Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

December 23, 2007

The Gift of Christmas

Luke 2:1-20

I would like for the text which we read a few moments ago, the familiar Christmas story from Luke's gospel, to stand in the background of our thinking as I preach this morning, but I would also like to offer a couple of other verses from the Gospel of Mark that you will see how I connect near the end.

Mark 1:14-15: "After John was put into prison, Jesus went into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God.'The time has come,' he said,'the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the Gospel.'"

The Chronicles of Narnia are a popular series of books for children. I think with the movie, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and other venues, that many people are familiar with them. I think there are seven. The first being The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in which four British children who have been sent away from London during the Blitz find a strange and enchanted land in the back of a wardrobe in the professor's house. When they go to the back of the wardrobe and arrive in the Land of Narnia, they describe it in a way that has become a little famous, I guess. It is a description that when we hear it, many of us know. When the children arrive in Narnia, they say that Narnia is a land where it is always winter and never Christmas. Is there a better description of bleakness than a place where it is always winter and never Christmas?

To help us visualize what this may mean for just a moment, I want you to think about the difference between winter in December and winter in January. Which is the more popular month for weddings? If you were married in January, it's a great month. I would celebrate your anniversary with you but, typically, you hear people say, "Oh, December weddings are just so beautiful." If someone is engaged in July or August, typically they don't plan a January wedding. More typically, they plan a December wedding. Why? Because the sanctuaries are already decorated. There is already greenery. There are poinsettias. There is holly. There are lights. There are candles. All of these things and they make the sanctuary so beautiful and they make a wedding that takes place in December seem that much prettier. Why not in January? Why couldn't you put all these things up for January? We would know quickly because this is Christmas and January is not. Once Christmas is gone, all of these decorations are gone and it just doesn't look the same. A January winter and a December winter are different.

Take darkness. We say this all winter long, but particularly in January when there are no lights, no parties, no festivities, when it is 7:00 we say, "Is it only 7:00? I can't believe it. It already seems like it is 9:00."

In December, there are places to go. There are people to see. There are gifts to share. There are carols to be sung. There are all kinds of things taking place, but in January, where do you go? What do you do? You just go home, you hunker down, and you wait for morning to come.

Music. What are the great January songs? Are there any songs about peace, hope, and joy that go with January? No, of course, not. They all go with Christmas. They are in December and things like this are what make winter in December better. By the time we get to January, we are longing, longing for Ground Hog Day in February so that we hope we will get a word that winter might soon be over. A December winter day could be the same gray, the same dark, the same damp, as a January day, but in December, it just seems better because we know that we have Christmas to punctuate our lives and we have Christmas to provide light and the message of hope and sing carols of joy. December is much better as winter because Christmas is there.

If you could imagine that all winter was like January, that all winter was like that where it was always winter and never Christmas, we would begin to get an idea of what C. S. Lewis was describing when he described the Land of Narnia. Always winter and never Christmas.

Hold that thought for just a moment because I want to refresh our memories. I know some of you are here for the holiday and have not been here this month. You live in other places. We have guided our worship by thinking about the gifts of the Magi—gold, frankincense, and myrrh. It is easy for us to remember that we give gifts because they brought gifts to the Christ Child.

Another popular way to think about gifts at this time of the year is to remember that Christ is the greatest gift. We think about that verse in John, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son." We look at the Babe of Bethlehem and we look at our manger scenes and our nativity place and we always think about Christ being the great gift. But in the midst of thinking about the gifts of the Magi, and in the midst of thinking about Christ as the great gift, I have one other thought about gift at Christmas and that is that Christmas itself is God's gift to us, not only the birth of his son, and primarily the birth of his son, but also this whole season of Christmas. This is a part of God's great gift to us. This is a part of what God wants us to have.

Now, a couple of illustrations. Generosity. I have a personal conviction that everybody wants to be generous. I really believe that most people in their hearts when they envision themselves at their best, when they envision what they want to be like someday, include a vision of themselves as generous. If you ever dream about winning the lottery, among all the other things that you want to do, I bet that you have imagined giving away money, that you have imagined giving money to people who don't even know who you are or you foresee yourself giving some tremendous tip to the server at a restaurant, a tip that would leave them shocked that they waited on a table and someone gave them that much money because we want to be generous, and we have as a vision of ourselves, what we would be like if we just had it all. We would give it.

