Sermon for Christmas Eve, December 24, 2007

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS AS A WAY OF LIFE!

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Did you hear about the Starbuck’s drive through in Florida where something very newsworthy happened last week—so newsworthy that national TV cameras were on the scene? It was a good story and very typical of this Christmas season.

It seems that in the morning one of the drivers in the drive up became extremely impatient and was in such a hurry that he honked and gestured to the car in front of him to hurry up with his order and get out of his way.

The driver who was sworn at and was the object of the hostility of the man behind him made an important decision: he decided, in the words of St Paul, not to return evil for evil but to respond to evil with good—and he paid ahead for what the man in the car behind him had ordered!

So when the impatient boor got to the window, his drink had been paid for—and he did something new. You guessed it—he paid for the order for the folks in the car behind him. And that generosity became so contagious it continued well into the day with people getting to the window and being told their coffee had been paid for and being so touched that they continued to do good for other people.

I love that story. It shows me the best part of the reason for the birth of Christ—so we could do a better job of caring for each other and living by the teachings of Christ and learn to really practice kindness and compassion and patience—to treat other people the way we want to be treated.

And what if—what if this spirit of unselfishness and kindness could continue past today? This is a radical idea I know. What if we not only gathered in December to sing about Jesus and to honor his birth midst our humanity, what if we made new and deeper efforts to live like Jesus, to live his ethics of humility and sharing right into the new year?

There was a Charlie Brown cartoon years ago about this. Charlie Brown was saying to Lucy how wonderful it is during this month to see people treating each other well and was wishing for this to go on past December 25 and Lucy said to him, “What are you Charlie Brown, some kind of NUT??”

Well, people who work to follow and imitate the upside down ethics of Jesus Christ have been called nuts and wackoes and other things. But let’s think about what it would mean to keep doing what we have tried to do this month.

My friend, Jim Harnish, at a Methodist Church in Florida tells about a Christmas card he received a couple of years ago with only these words:

BLESSED ARE THOSE WHO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS AS A WAY OF LIFE.

He was struck by that thought and what it might mean. What would it mean to celebrate Christmas as a way of life—to keep going with what we have been doing these four weeks? It might mean some silly things like just keeping our Christmas lights up for the whole year and not storing them any more. We actually have a neighbor who seemed to keep her Christmas tree up well into March or April of the new year. Or keeping the Christmas spirit going might mean just maxing out our credit cards EVERY month and not just during December—not something I recommend at all!

What do you think it would mean if we celebrate the good news and the best practices of Christmas as a way of life?

I think it might mean that we start to practice, year round, the kindness of the man in the Starbucks drive up line—that when someone treats us wrongly we resist the temptation to just hit back harder, that we refuse to return evil for evil but that we do what our book tells us—let love and compassion guide our lives instead of being controlled by the actions of someone else. It is difficult and it works better in personal relations than in international relations and it does not always “work” in personal relations, but think about letting your life be guided by kindness instead of revenge and see what that might be like.

The second thing it might mean to celebrate Christmas as a way of life is that the generosity we practice at Christmas might become a year round posture—a year round habit. Think about that—a posture of how can I do something good and gracious for others instead of just focusing on me. It is not new for most of us and Christmas really lets us practice that posture of giving more consistently. AND we know how good it feels to give during this time. Jesus knew that and he told it to us—there is more joy and blessing in giving than in receiving.

I was out Friday morning on a coffee break from writing my three sermons of this week and I had taken a coffee gift card to the tailor we use near the coffee shop and I ran into one of our members who with her boss was also delivering presents to some of their clients. We talked together about how fulfilling it is to do something good for someone else—how good it feels to give and share. What if we kept that spirit of unselfishness, that posture of giving back throughout the whole new year of 2008? What if we let 2008 be the year we practiced the virtues of Christ—the virtues of Christmas as a way of life.

If we did we would do a couple of other things. We would remember that what is important about this season are the relationships—the time with people we care about, time with loved ones and friends. Don’t we try and make time this season to be with people we care for? Don’t we look forward to spending time with loved ones? How well do we do at that the rest of the year—finding love and nourishment in relationships and not in what we own or wear or have in the bank?

Bill McKibben in his little book The Hundred Dollar Christmas tells about the change in his family over the years when they decided to limit the money they would spend each December for stuff and instead give to each other gifts of time and make some things together and find the real joy in being with people who are cherished and vital to us. We still have some copies available for you to use for next year.

The Christmas style of life will mean that we take time for and with each other during the year—people we can laugh with and be honest with and even sometime shed a tear with and remember with.

When we look at the original story of the first Christmas we will do two other things. We will remember and care for the least and the last and the vulnerable—the people who in the eyes of a materialistic world are the nobodies, the ones with no status and who are thought not to belong. Those folks were very prominent in the first Christmas. Do you know who they were? They were the shepherds—the very first visitors to see the Christ child. Shepherds were the lowest of the low class in ancient times. They were dirty, smelly; they associated with those dumb sheep. They had absolutely no status. And Luke tells us that it was to those nobodies, those fringe people, where the angels first appeared to tell of the good news of Christ. AND Mary has already said in her song—the magnificat—that God is more concerned about them than about those who are smug and powerful and insensitive to others

If we keep Christmas as a way of life, we will pay more attention to the neediest of the needy and we will do more than see them during this season, we will be sure there is a chance for them to survive and thrive and have the chances some of us have had.

Finally to keep Christmas, to keep the insights of Christmas as a way of life, we will look for God in some different places. Most of us, when we look for God, don’t look low enough. We look for God in the holy places and God is there—in the music, the prayers, the beauty of the flowers and the candles. AND—God is in the secular and the worldly and the earthiness of life.

Martin Luther father of the Protestant reformation knew this. He said, if he had been told the savior, the Messiah had been born, he would have gone right to the temple where all the priests were gathered because surely that is where God would show up. No, Luther said, look at the surprise, the scandal of a God who shows up in a feeding trough among the animals—born to a working class couple in an out of the way part of the world—a God who says in that event. I am with you everywhere you are and most of the time you miss me because you do not expect me in the ordinary and the humble and the everyday places of your life.

We will look a little lower for God if we learn from the Christmas story and keep it as a way of life.

Generosity, kindness, relationships, looking for God in the humblest persons and humblest places—the message of Christ and the message of Christmas. Can we this year adopt that message and those practices beyond just the month of December and to make them into our way/Christ’s way of life year round?

Will you pray with me?

God, we thank you for the gift of the Christ child this season of Christmas, and we remember what it is that makes this our favorite time of year—the kindness we practice, the relationships we treasure, the joy that comes from giving and sharing with others. Help us carry those practices of Christ’s message into the new year and to make them a way of life.

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