CHRISTMAS

Over the years we all have heard people attempt to define the real meaning of Christmas. Yet, the meaning of Christmas is so deep and so personal words truly fail when we try to get at the root of this celebration. That does not mean we do not make an effort to explain the truly unexplainable. Thus:

A friend of mine sent me a story that reminded me about the meaning of Christmas, or at least one of the many meanings of Christmas – it being quite difficult to make the meaning of Christmas so concise. In truth the story has nothing to do with Christmas and yet it has everything to do with the meaning of Christmas.

The story is about two brothers who lived on adjoining properties but who were at odds with each so much so that one brother brought in a bulldozer to create a creek between their properties. The other brother decided to do the other one better by hiring a carpenter, who providentially appeared on the scene, to build an eight-foot fence alongside the creek so that he would see neither his brother’s face nor his place anymore.

Both brothers were away for the day. The carpenter worked all day on into sunset and built not a fence but a bridge spanning the creek. When the brothers returned to their homes that evening, they were shocked, especially the creek builder who, before his brother could utter a word, crossed the bridge, extended his hand in friendship and praised his brother for such an act of brotherhood. When the carpenter turned to leave, both brothers asked him to stay as they had more work for him. The carpenter thanked them but said he had to go as he had more bridges to build.

Christmas, in more ways than one, is the celebration of the birth of The Carpenter among us. Jesus came to build bridges where humanity has built creeks and walls and fences. Jesus came to remind us that we are all brothers and sisters one to another no matter who we are, where we live, the color of our skin or anything else that might differentiate us one from another. We are all God’s children and nothing we say or do will ever change that, creeks, rivers and oceans, walls and fences notwithstanding.

Christmas and our Christian faith is all about building bridges where there are fences, building bridges where there is a gulf. Christmas is about bringing us back together where we have drifted apart. Christmas is about being the first one to cross to the other side to bring reconciliation and peace. Christmas is about being willing and daring to build the bridge and take the first step.

Like Jesus we are all called to be carpenters. That is the mission and that is the ministry Jesus has given to us and which we, in and through our baptism, have accepted. It is neither an easy mission nor often a pleasant ministry to fulfill as we have all discovered over the years. But it is a wonderful, joyful and exhilarating opportunity to live the meaning of Christmas each and every day of our lives. May we accept it and dare to live it to the fullest.

Merry Christmas.

WHAT IF THEY CANCELLED CHRISTMAS?

They won’t, of course. The Powers Who Are, whoever they are, would never, ever cancel Christmas. What would we do from Halloween until after all the After Christmas Sales? The world’s economy would take a nosedive. Heaven forbid! Or what if Christmas became just like Easter, a day so downplayed that if it were not for cards, candy and lamb, it would be no different than any other Sunday of the year? No, as long as there is commerce, there will be Christmas.

This is not to bewail and bemoan what has become of Christmas because The Powers Who Are do not control Christmas. They may have blackmailed some merchants into emphasizing the word “Christmas” instead of “Holiday”, but that did not alter the truth that Christmas for all intents and purposes for most people, especially the merchants and The Powers Who Are, is a holiday and not a holyday. The holiday can be cancelled. The holyday cannot.

So They can cancel the holiday. We will celebrate the holyday. We will celebrate it, much to The Powers’ delight, by giving and receiving material gifts, tangible signs of what this holyday is all about, namely, God’s love for us which we manifest by our love for another, for others. Yet, as limited as my observation honestly is, I would assert that we holyday celebrators are altering the manner in which we are demonstrating our love, altering it in such a way as to make the secular holiday almost into a holyday.

What we are doing is giving material gifts in the name of those we love to those who truly need to receive those gifts. Each of our daughters has told us that the best gift they received from us last year, and I am sure will be this year, was the one we gave in each of their names to those in need in our community and in our world. I have been the recipient of many such gifts and I am thankful. They make Christmas truly a holyday.

For many, many people, and not just The Powers Who Are, Christmas is a once-a-year holiday. For us, for you and for me, Christmas is an every-day-in-the-year holyday that we celebrate once a year but which we try to live out every day of the year. We live it out not only in gift-giving but, even more importantly, in the daily giving of our time and talents whenever and wherever they are needed.

Christmas, the real meaning of Christmas, cannot be cancelled. It can only be lived or not lived. The truth is that we choose to live it by giving ourselves, of ourselves, in some very secular and some very sacred ways. And it is in our living out the meaning of this holyday that we celebrate it.

