And Life Goes On…
The Day After Christmas 2010: Luke 2:21-40
Intro:
Guess what? Only 364 more sleeps till Christmas! Anybody counting down?? I found a couple things I thought I’d share this morning:
Why Jesus is Better Than Santa Claus
Santa lives at the North Pole...
JESUS is everywhere.
Santa rides in a sleigh...
JESUS rides on the wind and walks on the water.
Santa comes but once a year...
JESUS is an ever present help.
Santa fills your stockings with goodies...
JESUS supplies all your needs.
Santa comes down your chimney uninvited...
JESUS stands at your door and knocks, and then enters your heart when invited.
You have to wait in line to see Santa...
JESUS is as close as the mention of His name.
Santa lets you sit on his lap...
JESUS lets you rest in His arms.
Santa doesn't know your name, all he can say is "Hi little boy or girl, what's your name?"...
JESUS knew our name before we were born. Not only does He know our name, He knows our address too. He knows our history and future and He even knows how many hairs are on our heads.
Santa has a belly like a bowl full of jelly...
JESUS has a heart full of love
All Santa can offer is HO HO HO...
JESUS offers health, help and hope.
Santa says "You better not cry"...
JESUS says "Cast all your cares on me for I care for you."
Santa's little helpers make toys...
JESUS makes new life, mends wounded hearts, repairs broken homes and builds mansions.
Santa may make you chuckle but...
JESUS gives you joy that is your strength.
While Santa puts gifts under your tree...
JESUS became our gift and died on a tree...the cross.
http://www.thoughts-about-god.com/christmas/jesus_better.htm
A Digital Christmas
This next one Ingrid Reinholdt sent me, it made me smile. Christians have always imagined what it would be like if Jesus was born during their time, this one is pretty up-to-date…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHNNPM7pJA
The Christmas Tree: Samuel T. Coleridge - Ratzeburg, Germany 1799
From the modern, to the older: this from 200 years ago:
There is a Christmas custom here which pleased and interested me. The children make little presents to their parents, and to each other; and the parents to the children. For three or four months before Christmas the girls are all busy; and the boys save up their pocket money, to make or purchase these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it -- such as working when they are out on visits, and the others are not with them; getting up in the morning before daylight; and the like. then, on the evening before Christmas day, one of the parlours is lighted up by the children, into which the parents must not go. A great yew bough is fastened on the table at a little distance from the wall, a multitude of little tapers are fastened in the bough, but so as not to catch it till they are nearly burnt out, and coloured paper hangs and flutters from the twigs. Under this bough, the children lay out in great order the presents they mean for their parents, still concealing in their pockets what they intend for each other. Then the parents are introduced, and each presents his little gift, and then bring out the rest one by one from their pockets, and present them with kisses and embraces. Where I witnessed this scene there were eight or nine children, and the eldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped all his children so tight to his breast, it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him. I was very much affected. The shadow of the bough and its appendages on the wall, and arching over on the ceiling, made a pretty picture, and then the raptures of the very little ones, when at last the twigs and their needles began to take fire and snap! -- Oh, it was a delight for them! On the next day, in the great parlour, the parents lay out on the table the presents for the children; a scene of more sober joy success, as on this day, after an old custom, the mother says privately to each of her daughters, and the father to his sons, that which he has observed most praiseworthy, and that which was most faulty in their conduct. Formerly, and still in all the smaller towns and villages throughout North Germany, these presents were sent by all the parents to some one fellow, who in high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enormous flax wig, personate Knecht Rupert, the servant Rupert. On Christmas night he goes round to every house, and says that Jesus Christ his master sent him thither, the parents and elder children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened. He then inquires for the children, and, according to the character which he hears from the parent, he gives them the intended presents, as if they came out of heaven from Jesus Christ. Or, if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod, and in the name of his master recommends them to use it frequently. About seven or eight years old the children are let into the secret, and it is curious to observe how faithfully they keep it.
And Life Goes On…
My title this morning is, “And life goes on…”. The Scripture (Luke 2:21-40) we read through our time of worship reflects that for Mary and Joseph – after “the big event”, life goes on. We read the story, I don’t plan to read it again, but it shows us how life goes on – quite a bit differently now for Mary and Joseph, as it is for every couple that gives birth to their first child. From that moment on, everything changes –priorities, the tendency to put ourselves first, sleeping and eating habits, and for the rest of their lives they go on as different people – as “parents”, and so all the significant decisions are impacted by that reality as parents weigh how decisions effect not just them, but the others as well.
That is my very simple message this morning: life goes on after Christmas, but it really should go on differently. We celebrate the birth of Jesus 2000+ years ago, and that is especially significant to all of us who call the Baby our Lord and Saviour, all of us in whom Jesus has taken up residence in our lives. Jesus came, not just in the flesh 2000+ years ago, but Jesus has come in the Spirit to us. And so we place the birth of Jesus next to our re-birth into the family of God, and that is now how we must live.
The entire idea of the “incarnation” – the rich theological term that means that God became human and lived among us – is meant to be repeated by us each and every day. We are, as followers of Jesus, to follow His example and live out our new birth in the world around us. I have two stories to tell to make this point, and then we’ll be done.
The Frontier College Story:
As you know I’ve been working on an education degree at the U of A – one more course and I’m done! This past fall I took a course on the Foundations of Adult Education, and learned some great stories about the specific Canadian context, including the story of Frontier College.
