At Christmas time, all the rules change. At Christmas time, the boundaries get opened up and widened. Children who for eleven and a half months of the year are told, “We can't afford that, suddenly are permitted to spring to Santa's knee and express their desires for the latest and most glitzy exotic monsters to burst from the minds of Mattel. Men who are normally the pictures of restraint and dignity jump into office parties and warble songs of good cheer at full throttle. Ladies who count calories daily and hourly allow themselves an indulgence of sugar and cholesterol and throw caution to the winds. Why, I know one church member who confided to me that she allows herself one – one – piece of candy a year, and, guess what, it's done at Christmas! At 6hristmas, the rules change and the boundaries open up.
And the stores – what a bewildering array of things they offer! Every manufacturer and every merchant wants to have all sorts of new choices for Christmas, and so the stores are chock full of goodies to tempt our eyes and thin our wallets and worsen the trade balance with Japan. The boundaries are off, it seems, and those of us who normally count pennies and will drive five miles extra because the milk at that grocery is selling a dime cheaper than the milk at this store, those of us who know that we have to be very, very careful about what we spend will find ourselves caught up in the boundless opportunities of the moment. We will push the plastic and indulge a score of whims, perhaps for all kinds of reasons, but not least because at Christmas the rules change, the boundaries open up, and there is an air of boundlessness around. There is an atmosphere of anything goes.
Now of course when it comes right down to it, choices do have to be made amid all this boundlessness. I cannot literally have it all, and so I do have to make some serious choices. It's nice to know that there is such a host of options out there, but I cannot have it all, so I begin to choose. I am the kind of shopper who isn't quite satisfied unless he has examined the whole range; I need to be sure I'm getting the best deal, the right thing, and so have this tendency to want to look at it all before I settle down. On those rare and, I must say, trying occasions when I have to shop for a car, I want at least to read about and study everything from the luxury of a BMW to the tin can Yugo, even though I know full well I won't buy either one. I need to know, just the same, that the choice I’ve made is the best choice, the right choice, out of the whole boundless range of options.
You and I need to see this morning that we make life choices too. Out of a wide, wide range of options we choose who it is that we shall be. We select an identity, we choose a way of life. The boundaries are off in our day as they have never been before and it's like Christmas out there. We can choose among possibilities folks a generation or two ago never thought possible. If you have college students coming home for Christmas, you may have discovered that some exploring and some choosing is going on. There is a beard where once before there were the smooth cheeks of a mere lad. There is new talk about politics and issues and questions you never worried with twenty-five years ago. And whereas for you the great spiritual choice was whether to be a Baptist or a Methodist, now she's come home to tell you she is taking lessons in Zen or has embraced the Muslims. Choices. Choices out of a boundless range of options. Life choices – I'm saying that all of us are called to make them. In fact, I’d worry a whole lot more about the person who never seemed to struggle with choices than I would about somebody who is making choices I didn’t make.
Choices, though, that's the main point. You and I are called, not just in our younger years, but throughout the seasons of our lives, to choose who we shall be and how we shall live from what appear to be boundless and wide-open possibilities. How shall we do it? How do you decide how you're going to live? How shall you know by what style you shall live your life?
I know the story of somebody who had every privilege it is possible to imagine, who had before him all the riches and all the knowledge anyone could count up, and in fact, infinitely more. Once this one, a prince among princes, the heir of a father who could give him whole worlds – this one came to a day and a time at which he laid it all aside, he turned his back on the power and the glory, he rejected status and honor. Even though infinite wealth was his by right, he chose poverty. Even though the boundaries were off for him, he chose the confines of a humble home in a dirty third-rate country. Even though his father possessed boundless reserves of influence and of power, he chose as his style of life to teach the ignorant, to offer a word of wisdom to the ungrateful, to lead the unruly. Out of all the boundless possibilities that life held out for him, he chose humility and poverty, and worse.
For, you see, the Christ of majesty, the Christ of glory, begotten of his father before all worlds, god of god, light of light, very god of very god – this ancient of days, enthroned in glory and couched in light unsurpassable -- this one emptied himself, taking upon himself the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself. And can I say it, can I even bring myself to grasp it? This Christ of infinite majesty, who was before and beyond all things, without whom was not anything made that was made, he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.
Jesus chose servanthood. Have you ever thought about that? Jesus the Christ, yes, Son of God, but also truly human, truly flesh and blood as we are, Jesus chose servanthood. All through eternity and all through his earthly life, he chose servanthood, even though boundless possibilities were open before him.
As the word of God, existing in heaven from all eternity, the Son of God chooses to become the son of man and to serve our needs close up, right here, where we are, and chooses to experience our life. He chose to be a servant.
As a young man on the brink of his career, he is faced with choices. Worship Satan, throw yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple, command that these stones become bread, do the spectacular thing, use your power to gain a quick and adoring following. But he chose to be a servant.