May our celebration of Christmas this year be joyful and deep. May the gifts we give and the gifts we receive remind us of God’s Gift to us. May that Gift be a daily reminder that the greatest gift we can ever give to another is the gift of ourselves in whatever way that gift may be needed at that moment in time. May we never forget that the real meaning of Christmas is the giving of our love every day of the year so that we make every day a holyday, make every day Christmas. May it never be cancelled, at least not by us.

 

ON THE ONE HAND...

Recently I received and email from a friend which began: "Subject: Safety Statistics." It described The Safest Place on Earth. It warned that we should certainly avoid riding in automobiles because they are responsible for 20% of all fatal accidents. Moreover, we should not stay home because 17% of all accidents occur in the home. We must also avoid walking on streets or sidewalks because 14% of all accidents occur to pedestrians. And we should avoid traveling by air, rail, or water because 16% of all accidents involve some form of transportation.

I was pleased to learn that only .001% of all deaths occur in church, and these are usually related to previous physical disorders. Therefore, logic tells us that the safest place to be at any given point in time is at church! Bible study is safe too. The percentage of deaths during Bible study is even less. The conclusion: for safety's sake attend church! It could save our lives!

Maybe we should make this information widely available. It could be a good evangelism message, bring people to church, expand our membership and all that. After all, most of us have been taught from infancy to be safety conscious. What better way to put into practice what we have been taught?

On the other hand while reading over and article on Church history, I came across the following bit of historical information.  At the very beginning of Christianity to openly profess to being a Christian was to invite persecution, suffering and even death. It was not until the Edict of Milan in 313 that persecution stopped and going to church became safe, at least for most people.

What I leaned was that of the 318 bishops who gathered at the first Council of the Church in Nicea in 325, a dozen years after religious freedom was granted, only about a dozen of those bishops had not lost an eye or a hand or did not limp because of a missing or atrophied foot or leg caused by torture. Those bishops must have uttered to themselves the thought: "I know His truth is marching on. But why do we have to stop so often to bandage up the soldiers?"

History has also taught us that if it is easy to live out our faith, if it does not cause us some form of pain or discomfort, when the going does get rough, it is easy to not live out our faith.

All of which leads to the question: do we really want to preach a faith that does not cost us anything, a faith that is easy to live? Is that the kind of faith we are now living?  The truth is if living out our faith seems painless, it probably is. It may also mean that we are not truly living it as we should.

No one wants to live in pain, but it is sometimes required if we are to do what we know in faith we must. The truth is, when we are truly living out our faith, we will be bloodied in one way or another. So much for church being a safe place to be!

THERE'S HOPE FOR US ALL

Whenever I read the Bible and think about the cast of characters I find on almost every page, I realize that there is hope for me; there is hope for all of us.  If the truth were told, it is a motley bunch that God chose to be his representatives in this world, to speak God’s word to the world, to help bring about the salvation of the world.  Almost every person we encounter in scripture, if not every single one of them, is flawed, and some rather mightily flawed!

The truth of the matter is that no one is perfect; we are all flawed.  The further truth is that God so often uses those very flaws to accomplish God’s work.  My suspicion is that we often take our gifts for granted but are well acquainted with our shortcomings.  We work on those failings.  Sometimes we work very hard on them.  And so often it is overcoming those things which we consider deficiencies by concentrating on them that we tend to shine.

In the Christmas story everyone involved seemed to be flawed in one way or another.  Neither Mary nor Joseph would have ever considered themselves capable or worthy to become the parents of such a child.  They must have worked every day, worked hard every day to be the very best of parents. They may have done so in fear and trembling because of their responsibility, but they did.

The shepherds, of course, were at the lowest end of the respectability scale in society.  Their smell was a reminder of their low esteem and probably helped keep their self-esteem even lower.  But that did not prevent them from becoming the first to give honor and pay respects to their Savior.

The Wisemen somehow knew they did not have all the answers even though others looked up to them as bastions of wisdom and knowledge.  They came looking to find true wisdom, even Truth Himself. 

All the others in the cast of characters in this story were ordinary human beings, from the inn keeper who helped in the best and probably only way he could by offering them at least a warm place to stay for the night; to Herod who was a living reminder that selfishness always gets in the way of doing what is good and right, to anyone else who happened upon the birth. Each and everyone was a flawed human being.

All of us would have fit right in somewhere.  We would be no better or no worse than anyone else.  The baby we would be seeing in that manger came to give us what we all always need: hope.  Because of his life and death and resurrection we all have hope; we all have the ability to overcome our weaknesses and failings and sins and become, in our own way, instruments of salvation.  We do that by telling the Christmas story through our very lives.

May this Advent Season be a reminder that God uses us to be today's heralds of God's hope for the world in Jesus.