IT S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS. If your family is like my family you are receiving your fair share of Christmas letters

Transcription

1 1 December 12, 2010 IT S BEGINNING TO LOOK A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS If your family is like my family you are receiving your fair share of Christmas letters from friends across the nation and the world. I frankly love to receive Christmas letters it is a wonderful way to catch up with friends. To hear about their comings and goings. But people in their Christmas letters tend to, what should I say, put their best foot forward. The news we get is slightly skewed toward the positive. The headlines are almost always about the good things that have happened. Sometimes families go even a little overboard with trying to help you think that they have it all together. The following letter may not be too far from the mark: Dear Friends: We bring you holiday greetings from the Hawthorne family. Hard to believe that another year has gone by. It has been an active one for our family. Rebecca, age 10, having skipped six grades last year is now preparing to send in her applications to the finest colleges in the land. She is a child prodigy. She is captain of her soccer team and softball team and just missed the Olympic trials. Only the best children in town are her friends and she brushes her teeth every day.

2 2 Billy, age 7, is just a joy. He washes and folds the laundry every day. Has never, ever been caught asking for something without saying please. He loves the little nuclear laboratory that Tom built for him last year and was slightly disappointed when he was not awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. The new on-line company he started last year has recently gone public. Tom, aside from building nuclear laboratories for Billy, loves his new job as the President and CEO of the world s largest company. He has managed to get his golf game into shape and counts as one of the highlights of the year the several lessons he gave to Phil Mickelson. Tom feels he needs to cut back a little on his exercise after having completed his seventeenth marathon in the past two years. Being mayor of the town has not managed to cut into the five hours of quality time he spends with the kids every day. Finally, Patty tries her best to keep up with the rest of the family. Her prize winning rose garden was featured this year on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens. Her architectural degree has come in handy in the design of the new wing to our house. Rebuilding the car engine was something she didn t expect she would love so much. Rebecca s Girl Scout troop of which Patty is the leader sold the most Girl Scout cookies ever in the history of Girl Scouts. Wish we could tell you in detail about our trips to Europe and Galapagos Islands as well as our family visit to the White House. We hope you have a Merry Christmas, and let us never forget the reason for the season.

3 3 Let us never forget the reason for the season. I would be willing to bet that you would get a rather varied list of answers if you were to ask people what is the reason for the season. From many, if not most, you would get the answer that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus --- but from there the reasons for the season might be all over the map. Christmas is a time for joy a time for giving a time for sharing a time for children. A time for music a time for putting on your best face a time for pretty wrappings a time for shopping. What is the reason for the season? It s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, we sing but what do we mean? What does Christmas look like? Pretty lights, pretty bows, pretty music, pretty decorations, a pretty letter sent, a pretty letter received the pretty face we put on whatever we might be feeling. Don t you wonder sometimes in some of the Christmas letters you receive --- that it really couldn t be as good as they make it out to be? This family can t be that perfect. It s ironic isn t it that in the season in which we are supposed to be celebrating the birth of the Savior we spend most of our time convincing people how much we don t need a Savior. What does Christmas look like? That appears to be the question that John the Baptist is asking after he s been locked up in prison. John has spent the early part of his prophetic career

4 4 announcing the arrival of the Messiah. Christmas is coming! John cries in the wilderness. The Messiah is on his way. The Savior will be here any moment. He is getting people ready for the moment that Israel has been waiting for a long time. God s Anointed One the one who will deliver his people Israel. And for all of John s faithful advance work what he gets is thrown in prison. Nasty King Herod is tired of hearing John s preaching a baptism for repentance so he does what he knows best to do he puts John in jail. Best way to shut him up is to put him in jail. And it is in jail that John waits to see what the Messiah will do. He is waiting to see what Christmas really looks like. What does it look like when God enters the world? And as he waits there doesn t appear to be much happening. There is no revolt against Rome. No military coup. No waving of a magic wand. What s the deal? Is this really the Messiah we expected to come? Have I pointed out the wrong guy? If Christmas is coming then what is Christmas supposed to look like? So John sends a message out of jail... a message to Jesus and says, Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? If Christmas is coming well then what does Christmas look like? And Jesus sends word back to John and he says, Tell John what you see and hear: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. Tell John if he wants to know what

