanksgiving
and people over here if they insist on waiting till after. Not that I think I
could get any of you to change seats. We
will NOT do that. Countless times, I’ve
been a part of conversations at this time of year where people share their
thoughts on preparing for the holidays. “It’s
not really Christmas until…” When is it “Christmas-y” to you? Here in the
South, outdoor Christmas lights can be a year-round thing, so that’s not always
the best indication. For some, the first cold weather or snowfall. For some, the first Christmas carol, or
watching White Christmas or Miracle on 34th Street or Rudolph. For some, it’s that first holiday batch of
cookies or when their family arrives in town or getting the Christmas tree
up. For my mom, it was when we finally
read the Luke passage that Charles Schulz insisted be a part of the Charlie
Brown Christmas special. “As shepherds
kept watch ore their flocks by night…”
How
do we prepare our hearts
for the coming of Christmas, the coming of Christ? Now you might suspect I have
some suggestions. I’ve thought a bit
about this God and Jesus subject. I even took a few classes on it in school.
Jesus says, and I think I agree, we should always be prepared. Prepared as
servants waiting for the aster of the house to come home.
It
is preparation and anticipation as much as anything as human beings that gives
us meaning. We spend Lent preparing for
Easter. Palm Sunday prepares us for Holy
Week. Advent is our preparation for
Christmas. We prepare not a footbridge
or hiking trail for the king to arrive, for the prince of peace to enter. We prepare a highway, we prepare a
runway. We prepare because it sets a
priority in our lives. All else comes
after. Preparation is the ultimate in priority-setting. Guests are important.
Their comfort and happiness is above our own, so we change things. We pick up
the house more because we want them to be more comfortable than how we live
each day. We kick the kids out of beds
onto couches and floors and sleeping bags because grandma and grandpa and
uncles and aunts are a priority. We cook
food we know others love because they are the priority. Parents spend hours wrapping gifts for
children because their happiness and joy and memories mean more to them than a
few hours of sleep.
My
heart is warmed when I see people take items to the angel tree or fill shoe
boxes for Operation Christmas child or see folks make plans to visit the
homebound and lonely relatives. Making time for such things in the midst of the
busiest time of year shows a priority for love, for the one who taught us that
we will be known as his followers when we have love for one another. Taking time
every single day for three weeks to read from an advent calendar, from
scripture, with your family, with children, taking time to tell the story, to
build an anticipation, to make your faith and passing on that faith a priority…
that is Advent in its most pure form.
Many
people will cringe at the greeting, “Happy holidays.” Others will delight in having brothers and
sisters who share the faith in which Jesus was raised and other
traditions. I won’t ask you to divide
the sanctuary on that one either. But, after all, the wisemen were neither Jews
nor Christians and the innkeeper who loaned the stable may have been a Roman. I
won’t ask you to “remember the reason for the season” or the “real gift of
Christmas,” and abandon all your favorite traditions. I will challenge you that if there isn’t room
in your traditions for truly anticipating the Christ child, if your faith and
your savior aren’t the obvious priority amongst your preparations, you should take
some time to make at least as much room in your lives as an innkeeper once did.
Years
ago, I heard a story, very likely from Ron.
A Church put on a nativity play and all the children participated, including
one little boy who was mentally handicapped.
The little boy was very friendly, very kind and well-loved. And he wanted very much to be a part of this
play. He wanted to have lines. So those in charge made him one of several
innkeepers who would turn Mary and Joseph away.
His only line was, “There is no room here!” It was a small line, and he delivered it
perfectly and with enthusiasm at each practice, but the adults and his parents
all held their breath on the night of the show.
When Mary and Joseph arrived and asked if they had a place for them to
stay, he delivered his line perfectly in a booming voice. “There is no room here!” And as Mary and Joseph turned to walk away
very disappointed, his lip quivered and he nearly burst into tears. And he shouted after them, “Oh come on
in! We can make room for you, Jesus!”
Can
we
make room?
So
maybe, just maybe, you can find a more fitting place in your home and your
heart, so it begins to look a little more like Christmas than just… a little
more like a holiday. Maybe, as we
celebrate Advent each week this year, you can make hope, peace, joy, and love a
part of your lives… and all our traditions can reflect the anticipation we
share for the birth of a child, Emanuel, God with us.
Charge: Grinch, Whoville, Sang and Celebrated. Without the presents, their Christmas looked
a lot like Thanksgiving. The family
gathering, the food, thankful for all they did have. Would your Christmas look so much like
Thanksgiving, if all the presents were taken? Maybe this year, your Advent can
look more like the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving, thankful for all your
blessings and the most special gift of all.
