So This is Christmas
Sunday AM – Lynn Haven – 12/23/07
FOCUS:
• The Meaning of Christmas
FUNCTION:
• Calling the church to embrace the Holidays in such a way that imitates the behavior of our Heavenly Father in the Christmas Story.
INTRODUCTION
A. Pleasantries
B. Right on the verge of Christmas…
1. Making sure we have all the presents wrapped up…
2. Making double sure we have all the ingredients we need for our Christmas dinners
3. Making those final preparations for family guests.
C. And as we think about Christmas today, what does Christmas mean to us?
1. Presents?
2. Family?
3. Tradition? Or Pageantry?
D. All of these are good. We shouldn’t necessarily feel guilty about these values…
1. But Christmas itself stands for more important values… yes, even more important than family.
2. It’s not that those values are unimportant.
3. But they are the outgrowth of other values… values that are sometimes buried in the mound of presents under the tree & are forgotten in the hustle of getting everything prepared.
4. Let’s look at some of these Christmas values from Scriptural perspective…
I. God Celebrates
A. When Jesus is born in Bethlehem, God throws a party.
1. Just look at Luke 2…
a. He lets loose the angelic choir…
1. He can’t hold them back.
2. This is a time for joyous song!
b. And he lets this angelic choir perform before a group of Shepherds
1. He invites them to the stable to come visit His Son.
c. He unleashes a new star
1. He leads the three wise men to the scene so that they can visit the new King.
2. God is throwing a party here!
B. I’m not sure what it is about us, but for some reason our fellowship has had a difficult time with the Christmas Holliday.
1. And we’ve been inconsistent.
a. We seem to have no problem celebrating our nation’s birthday in July, but celebrating the birth of Jesus has been somewhat taboo in our fellowship
b. We have no problem celebrating when it comes to marking birthdays or anniversaries, but when it comes to remembering Christ’s crucifixion we shy away from marking that holiday.
2. And some in our faith even get cantankerous on this issue, to the extent where it becomes a point of contention.
C. But I think that it’s perfectly legitimate to look at Scripture, see God celebrating, and accepting the invitation for us to celebrate right along with him.
1. And that’s what it is: An invitation to celebrate.
a. An invitation to come and adore Christ.
b. An invitation to find peace, joy, and good news.
2. God celebrates, and calls us to celebrate with Him…
Trans.: Another Christian value of Christmas that gives us a sense of meaning is that…
II. God Cares
A. He cares…
1. God is compassionate & sympathetic to the human condition to such a degree that he’s willing to stoop down to help us.
2. God cares.
B. We see it throughout Scripture.
1. When God’s people are in bondage in Egypt, at the end of Exodus 2…
The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
2. And later, when Israel makes it to the Promised Land & has problems, they continue to cry out to God for help, and He faithfully came to their aid.
3. And when the time was right & humanity was at its fullest need, God cared enough to stoop down to help his creation again.
C. And just as much as God cares, He calls us to care.
1. This is a season where we crawl outside our comfort zones & care for others in need.
2. If you haven’t already, I strongly encourage you to do something big and something kind for someone within your sphere of influence.
a. Maybe you know a family that doesn’t have much, and you could play Santa Claus for that family.
b. Or maybe you know someone who will be alone for Christmas, and you can adopt them & invite them to be a part of your family for the Holiday.
c. Or you could volunteer at the Rescue Mission, or at a retirement home, or any number of places where people are perpetually in need.
3. It’s the season of compassion. And if we’re going to call ourselves Christians, and stand up for the right to say “Merry Christmas” & not just “Happy Holidays,” then our actions during this season ought to line up with the true values of Christmas.
a. Do something for someone else.
b. Take the opportunity & invitation to help someone else in need this week…
III. God Sends
A. The fundamental story of Christmas is that God sends His Son
1. [READ PHILIPPIANS 2]
2. God is a sender
a. He didn’t just drop a book from on high, He sent His Son.
b. God didn’t broadcast His message on a TV or radio frequency, He sent His son.
c. God didn’t just utilize multimedia & remain comfortably seated on his royal Heavenly throne… He “emptied himself” & came to the rescue.
