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Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
Merry Christmas to you! At this hour of the evening of Christmas Eve there is still a GREAT air of anticipation and expectation, isn’t there? Anticipation of big things yet to come this evening… and tomorrow…
And yet our anticipation tonight might depend a bit on our age…
One of the great blessings we have been given by God as a Congregation is the diversity of ages represented by all of us … from nursing children … to many who are in their 90’s.
And so, on one hand we have children anticipating a Christmas, the number of which they can count on one hand …and others who have seen many, many in their days.
Now, we don’t want to take anything away from the celebration of Easter, Jesus Resurrection from the dead … and the promise of our own … as it truly is the Highest Celebration in the Church …
But, for a lot of reasons, Christmas seems to be a more singular event both in our homes and even in our Church… with more strongly held customs and traditions.
Few of us have “Easter Trees” or go door-to-door “Easter Caroling” and how many of us put up lights and decorations for Easter and leave them up for more than a month??
One difficulty is … the season of Lent just before Easter sets a more somber tone than the Season of Advent.
And … apart from the symbol of the cross at Easter … Christmas is much more steeped in musical and visual tradition, especially in our homes, and again, even in our churches. We decorate for Easter, but nothing like we do at Christmas.
And so, this evening, we’d like to suggest something. Suggest that all this wonderful tradition connected with Christmas is not just due to commercialization or coincidence. But, in fact, all this tradition is part of God’s plan for us.
Lately, my devotional time has been taking me through the third Book of the Bible, the Book of Leviticus. Not my favorite book … but throughout that book… time and time again … God speaks through Moses about certain things that the people must to do … and then He says, “This will be a lasting ordinance for you… for you and for your children and for all who live within your gates.”
A lasting ordinance … like, in those days, the celebration of the Passover. Something God ordered to be held every year on the 15th day of the first month of the Jewish calendar…
The Passover celebration was what Jesus was doing on the night He was betrayed. It was marked by a remembrance dinner held by each family on the occasion of God’s deliverance of the Children of Israel from bondage in Egypt.
Its celebration took the same form… every year. A script was recited by members of the family that never changed… except for the roles the children played as they got older.
And so … this year’s Passover would have been identical to the one the Father of the family celebrated when he was growing up in his own father’s house.
And yet, don’t our Christmas celebrations have much the same traditional feel? Personally, we have a gold bell ornament that’s been on every Christmas tree I’ve known since I was very young. We have a wedding ornament. Chapin’s first Christmas ornament. There are some other ancient ornaments we hang every year out of tradition … that probably go back two or more generations.
My personalized red, white and green wool Christmas stocking that was knit by my mother when I was pretty small is identical to the personalized ones she knit that now hang in my brothers’ homes. Seeing them each year takes us back to when they all hung on a mantle together.
My family’s not unique … who would go out and buy completely new decorations every year? There’s carry over from year to year, generation to generation. And in the process some things become attached to special people or times in our lives. And so, those things become cherished… as those people or times are cherished.
That’s part of our make-up as human beings… and who would know better than our Creator?
And what better occasion to have all this tradition centered on home and family … than on Christmas…when God had Mary deliver His love in person into this world on that first Christmas night?
However, God didn’t designate Christmas to take the role of the Jewish Passover in the Christian tradition. There is no levitical direction from God to observe and celebrate Christmas, like He had given for the Passover.
And there’s no astronomical way to set the date for Christmas as there is for the Passover.
In fact, in the ancient Christian church, Christmas was no big deal. The Celebration of Epiphany, the visit of the wise men, eclipsed the event of Jesus’ birth for centuries.
But we live in this century…with traditions surrounding the celebration of Christmas that are many, many centuries old. So, what are we going to do with those traditions this evening?
We’ll submit there are a couple of biblical choices to that question. On the one hand … we may want to take the path that Mary herself chose… and treasure up all the events of this day and the next… and ponder them in our hearts.
Or we may wish to take the path chosen by the shepherds that first Christmas … and make a lot of noise … and tell everyone we meet about what we have seen and heard.
Right now, at this moment … here in church … we’re going down Mary’s Path, pondering God’s love for us …
But in a few minutes we’ll be taking the shepherds path … sharing together the witness of our faith as we proclaim the birth of Christ in word and song.
And so, think about this: as you go home tonight … the lights in and on your house announce that the people who live here hold this Christmas night to be special ... something they feel worth proclaiming to the world.
The ornaments, the decorations … some of those things we might best call “artifacts”… things that decorate the inside of your home… speak not only to the visitor … but also to your own soul about how You… and Christmas… and how God’s reign in your heart… all come together. Things that are personal.
And then there’s the gifts. This is usually a taboo area for preachers, but hear this out. Although we may all feel that the celebration of this holiday has become too commercialized and too promoted, much of that because we live in a consumption-driven economy … think about this…
Let’s guess … at least 80 to 90 percent or more of the things purchased since black Friday, either on-line, or in stores or from catalogues … you name it … are not intended for the use or the consumption of the ones actually purchasing those things…
People are buying gifts … to express their feelings … their love… for others. That’s all together different from the forms of conspicuous consumption we often see where the purchaser is buying solely for themselves.
It has to say something when people will get up at ungodly hours, wait in interminable lines … put up with some rather barbaric behaviors by others… just to get “the right thing” for someone else.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the true reason for Christmas is being honored in all that buying … but, we might argue, that it does reflect that there is a tarnished Image of God in all of us. And that in our society… people can put others before themselves … and that people can and do make sacrifices for others … out of love.
At Christmas, even in secular society, we see a display of Love… not hate. That alone is heartening. Taking people from showing human love to appreciating God’s love is by far a much smaller jump … than trying to reach people who are devising vengeance and living to hate.
And so … this Christmas … we don’t worship the traditions, we don’t let the presents take the place of Jesus in the manger … but, we let our souls ponder the immensity of God’s love.
And when we do, we find God’s Spirit within us helping us to share that love of God with others… starting with those closest to us.
Why? Because that’s what God did that first Christmas. And we are His children. And so, He’s relying on us to carry on the Family tradition. How else will His world truly come to know Him?
So, take Him home with you tonight … as you Celebrate … and in Him, you live all for Jesus,
In the name of Him who came and is Coming … Christ the Lord. Amen.
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