On the road with his disciples, pressing on toward his goal, one of them wants to push him to be a leader in the old martial style. Take over from these Romans, push out these heathen, call down fire from heaven on these pagans. But Jesus chose to be a servant. He is Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, but within all that he chooses to be the servant of all.
And in those last few precious days, when anyone would have forgiven him had he chosen the easier way; when sheer common sense would tell you that you could relax for a while and let somebody else carry the burden, then above all he took a towel and girded himself and washed their feet, and said whoever would be great among you must be the servant of all. Jesus chose, out of the boundless options open to him, to be a servant.
Is it possible this morning that Christmas is teaching you and me that out of the glitter and the glamour of these days, we can and must choose to be servants? Is it possible that if we perceive the Christ of Christmas at all, he is teaching us to serve? If so, then I would tell you that he is teaching us that to serve is in fact opening up boundaries, just like Christmas always does. Watch what I am saying. This is a key idea, this is the real point of today’s message. To be a servant is ultimately to open up the boundaries of our lives, not to close them down. To be a servant is to be free to receive and experience the boundlessness of life, the wide-openness of it all.
I know that sounds crazy, I know that sounds like a contradiction, but I tell you it is true. Whoever, like our Christ, chooses to set aside all the trappings of success; whoever, like our Christ, chooses to make giving his style of life; whoever, like our Christ, binds himself, commits himself, disciplines himself to be the servant of others' needs – that is the person who most experiences freedom and giftedness, boundlessness.
You see, if your life is wrapped up in getting and keeping things; if, as somebody put it, it's all thingified, then you're not free. You're not free because you know that somebody could take that away from you. And you get invested in locks and alarms and security and hanging on, and you've lost your freedom. But if you have chosen to be a servant, a giver, then your things have no more hold on you. You are in charge of them, not they in charge of you. The servant, you see, is free, the servant is boundless.
Or if your life is wrapped up in status and power and reputation, well then, these things too can be taken away. You get all tied up in image-building: what do I look like to you, what do you think of me, how am I coming across to you. And image and power and influence, all these things take over. All these things bind up your life. And you are not free.
But take off the boundaries, find a way to be a servant, care not if somebody sees you on the wrong side of the tracks, fear not if someone misunderstands the way you dress or the disreputables you associate with; know instead inside your heart that you are a servant for Christ's sake, and you will be free indeed.
A few days ago in a church in our neighborhood a dozen or so young women took vows as Missionaries of Charity. They will work with Mother Teresa, in her order of sisters, whose intention it is to be servants among the poorest of the poor. The newspaper reported that the mother of one of them fairly snarled out, "I don't understand it. She had the best of everything. We gave her every privilege: the finest education, the best we could buy. She was so much in love with life; we don't yet understand how she could do this". No, I suppose not. For it is never easy to understand at first glance how anyone could freely give up privilege and power, things and more things, to be a servant. But I am trying as best I know how to say to you that in the end the servant is the only one who is free, the only one who is without boundaries and thus the only one who can surely keep Christmas.
For hear again the words of our Scripture and hear it all: "Christ Jesus did not count equality with God something to hold on to, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." Therefore – therefore, just for that reason – "God has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the father."
Do you catch that connection? Do you see how it is that Jesus has become the one whom we adore? Do you know why he now lives forever at the right hand of the father, the heir of all things, boundless and limitless?
It is because he chose to be a servant.
Because he chose to be a servant, now his name is exalted, not because he chose to hire a public relations agent.
Because he chose to be a servant, and emptied himself, that now he is enriched with the boundless stores of God's grace, not because he built bigger barns and delighted in insider trading.
Because he chose to be a servant, and humbled himself, and became obedient, now he is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, not because he cultivated an image and condemned the poor for making his world untidy.
Because he came at Christmas to a lowly stable, rough and rude, amid cattle and common shepherds and curious magi, and freely gave to us all, now we call him Lord and Christ, and accord to him a name above every name – above Herod and above Caesar and above all who would lord it over others.
I tell you, it is because he took on himself the form of a servant, and taught us that we are to serve and to share as he did – because of that that every knee bows and every tongue confesses him as Lord, boundless, wide open, without limits, with boundless stores of grace.
Thank God that at Christmas time all the rules change. At Christmas time all boundaries get opened up and widened. At Christmas time we can finally forget ourselves and we can take off the trappings of status, we can take off the royal purple. However it looks on you I know what its symbol is on me [TAKE OFF STOLE] And I can in my heart as well as with my dress humble myself to receive the image of his death, his servanthood, his obedience unto even a cross. {PUT ON CROSS]
And I can move a little closer to becoming what he calls me to become: servant yet free, self-giving yet boundless, without a care for my reputation yet respected everywhere, dying yet boundlessly alive.
"Dear name, the rock on which I build, my shield and hiding place, my never-failing treasure, filled with boundless stores of grace."
