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 Luke 2:1-14
By my calculation, in this room at this moment, there are between two hundred and fifty thousand and five hundred thousand warm, happy memories of Christmas, treasured moments, the "precious collectibles of Christmas." You might think I am exaggerating, but the other day I sat down and in just a few minutes' time, just skimming the surface, I easily came up with about sixty-five happy memories.
The first Christmas I remember is when I was five years old. We had a tremendous blizzard that day, and the snow was piled high. This was wonderfully exciting for my brother and me. The power went off, but that was no problem because we had a coal-burning furnace, my mother had a gas stove, and we had candles. I remember that as the most cozy, safe, happy moment. Somehow I knew, even at that young age, that the world would not always be that way and I'd better hold onto that feeling.
A few years later World War II started. There was darkness over much of the world and a tremendous fear. I was very aware of the war because my family lived in a seacoast town and the Navy was a presence. From time to time, while outdoors playing, we could hear explosions from ships doing target practice beyond the harbor.
During that war, as some of you will remember, there was the custom of having silk banners in the windows of homes with men in the military, with a star for each serviceperson. From time to time you would pass a house where there was a gold star, meaning somebody had been killed. My father was overseas in the Army in England. None of us knew if he was coming back, as my friends didn't know if their parents or elder siblings were coming back. We all felt fear.
What I remember most about one wartime Christmas was getting a package from my father a few days before Christmas with the warning, "Not to be opened until December 25." Inside was a scratchy seventy-eight record of his voice telling us, each one by name, how much he loved us.
I have memories of my mother as a baker. Born and raised in Italy, at Christmas she baked fancy cookies that I still haven't been able to find here. Even today I can taste and smell them in my memory. The precious collectibles of Christmas...
I remember my father's little church. It was no bigger than Poling Chapel here at Marble Church -- maybe a little smaller. But to a little boy it was plenty big. What I remember most is people singing Christmas carols, especially the older people who didn't speak English, singing the carols in Italian and doing it with so much passion.
The years passed, I had my own children, and we built new Christmas memories. They are poignant and vivid and joyful. I remember one Christmas when my children were very young. We had a white cat who climbed the Christmas tree and pulled it down, breaking most of the ornaments, scaring my sons and making me furious.
Then all the Christmases at Marble Church I have known -- dozens now -- each full of moments and people and feelings. I remember a woman named Joan Sontag, an outspoken, intense person who worked as the assistant to our senior associate minister Dr. Florence Pert. Joan died at age thirty-nine of cancer. What I remember most about her is how, at the reception we would have after the Christmas Eve service, she would wander through the crowd looking for those who were alone and didn't have any place to go. She would invite them to her tiny apartment -- there was always room for one more in Joan's apartment. People still talk about her having invited them when they had nobody else.
There have also been sad, lonely Christmases -- the first Christmas after my father died, the first Christmases after important relationships ended. As I have been going through a recitation of some of my Christmas memories, surely you have been doing the same and connecting with your own precious collectibles. Most of us here are very fortunate; we have more happy memories than sad ones. But I know there are some whose memories mostly are sad. So today we will find ways to create new precious collectibles to cherish from now until the end of our lives.
The other night I called a childhood friend of mine. Her husband answered -- he has always had a playful sarcasm. "How are you doing?" I asked.
"Terrible. I hate Christmas!"
I thought he was teasing. "I remember you liking Christmas."
"No, I used to like Christmas when we were younger, but I don't like it any more. Everybody important to me at Christmas when I was a kid is gone. My parents are gone, my aunts and uncles are gone, my older siblings are gone, my friends are gone -- I don't like Christmas anymore."
And then I was in a store the other day and I heard this mournful dirge of a song, "I'll have a blue Christmas without you..." and I wanted to get out of that store. Yes, it is true that at Christmas sometimes there is sadness, missing special beloved people. Lest we get buried in sadness, it is helpful to remember that we have more control over what kind of Christmases we have than we think. We don't need to wait for happiness to come to us.
We have control over the attitude we choose, the way we respond, and the things we choose to do or not do.
That wonderful writer Laurie Beth Jones, in her extraordinary book Jesus CEO, helps us to see Jesus with a new set of eyes. She shows Him as one who was in a constant state of celebration, always looking for the moment when He could celebrate something. She spoke about how often people would ask Him to their homes for dinner. You don't ask a critical sourpuss home to dinner. You ask somebody who's going to bring life and vitality and love -- somebody who is upbeat.
When He was talking to the crowds and they needed food, He found a way of getting them the food, as He did with the five thousand. He organized them into a giant picnic. And at a wedding party when the host said they ran out of wine Jesus changed some water into wine and the party continued.
In one of His parables we read about a party thrown by a father who was dismayed and broken because his young sons had gone off and wasted his life and his inheritance. When the father heard his wayward son was heading home, as soon as his son was in sight, he ran toward him. "Kill the fatted calf. We're going to have a party!" he instructed his staff. "My son who was lost has come home." And they had a huge party in celebration.