In 1899, Alfred Fitzpatrick (an ordained pastor) recognized a huge social need. It was the era of lumber, mining, and railway camps – men (mostly immigrants) living in cramped quarters, far from family, with no ability to read or often to speak English, and no way to learn. Fitzpatrick decided to do something about it, so he recruited young University students (many of whom had been impacted by a Christian movement known as “the social gospel” which sought to address the many social problems that industrialization had created). These students were sent to the camps to teach the men – they set up “reading tents” where the men could come to learn. But Fitzpatrick and the teachers discovered something very quickly – few men were coming to the tents to learn from these young, “educated” university grads. So they made a huge decision: the “teachers” would no longer be just “teachers” – they became “labourer-teachers”. They went out into the fields to cut trees, into the mines with pick axes and shovels, and out to the railway lines, and worked shoulder to shoulder all day long, and then opened the reading tents in the evening. And the men started to come, they started to learn, and it is a proud Canadian story that to me – and I took great delight in pointing this out to my classmates – is a beautiful demonstration of exactly what we believe Jesus did in the incarnation. Frontier College still exists today, focused on adult literacy and led largely by volunteers.
A Christmas Story
The last story of the morning --- Copyright © 1982 Nancy W. Gavin
--- Submitted by Edwin G. Whiting
“The story first appeared in Woman's Day magazine in 1982. My mom had sent the story in as a contest entry in which she subsequently won first place. Unfortunately, she passed away from cancer two years after the story was published. Our family still keeps the tradition started by her and my father and we have passed it on to our children. Feel free to use the story. It gives me and my sisters great joy to know that it lives on and has hopefully inspired others to reach out in a way that truly honors the spirit of Christmas. --- Kevin Gavin”
It's just a small, white envelope stuck among the branches of our Christmas tree. No name, no identification, no inscription. It has peeked through the branches of our tree for the past 10 years or so.
It all began because my husband Mike hated Christmas---oh, not the true meaning of Christmas, but the commercial aspects of it-overspending...the frantic running around at the last minute to get a tie for Uncle Harry and the dusting powder for Grandma---the gifts given in desperation because you couldn't think of anything else.
Knowing he felt this way, I decided one year to bypass the usual shirts, sweaters, ties and so forth. I reached for something special just for Mike. The inspiration came in an unusual way.
Our son Kevin, who was 12 that year, was wrestling at the junior level at the school he attended; and shortly before Christmas, there was a non-league match against a team sponsored by an inner-city church, mostly black.
These youngsters, dressed in sneakers so ragged that shoestrings seemed to be the only thing holding them together, presented a sharp contrast to our boys in their spiffy blue and gold uniforms and sparkling new wrestling shoes.
As the match began, I was alarmed to see that the other team was wrestling without headgear, a kind of light helmet designed to protect a wrestler's ears.
It was a luxury the ragtag team obviously could not afford. Well, we ended up walloping them. We took every weight class. And as each of their boys got up from the mat, he swaggered around in his tatters with false bravado, a kind of street pride that couldn't acknowledge defeat.
Mike, seated beside me, shook his head sadly, "I wish just one of them could have won," he said. "They have a lot of potential, but losing like this could take the heart right out of them."
Mike loved kids-all kids-and he knew them, having coached little league football, baseball and lacrosse. That's when the idea for his present came.
That afternoon, I went to a local sporting goods store and bought an assortment of wrestling headgear and shoes and sent them anonymously to the inner-city church.
On Christmas Eve, I placed the envelope on the tree, the note inside telling Mike what I had done and that this was his gift from me.
His smile was the brightest thing about Christmas that year and in succeeding years.
For each Christmas, I followed the tradition---one year sending a group of mentally handicapped youngsters to a hockey game, another year a check to a pair of elderly brothers whose home had burned to the ground the week before Christmas, and on and on.
The envelope became the highlight of our Christmas. It was always the last thing opened on Christmas morning and our children, ignoring their new toys, would stand with wide-eyed anticipation as their dad lifted the envelope from the tree to reveal it's contents.
As the children grew, the toys gave way to more practical presents, but the envelope never lost its allure. The story doesn't end there.
You see, we lost Mike last year due to dreaded cancer. When Christmas rolled around, I was still so wrapped in grief that I barely got the tree up. But Christmas Eve found me placing an envelope on the tree, and in the morning, it was joined by three more. Each of our children, unbeknownst to the others, had placed an envelope on the tree for their dad.
The tradition has grown and someday will expand even further with our grandchildren standing around the tree with wide-eyed anticipation watching as their fathers take down the envelope. Mike's spirit, like the Christmas spirit, will always be with us.
Closing Prayer: Christmas by Peter Marshall
We yearn, our Father, for the simple beauty of Christmas -- for all the old familiar melodies and words that remind us of that great miracle when He who had made all things was one night to come as a babe, to lie in the crook of a woman's arm.
Before such mystery we kneel, as we follow the shepherds and Wise Men to bring Thee the gift of our love -- a love we confess has not always been as warm or sincere or real as it should have been. But now, on this Christmas Day, that love would find its Beloved, and from Thee receive the grace to make it pure again, warm and real.
We bring Thee our gratitude for every token of Thy love, for all the ways Thou hast heaped blessings upon us during the years that have gone.
And we do pray, Lord Jesus, that as we celebrate Thy birthday, we may do it in a manner well pleasing to Thee. May all we do and say, every tribute of our hearts, bring honor to Thy name, that we, Thy people, may remember Thy birth and feel Thy presence among us even yet.
May the loving kindness of Christmas not only creep into our hearts, but there abide, so that not even the return to earthly cares and responsibilities, not all the festivities of our own devising may cause it to creep away weeping. May the joy and spirit of Christmas stay with us now and forever.
In the name of Jesus, who came to save His people from their sins, even in that lovely name we pray. Amen."