B. And so God also sends us.
1. God celebrates, and he invites us to celebrate…
a. God cares, and He calls us to care along with Him.
b. And God sends, and so He sends us as well.
2. He sends us into the world to spread His message…
a. He doesn’t call us to just put Bibles in hotel rooms or drop pamphlets from airplanes.
b. He doesn’t call us to simply broadcast his message on a TV or radio frequency.
c. He doesn’t call us to just utilize multimedia & remain comfortably seated on our padded pews… He calls us to empty ourselves & go to someone else’s rescue.
C. These are just a few Christmas values that give us a sense of meaning.
1. I want to share a story for one more.
2. This is written by a minister in Abilene, TX named Mike Cope.
3. He’s one of the more well-known speakers in our brotherhood.
4. He writes these words:
(Insert Mike Cope Illustration)
The Quarter of Remembrance by Mike Cope (reprinted)
http://preachermike.com/2007/12/21/two-bits-of-memory
I actually got to meet Dr. Channing Barrett, though I don’t remember the meeting because I was too young. But that doesn’t change my picture of him as a young man walking a marathon of miles every weekend. In my mind, I see him returning home to Blissfield, Michigan around the turn of the century.
Channing Barrett was one of eight boys and was the first ever in the Barrett family to go to college. From his medical school, he walked twenty-five miles home each weekend, always returning a couple days later with clean clothes, a food packet, and a dollar.
Dr. Barrett became one of the first ob-gyns in Chicago, practicing at Cook County Hospital. He was known widely both for his innovative surgical techniques and for his ambidextrous skills that allowed him to change hands during long procedures.
There was no patient whom he wouldn’t accept. He delivered many “tenement babies” for fifty cents and many babies for the wives of Mafia dons for a good bit more!
With a growing, respected medical practice, a wonderful wife, and three children, this young physician seemed to be living the idyllic life. He enjoyed riding horses and lifting weights, and was an early member of the Polar Bear Society–that “unique” group that takes to the chilly waters of Lake Michigan in January each year to prove–well, who knows what they’re trying to prove?
And then World War I interrupted this Norman Rockwell life. Dr. Barrett left Chicago to run a field hospital in France, followed shortly by his 17-year-old son, who fought in the trenches.
As long as he could, Barrett sent money back to his wife and daughters. But by the last year of the war, his funds were nearly exhausted. He had no more to mail home. Mrs. Barrett sold most of what they owned, trying desperately to keep her daughters fed and clothed without having to lose their house.
By the time Christmas rolled around in 1918, there were no presents to place under the tree. They were lucky to have a place to live.
But Mrs. Barrett had managed, despite all the financial scrimping, to save two quarters. So on Christmas morning, when the girls emptied their stockings, under the paper dolls their mother had cut out for them and under a couple pieces of candy, they each found a coin.
Previous Christmas mornings had been more lavish, filled with frilly dresses and expensive toys. And there would be more such mornings in the future. But this was the Christmas the family would always remember.
In the future, even during the years of plenty, when the girls emptied their stockings, they always found–under the apples, oranges, nuts, and candy–a quarter.
It was a reminder–a reminder that some years are good while others aren’t too good. Some years deliver new babies, promotions, raises, and great promises. Other years offer sickness, failure, death, and deep disappointment.
The quarter reminded them about both possibilities. It warned them not to write off all the pain of the past as if it didn’t exist. It taught them that the sorrows and wounds of their lives had shaped their characters as much as their joys and accomplishments.
Anyone who takes seriously the Christmas stories of scripture knows that the first Christmas had more than angels, shepherds, wise men, and a mother nursing her baby. There was also the anguish of childbirth. There were the pungent, impolite odors of an animal pen. There was an old man who held the baby and told his mother, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.” There were the voices of many mothers screaming for their baby boys being slaughtered by a demented ruler named Herod. There was a breathless escape to Egypt.