Laurie Beth commented that she noticed Jesus was trying to get us to lighten up. In the Sermon on the Mount, when He talked about the lilies of the field and how beautiful and free they were and the birds in the air having fun, He was trying to persuade us to lighten up and trust that God will take care of us. Then Laurie Beth said something that I would not have thought about, that the meal on the last night of His life, which we know as the Last Supper, was a celebration meal. It was a celebration of life, and a celebration of an extraordinary love. Are we not touched today by the love of that final celebration?
In my study at the church, and on my wall at home as well, I have a picture of a laughing Jesus. Every time I look at that picture -- and it's often -- my whole self smiles. Looking at it helps me lighten up. In the picture Jesus' head is tilted up, His eyes are vibrant and alive and His mouth is open as if He's giving just a huge full-bodied laugh.
As you are aware, there is considerable criticism about the way we celebrate Christmas, but if Jesus was in a constant state of celebration, which I believe He was, He would like so much of Christmas, even the way we celebrate it, because Christmas brings people to a higher level of joy. Christmas gets people to think about other people. When we are buying gifts, we are trying to figure out how to make another person happy. Even the Scrooges among us find some way of pulling a little bit of money together and doing something for somebody else.
I believe Jesus loves the music, the colors, the beauty of the decorations, He loves the joy and the fun we have. Did He not say, "I have come that you might have life and have it in all of its abundance"? And don't we have more abundant life during the Christmas celebration?
"Be attentive to my teachings," He might say. "There is one thing I want for you, that my love, my joy, my Spirit, be born again in you." So this year at Christmas, be open to the spiritual dimension of the holiday, and let the presence of the Christ child be born again in you. Drink from the cup of joy.
A couple of weeks ago I was in conversation with my good friend, a member of this church, Richard Lewis. Richard has a marketing and advertising company and because of the economy he has been having a hard time. I have never heard him complain. He is always finding ways to drink the cup of joy.
During Advent every year he will take five or ten minutes each day to do something special. I love that idea, and I've been trying to do it myself. On Friday I called him and asked what he had done recently.
"Early in the morning," he said, "I take a cup of coffee and I walk down Fifth Avenue to Lord and Taylor department store. I'm the only one there because it's so early. I spend some time alone with those beautiful windows.
"Another morning I might go to the skating rink at Rockefeller Center very early, about seven-thirty, and often there will be just one skater, and I'll watch her go around and around, gliding so freely and happily, and I get into the spirit of the skater. "Today," he went on, "is Friday. A Pakistani friend of mine has invited me to go to his mosque with him and so, to celebrate the friendship, I am going to the mosque as part of my Christmas celebration.
"I've also got a Christmas tree in my office. It's a five-foot tomato plant with eight plum tomatoes on it -- it doesn't know it's winter! I used the plum tomatoes as the basis for the decoration, then I added bulbs and lights. Who said a Christmas tree had to be a fir?"
Drink from the cup of joy. Some time before Christmas Richard will be taking to dinner a friend who has been having a very hard time. "Richard, you have big shoulders," he said, so those big shoulders are going to be with his friend. Drink from the cup of joy. Find ways to create precious collectibles as you celebrate the birth of the Christ child.
As many of you know, Thanksgiving week I had my grandchildren in New York. There are three boys and two girls. Friday morning the grandmothers took the girls to the American Girl store on Fifth Avenue for breakfast. And the other grandfather, Gene, and I took the boys to FAO Swartz, where they could buy any toy they wanted.
While we were in there, I said, "Gene, you're doing a wonderful thing."
"You know Arthur," he responded, "when I was six years old my grandfather took me to FAO Swartz and said that I could buy anything I wanted." He was simply passing it on, giving a precious collectable to somebody else.
Christmas is about love. The love we experience at Christmas is the light of the world. Jesus was born as the Prince of Peace, the light that gives hope to the world.
In New York harbor is a reef called Robin's Reef, with a lighthouse which many, many decades ago was manned by a man named Jacob Walker, and his wife. One day he caught a cold which turned into pneumonia and he died. His wife continued on at the lighthouse. Every morning and every afternoon she could look across at Staten Island and see where he was buried. She would remember what he would always say to her: "Honey, mind the light. Mind the light."
It is our charge, too, to mind the light of Christmas that Jesus has left for us. As you are experiencing the joy and fullness of this wondrous, magical season, through this season and beyond, mind the light. Reflect the light of Christ to a very dark and frightening world. Do that, and you'll be blessed. Do that, and you'll bless the world. Let us pray:
For the blessing of the day, for the wonder of this very moment, for the thrill and excitement of the season, for the miracle of Jesus' birth, we say thank you, God. May Christ be born in us again today. AMEN |
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