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John 1:14
Seventeen hundred years ago, St. Augustine, one of the greatest Christian minds, in these simple words described love:
It has the hands to help others.
It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy.
It has the eyes to see misery and want.
It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrow of people.
That is what love looks like.
Was he not describing Jesus? Love also looks like the gift of the Christ Child entering the world to bring the message of God’s love. In all the long centuries since that birth, there has never been a Christmastime when we did not need to be reminded that Jesus’ teachings and the example of His life was about love: God’s love for us and the importance of our loving one another no matter how difficult that seems.
The world into which Jesus was born was very much like today’s world. There were people on the world stage then, as there are now, who were motivated by rage, fear, and the lust for power, desirous of destroying people they perceived as their enemies. The world that night two thousand years ago was not safe. The world today is not safe.
The Christmas story as recorded in the gospel of Matthew includes the story of three wise men. They were probably astrologers, and they were following an unusual star in the eastern sky which they understood as a sign that a Messiah had been born. When they arrived in Israel they asked everyone they met where the Child was. King Herod, hearing of them, summoned the three men before him. Of course he felt that his authority was being threatened if a child king had been born, and he said in a very cunning way, “Go and search diligently for the child.” Good advice, from a bad person. “Search diligently, and come back and tell me about him, so I can go there and worship him as well.”
So the wise men continued to follow the star, which came to a stop right above the place where the newly-born Jesus lay. They brought Him gifts and fell down and worshiped Him. Afterwards they had a dream which warned them not to go back to King Herod, but to leave the country by a back road.
When the king discovered their deception he was enraged, and he ordered the death of all boys two years and under in that region. It was a horrendous thing, and the scripture tells us that there were women weeping and wailing who never got over the murders of their children. That is the world Jesus was born in. The world we are living in today is no less dangerous.
When we sing the hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,” we know that there is still no lasting peace in Bethlehem. There is still dissent, fear, and violence. When we sing “Silent night, holy night; all is calm, all is bright,” we are peaceful and silent here in this church while we sing, but out there it is not silent or peaceful. When we sing carols we are singing about a cozy world, but the world outside is not cozy.
Nevertheless something significant happened on that long ago night, an incredible, enormous spiritual event which has been affecting the world ever since and which particularly affects us at this time of the year. This season is powerful. Often you will hear criticism of the commercialism of Christmas but, from another perspective, you can look at the crowded parking lots of the department stores and malls and ask why people are going to such trouble, spending so much money, spending so much energy, so much of themselves, in doing something for somebody else. Why is there so much effort for people to come together and to heal relationships? Why do so many people gather on Christmas Eve, in this church and churches all over the world? We are looking for something, something that happened two thousand years ago and which is still happening today. God has given to the world a light, and that light is the light of love.
A hundred-some years ago James Francis wrote One Solitary Life.
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in an obscure village. He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty, and then for three years he was an itinerant teacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never traveled, except in his infancy, more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. While he was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies. He went through the mockery of a trail. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth, his seamless robe. When he was dead, he was taken down from the cross and laid in a borrowed grave through the courtesy of a friend. [Twenty] wide centuries have come and gone, and today he is the centerpiece of the human race and the leader of all human progress. I am well within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever were built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has this one solitary personality.
Recently I got an email from a woman named Barbara Peterson telling me a story about the Christmas pageant at the school of her 6-year-old son Nicholas. She had been unable to attend on the night of the big event, so she, along with several other parents in the same situation attended the dress rehearsal.
One of the songs was called “Christmas Love.” The children sang out each letter of the words Christmas love standing for some aspect of the holiday: “C is for Christmas, H is for happy,” and so on. Each child held one letter of the words Christmas love, and as each letter was called a child would lift the card: C, H, R, I, S, T….
A very shy little girl had the letter M, but she became self-conscious and confused and held it up upside down: W. There was a little titter of laughter in the audience, but the children went on with the song: A, S, L, O, V, E. Then the parents saw what had been written out: CHRIST WAS LOVE. Barbara said, “And He still is today.”
The Christmas story is the story of how love overcame the hatred and fear embodied by Herod, who was unable to prevent Christ’s ministry. I believe the Christmas story is the story of the inevitable force of God’s love coming onto this earth through Jesus, transforming the lives of people hungry for that nourishment.
At Christmas we are enveloped by this love, and if this world is ever to make it – and I believe that it will – it will be because of the love, the compassion, the empathy, the forgiveness, the beauty, the simplicity, the wonder of Christ’s love. There’s no love in the world just like it.
Someone once said that the church will win the world when it loves the world. I agree; when the church remembers fully and clearly what Jesus taught—not dogma, not rules, not judgment—but love that heals and transforms. So put aside the doctrine, put aside the dogma. Just take care of the needs of the heart—the poor, the needy, the broken, the loveless.
I’m sure you all know that wonderful children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit. It is the story of a soft little stuffed rabbit that lives with the other toys in the playroom. At the beginning of the tale the rabbit is perfect. It is the boy’s most prized toy. This is a conversation the rabbit had with a much older toy, a skin horse, that was battered and worn from being loved so much by the little boy.
“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side…. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you’re made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Christmas is a good time to renew our commitment to be loving. We may become rather battered in the process, but we will be real, and Christmas will be real in us. Love at Christmas is something that can go deep. There is a spirit to the season that makes it easier to take the risk of being forgiving and understanding.
There is a story I love to tell, and I am especially reminded of it when I see the person who is the principal of the story. Each time I see him and I think of it I smile, and I am reminded of its meaning for me. When I tell the story I always start by saying that in the Hispanic community it is not unusual for parents to name their baby boys Jesus, pronounced like this: HAY-soos. On the maintenance staff of the church we have a lovely man with that name. Jesus is very good with a paintbrush and has become our resident painter. On any given day that you come into this building you might see him painting a wall or touching up a baseboard.
Several years ago, when I had just finished a meeting and gone to my office to get my coat, I noticed all the lights were on in the secretarial area, which is unusual. My door was open and all the lights in my office were on – also unusual. Then I realized that Jesus had been there; the door and the door jamb leading into my office were wet with paint. On the wall by the door was a little sign:
Sir, please do not close the door. Jesus.
At first I just smiled and said to myself, “Isn’t that nice,” but then as I walked into my office I realized there was a deeper message for me. As I get older I take fewer risks in mind and spirit. I’m not as apt to try new experiences, use new thinking or new ways of doing things. I don’t always have the courage. Yet I know as a Christian the importance of keeping myself open—to new experiences, to new people, to the risk of being loving. I try to remind myself: Don’t close the door on Jesus.
I am going to reframe that phrase for our purposes this morning. I am going to say “Please don’t close the door on Christmas.” Keep the door open for something new, something wonderful, something magnificent at Christmas.
Each of us has a unique personal history with Christmas. We remember some very happy times. We remember some very sad times. We remember times when expectations were met, and times when expectations were not met, and we were disappointed and hurt. Yet there is in this season a transcendent power which is bigger than any experience we might have. It is a spirit that can take us to the highest realms of the heavens and help us to go deeper and deeper and deeper spiritually, more so than ever before.
Celebrate Christmas. Let Christmas love happen to you. Keep the doors open for the growth of your love. And keep Jesus as the central figure in your life. Let us pray.
For the gift of the Christ Child, for the gift of love, for that beautiful thing which you have given to us at Christmas, O God, we give You thanks. Help us to reflect the light of this love so that we can make this world a better place. Amen. |
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