The entrance of God’s Son into the world meant peace–but it didn’t assure that people would get along. It meant great joy–but it didn’t mean we’d always be happy. And it meant unconditional love–though it never implied that everyone would act lovingly.
And so one family, year after year, continued dropping a quarter of remembrance into the bottom of each child’s stocking.
At least one of Channing Barrett’s children picked up that tradition. Every year through the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, her five children, Dr. Barrett’s grandchildren, pulled their stockings off the chimney on Christmas morning to find quarters buried under fruit, nuts, and candy.
And at least one of those five passed it on to her four children. And at least one of those four is passing it on to his children.
The quarter has mysteriously tied this family together–binding even generations who never met. Together they have remembered that bad year in 1918 and other bad years since.
- One year brought the safe birth of a new nephew; another brought the self-inflicted death of a relative who couldn’t keep fighting the demons of his life;
- One year brought the thrilling news from the gynecologist that a baby was on the way; another brought the news from the pediatrician that the baby wasn’t developing right;
- Some years brought joy; others brought deep, deep pain.
The quarter is a remembrance that the meaning of Christmas is deeper than our triumphs and sorrows. It is a joy that can’t fully be expressed, a peace that passes understanding.
For years my children have followed this tradition started by their Great, Great Grandmother Barrett. Together, we’ve experienced the love of God, woven through the fabric of good days and dark days.
Eleven Christmases ago the quarter represented a burden that was crushing our hearts. Not long before Christmas of 1994 our ten-year-old daughter, Megan, took her last breath in the pediatric ICU at Hendrick. Her death was surely the darkest moment in our lives. We felt very connected to Matthew’s Christmas story, the one that tells of “Rachel weeping for her children” (Matthew 2:17).
And then five Christmases later, our family returned to that grief, for in June of 1999 my brother’s son, Jantsen BARRETT Cope, died suddenly and unexpectedly after lifting weights with his high school football team. We barely survived as we gathered in my parents’ living room that Christmas without my nephew’s big, joyful laughs. Fifteen is too young to die. Our quarters were quarters of grief.
But by God’s grace, we have survived. We’re still together, we still love, we still hope, we still believe in that one who was born in Bethlehem.
This Christmas there is still that gaping hole of absence. And yet our quarters will also represent joy. For when people gave money as a memorial to Jantsen, my brother and sister-in-law prayed about a place to let that money be used in the name of Christ. Through a ministry of their church, they traveled to Vietnam to visit an orphanage. They only went intending to give money. But there in a foreign country, across an ocean, on soil where American and Vietnamese soldiers had died, my brother looked into the eyes of a little guy whose name was Vihn, but is now Van – Van Cope. A year later in the same place they looked into the eyes of a sweet Vietnamese girl who is now Tatum Cope.
As Randall Frame has written, “Christmas does not deny sorrow its place in the world. But the message of Christmas is that joy is bigger than despair, that peace will outlast turmoil, that love has crushed all the evil, hatred, and pain the world at its worst can muster.”
That’s why this Christmas Eve, late in the evening, my wife and I will slip a quarter into the bottom of the stockings of our boys and our daughter-in-law.
The quarter will always remind them of a story that is truer than life: that God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son. There in that simple manger in Bethlehem, “the hopes and fears of all the years” found their fulfillment. God had broken into a world of great darkness with the light of his Son.
And yet while the Kingdom of God came in Jesus Christ, we haven’t yet experienced it fully. That’s why the church has continued to pray for 2000 years, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In the meantime, in the words of scripture, we groan, we long, we wait, we hope.
We live in the belief that our simple acts of kindness and giving are not without meaning because Christ has come. And we live in hope that one day the Lord Jesus will come again and all tears will be wiped from our eyes.
That’s the story of Christmas. I know it’s true. I’d bet you a quarter!
Merry Christmas, church…