5 5 Christmas looks like that s what Christmas looks like. Tell John that Christmas happens not where things are all nicely wrapped together in pretty bows Christmas happens where things are broken. Christmas happens where eyes cannot see, where legs cannot walk, where ears cannot hear, where hearts do not beat, where hope is nowhere found that is where you will find Christmas because, Jesus says, that is where you will find me. I ve come not for the righteous I ve come not for those who have their acts together I ve come for the sinners. I ve come for the folks who don t have their acts together. I ve come not to put a package on something that s already perfect I ve come to open up the package where things are broken so that I can begin to make them whole again! But, you know, Christmas is one of those crazy seasons when the expectation for things to be perfect gets ratcheted so high so intensely that we even put a grade level on it. Did you have a good Christmas? we ask. And what s the right answer? Oh sure sure had a great time. Family is perfect. Job is perfect. Bank account is perfect. Health is perfect at least that is what I want everyone to know. But the truth is my kid has spoken to me in five years, the company announced that layoffs are coming. I don t think I have enough to retire and the doctor wants to see me for more tests. And Jesus would say, A good Christmas is when you let me into those parts of your life those broken, not so together parts to help to begin to make them whole again.

6 6 Do you remember that great line in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens where Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim come back home from church on Christmas Day? Tiny Tim is the sickly Cratchit boy and Mrs. Cratchit asks her husband how Tiny Tim did in church. And Bob says, As good as gold and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas Day, who made the lame beggars walk and blind men see. And isn t that the good news of it all? The reason for the season? That Christmas is not for those who made it but for those who haven t made it. And I suppose that means all of us because there is something in all of us that hasn t made it. It s why we need a Savior someone to complete our incompleteness. Truth is I don t think there is anytime like Christmas that most exposes deep within us how much we really do need a Savior. There is no time like Christmas that stirs up within us some of the old hurts and wounds of life the broken pieces of our hearts and souls and at the very least there is no time like Christmas to produce within us the aching sigh that comes from our frazzled lives. And that as hard as we might try to wrap it all in Christmas cheer the feeling remains that at the end of the day I am still a sinful, broken human being --- and if I have any chance of joy any chance of completeness any chance of escaping the judgment

7 7 that comes from my sin and brokenness --- it will come from the one for whom John is preparing us. One of my favorite Christmas sermons is a sermon preached by the great 20 th century theologian Karl Barth. One might expect a Christmas sermon by Karl Barth to be preached somewhere in one of the great universities of the world or in one of the great cathedrals of the world so great was this theological mind. But this Christmas sermon was preached by the great theologian in a prison in Basel, Switzerland. Barth made it his practice to be a regular preacher in the jail there. And on Christmas Day he preached on the message of the angel, For unto you is born this day, a Savior. And Barth went on to say to the prisoners that it would be tempting to think that Jesus doesn t come to them for what they did. That they are somehow exempt from the good news. No, Barth says, the angel of the Lord points to the shepherds and points to us. His news is directly addressed to us: To you is born this day a Savior You, Barth says, regardless of who you are, whether or not you understand the message, whether or not you are good and pious people. The news is meant for you. For your benefit the Christmas story happened. Don t be afraid, Jesus says, to confess that things are not perfect. You ve got sin. You ve got disappointment. You ve got brokenness. Welcome to the human race! And the Savior has come to do something about it!!!

8 8 Christmas is not the contest for who has it the best Christmas is Emmanuel, God with us even in our worst. It reminds me of the walk I once made in New York City. I had gone in there during the Advent season for a meeting and when the meeting concluded I decided to take a little walk to take in Christmas in New York. And so over to Rockefeller Center I went and say the great tree with all its lights and the skaters and the herald angels and the windows at Saks Fifth Ave. And then it was past Radio City Music Hall where the posters hung announcing the Christmas Show and the Rockettes. And then it was Times Square where the big crystal ball was being placed for the big New Year s drop. It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. And just then I noticed a few feet ahead of me an old man sitting on a heating grate. His back was propped against a building. He was sitting there to stay warm. And next to him was a young man kneeling beside him. He had with him a big kettle of soup. And he was ladling the soup out of the bucket and into a bowl and giving it to the man. That s about as much as I saw but it was all I needed to see. Because as much as I had thought I had seen Christmas nothing came as close as that ladle of soup for a cold and hungry man. And which of us does not need a ladle of something this Christmas? Which of us doesn t have something broken inside the pretty package? Which of us doesn t have an incomplete that

9 9 needs completing? Which of us doesn t need some saving? Good news! Christmas is for you. If it s for the prisoners of Basel then it s for you. If it s for the unrighteous then it s for you. If it s for real people with messy lives then it s for you. Tell John, Jesus said, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. Tell John that it s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.