Sermon for Sunday, December 24, 2005THE GIFT WE CAN GIVE TO CHRIST byRev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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We have heard these verses about the first Christmas so often that it is possible for them to just pass over us and to get lost in all the other things there are to think about. Unless we stop and put ourselves in the Christmas story and let it engage us right now. Two children did that in the Christmas pageant at two different churches a while back. These boys each played the part of the innkeeper – a role that is not in the Bible as we said last week, but one it is easy to imagine. One 7 year old boy in his innkeeper role could not contain his enthusiasm for Christmas and when the children playing the part of Mary and Joseph knocked on the door of the inn, he flung open the door and shouted enthusiastically, “Come right in! I have been expecting you!” The other church had a six year old playing the innkeeper’s role and he found himself very engaged in this powerful story of Jesus birth, so fully engaged that after he had told the holy couple that there was no room for them and they had turned away sadly to look for a different place, he shouted out after them: “Come back Joseph! You can have my room!” And he took the pageant in a different direction because he did what God might ask us to do also – he put himself into it and saw that it was not just a story from long ago but one where God asks some things of us right now today. The best example of someone putting themselves into the story and making it come alive right now comes from Linda McCoy, one of the ministers at St. Luke’s United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. Linda is a very good friend of Cindy Bates and former colleague when Cindy was one of the ministers in that church. Linda tells the story of two Americans who were in Russia in 1994. They had been invited by the government to teach morals and ethics in several places – in prisons, in businesses, in fire departments and police departments and in a large orphanage. During December 1994 the two Americans were visiting the orphanage and they told the children the story of Christmas from the Bible. The children heard all about how Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem and finding no room in the inn, found a place in a stable and placed the baby Jesus in a manger, a feeding trough for the animals. Linda says, the children were enthralled with the story – one that was new to almost all of them-and after it was over, they were given a small piece of cardboard to make a manger and some scraps of paper to make straw for the manger. The American visitors had some pieces of cloth for the children to use to make a blanket, and some felt material to be fashioned into the baby Jesus. The adults walked among the children as they were each making their own version of the nativity scene, just to see if they needed any help. Everything was gong well, until they got to the table where a little six-year-old named Misha was sitting. As the visiting Americans looked into the manger Misha had made, they was surprised to see instead of just one baby in the manger, there were two babies. The translator was quickly summoned and Misha was asked about his manger scene and why there were two babies in the manger. Little Misha, with his arms crossed in front of him, began to retell the story he had heard for the first time just a few moments ago. He had all the events down accurately until he got to the part where Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger. It was then he began to adlib and made up his own ending to the story. Here is his version of the story. “When Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no mama and no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay. So then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t stay with him because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much. So I thought about what I had that I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift. So I asked Jesus, ‘If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?’ And Jesus said, that would be the best gift anybody ever gave him. So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him – for always.” I think we can learn so much from six-year-old Misha. We probably think of the drummer boy song where the little boy gives what he has to give—a concert on his drum. Or we think of the Christmas song where the child thinks, if I were a shepherd I could bring Christ a lamb. But poor as I am, the best gift I can give is the gift of my heart, the gift of myself. I like the last line about Jesus inviting Misha and each of us to stay with him, to stay with him not just for a few days during December, not just on Christmas eve or Christmas morning but to stay with him after we have unwrapped all the presents and collected all the wrapping paper and eaten our fill and have drunk up all the eggnog and even after we have taken advantage on December 26 of all the 40% off sales. What would it mean to stay with Jesus and even to keep him warm after all of that is over? I think it means doing what he asks us to do in his name: to care for the poor, to reach out to the lonely, to help people get back on their feet, to welcome the outcast, to do what he would do, to be Christ’s hands and feet and heart in this time and place. The first week of January our church will be hosting, for a week, several homeless families in our building overnight. They will be in training programs during the day and will be having dinner here and sleeping here at night. We will do this one week every quarter and we still need some helpers and volunteers to make this work. I know those folks will come forward. This program is part of the Interfaith Hospitality Network and we are the first congregation in Douglas County to join up though there are several churches in Denver who belong. I think this and our many other outreach programs are some of the ways that we can stay with Jesus after this Christmas holiday and can do what little Misha says, to keep Jesus warm. Esther Resler of our congregation told me about their son Doug who is a Presbyterian minister in another town and whose congregation also joined this program. Doug felt that he had to exert a little pastoral influence to persuade the church it was the right thing to do with their building during the week. When the first family came to stay, the couple introduced themselves to Doug and said to him, “Pastor, just so you will feel that this is the right thing and a good thing, we want you to know our names right away. Our names are Mary and Joseph.” What can we do after tonight and after tomorrow to, in little Misha’s words, to stay with Jesus and keep him feeling warm? Do you feel any nudges from God on this holy night about what you can do? Here are some clues from a poem by theologian Howard Thurman. We will read this poem together tomorrow morning also in our one Christmas day service:
I think if we do that we will be keeping Christmas and staying with Jesus and truly warming his heart. Amen |