I think we often portray people who are not generous as greedy, and I don't think that's right. I think more people are not generous because they are afraid more than any other reason. There are so many things to be afraid of when you give. There is the fear that if I give, I might not have enough. There is the apprehension that if I give to someone maybe they really didn't need it as much as they portrayed themselves. Probably all of us have either had the experience or know someone who has given to someone who begged only to see that person later in circumstances where they clearly didn't need it. We take one incident like that in our lives and we are afraid to give other times because we are afraid someone will take advantage of us.

In many different ways, we are afraid and we are afraid to give, but at Christmas, at Christmas, there is this breath that comes upon us and the barriers of fear seem to melt away and we allow ourselves to give. It might just be change in the kettle or it might be an extra end-of-year donation to a charity or to a church or it might be participating in the Caring Tree which we do to give to families in need. It might be any number of these things, but there is some way that we give ourselves permission for a week or two or three to be more generous than we typically are and to be more like we always wanted to be. There is an excuse. It's Christmas. "Oh, sure, here. It's Christmas. I can be generous." Christmas is a part of God's gift to us to allow us to be what we always wanted to be. That's one.

Think about reconciliation. A big word, but we sing about it in the carols. "God in sinners reconciled," put back together, relationships made whole. It is the theme of everything from cheesy plays to classic stories, but at Christmastime, we think somehow about restoring relationships that have been broken. That maybe because of the spirit of Christ being born into the world, maybe there might be peace between me and someone that I have been at odds with or that perhaps wars might cease. Almost every war has a story of soldiers coming out of their fortifications, coming out of their trenches. People who were locked in grinding, grueling combat during the day would sing Silent Night together and come out and embrace on a silent night. Somewhere there is a vision within our hearts at this time of year, and while sometimes we don't act as readily on the vision of reconciliation as we do in judgment, it's there, and again, if but for the fear, we might do something about it. And there is the hope that maybe, maybe, somehow we could get together again.

Think about greetings. Typically, if we see each other we say, "How are you doing?" or when we part we say, "Come to see me. Oh, we've got to get together. We simply must get together." We say things and we mean them, but we are usually in so much of a hurry that we just let it go by or it's a throw-away line, but at Christmas, we will stop, we will embrace, and we will say something that is from our hearts in a deeper, richer, and fuller place and we will say, "Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! Tell your family'Merry Christmas.' Merry Christmas to you." We mean it more than we have meant it in November and more than we will mean it in January. We truly want to say something kind and good to each other that the rest of the year we don't have the opportunity to say. It's a gift from God to be able to say these things and people not think that you are foolish and for yourself not to think, "Was I a little overboard there?" It's Christmas. You can say those things. You can embrace. You can express your love. Christmas, not only Christ, primarily Christ, but not only Christ, Christmas is a gift from God. When the spirit of God blows across our lives and we catch a glimpse of God's own heart and we catch a glimpse of what God wants for each of our lives, what God wants for the world, in this season, in these few weeks, we see what could be. We see what God wants for us.

Now the passage from Mark. Mark is the only Gospel that doesn't have anything that we associate with Christmas in it. Matthew has the story of Joseph and how the vision comes to him and the Magi. Luke has how the vision comes to Mary and the story of the shepherds. Even John has its soaring poetry that says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." But Mark just kind of BAM, just starts, it's off and running. The first time we encounter Jesus, he says, "After John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. The time has come." He said, "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the Gospel."

So often the way this gets preached is it gets preached as bad news. "Repent. God's coming soon and he's really mad and you better straighten up. Every single one of you better get your lives right." What if this is what Jesus was saying? What if he was saying, "You have the glimpse of what God wants. You have seen the glimpse of what God would like for each of us to have and you have caught a vision for a season of what the world could be if everyone lived under God's guidance. In order to participate in that, why don't you throw the rest of that away? Why don't you throw all those other things that distract you and all those things that are barriers in your life, why don't you get rid of those things? Repent. Get rid of that and believe in the Gospel." Believe in the good news, the good news of God's life for us, of what God would have for us, what God would give us. Maybe Christmas is a time when we best understand what the good news really is. Kindness, generosity, greeting, warm greeting, reconciliation, peace. Maybe it's a time when we realize that war and hate really don't have a place in what God intends for this world. That hate is an acid that eats at the soul. That bitterness is something that will make us ill. That selfishness is a dead end and the way to life is giving. That is such good news. Repent. Get rid of all that other stuff. Repent and take in this life that God wants to give us and maybe we can catch a glimpse of Christmas.

Always winter and never Christmas is a choice that some people make. Christmas all the time. Christmas for eternity is a better one. Repent. The kingdom of God is near. Believe in the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ.

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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