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Sunday, December 26, 2010
Keeping Christmas as a Way of Life
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
The story began in one of the most out of the way places. A young couple, she was fourteen, he was a little older, were traveling in the last weeks of her pregnancy. They were traveling because of a political decision to hold a census. The birth was attended by other poor people who heard about it from, what they said was, a chorus of angels.
The stories about the new baby differ. One story says the couple then became immigrants leaving immediately for Egypt to avoid the wholesale slaughter of male children in the region where the child was born. The other story says that the family, following the tenets of their faith, brought the child, after a few weeks, to the temple in Jerusalem.
We know that they were a poor family because the offering they brought was the offering of the poor – two small doves. They came to the temple to dedicate him to God, and there, a wizened old man gently took the baby from them, said a prayer of thanks to God, and told the mother that this child was destined for the rise and fall of many. He said that the man he would become would generate much opposition, and conflict, and that sorrow, like a sword, would pierce the mother’s heart.
The mother pondered all this, as she had the words from the shepherds some weeks earlier.
The couple raised their son steadfastly in their faith along with his brothers and sisters. They were faithful observers of the best of their faith tradition and took him to the synagogue each Sabbath and also took him to Jerusalem twice a year as their faith prescribed.
He was a bright, curious and precocious child. On one of the visits to Jerusalem for the Passover, the twelve year old Yeshua got lost. When they found him he was in the temple sitting among the teachers, confounding them with his questions and with his own answers.
He continued to grow in wisdom and in faith, and in his relationship with God, his family and friends. He also became a construction worker, a builder like his father, and probably worked hard each day in the town of Sepphoris four miles from Nazareth.
When he was thirty, he went to his cousin John who had started a renewal movement, asking people to leave their, going through the motions rituals, and to turn closer to God. He was baptized as a sign of taking a new direction. He went into the desert for many days to pray and listen to God and to discern what God needed him to do.
He returned to begin his itinerant ministry of healing and teaching and inviting people to the best of their faith. He forgave people’s sins, he healed their brokenness. He was so full of grace and love that people would follow him with intense devotion, and they would want to just touch his garment to make them feel better.
He took time for each person and listened to each one intently. He welcomed everyone, even the misfits, the outcasts, and the so called “inferior” persons. He taught kindness and compassion and justice through his words and through his life.
He said that God was bigger than they thought. God was more gracious and compassionate than they thought. He still says that. Where other spiritual leaders wanted to build barriers between the righteous people and the “other’ people, Yeshua wanted to build bridges.
He always began with grace. He said to people, You are forgiven and now you are to be forgiving.
He asked people to treat each other the way we would want to be treated. He taught that God accepts us just the way we are and that God loves us to much to leave us this way.
He did not ask people to subscribe to a dogma or a doctrine like the virgin birth or immaculate conception. He simply asked people to follow him, to walk alongside him and to learn and be formed by him. He still does. He invited, to his movement, those who were struggling hard and carrying heavy loads. I will give you peace and rest, he said.
He also said, I will teach you the way to the most fulfilling life there is, and it does not come from grabbing and grubbing. It comes from service to others and from getting yourself out of the way.
He even said that he was the light of the world and that whoever follows him would not live in darkness but would have the light of life. He was willing to speak the truth to those in power, political power and religious power, just as the prophets had before him. In fact he saw himself as a prophet, among other roles.
His willingness to confront hypocrisy, self righteousness and empty ritual became such a threat to those entrenched that they killed him and they thought they had gotten rid of him. but God had other ideas and God confirmed that this One was the messiah, the one sent from God. Now 2 billion human beings join us tonight in celebrating his birth, the birth of the light of the world. Especially during this season, we try our best to live by his teachings of kindness and forgiveness, unselfishness and generosity, and compassion for every person.
We, who identify ourselves as followers of the way, followers of His way, try our best to live this way all year long, but we work on it especially in the month that we celebrate his birth.
What if, what if we could keep it going? What if we could live more like him into the New Year for a while longer?
What if we can keep inviting others, as his first followers did? What if we can invite others to come and see that we think we have found the one who is the guide, THE Teacher, the Savior who can save us from our empty feelings that make us say, “Is this all there is?”
What if we can live the words of the old hymns that were the favorites of Martin Luther King: Precious Lord Take my Hand and lead me on, lead me on to the best life possible. Or the other hymn, Just a Closer Walk with Thee—a closer walk.
Can we celebrate this spirit of Christmas as a way of living, celebrate it past December 25?
A few years ago it was the day after Christmas. People were going back to work. The bus was picking up some workers with disabilities and taking them to work. One of the men on the bus began to sing quietly, “Silent night, holy night.”
One of the other bus riders shouted, Be quiet. That was yesterday. That’s all over now.
Someone else nearby, someone perhaps, wiser, said softly, O no. It’s not over. It’s just beginning.
Is that true? Can we make that true this Christmas?