Every year beginning just after Thanksgiving, all the major networks and many of the cable channels start showing Christmas movies in the evenings and throughout the day. The Christmas movie selection is usually pretty predictable; Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, A Charlie Brown Christmas, It’s a Wonderful Life, and so on. Over the years, I imagine, we’ve just about seen them all, and we probably all have a favorite. One of my favorites is Christmas Vacation starring Chevy Chase. How many of you have seen Christmas Vacation? The movie has certainly become a holiday favorite for many besides just me! We cannot help but laugh at this simple parody of the false expectations that we build up around the traditional family Christmas experience. I imagine that many of us can identify with the character Clark Griswold, who does everything in his power to give his family the gift of a “perfect” Christmas.
The movie begins with Clark taking his family into the wilderness in search of the perfect Christmas tree. After a road rage accident that sends the Griswolds careening into a snow bank, they set off on foot. A lengthy march in the snow leads to the perfect tree, and also the discovery that Clark forgot to bring a saw. From wrestling with strands of Christmas lights that don’t work to suffering extended visits from difficult relatives, the Griswolds bear experience after experience that would prompt most of us to say, “Been there, done that!” For example, how many of us have had that wonderful Yuletide experience of trying to assemble a bicycle at 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, only to figure out that we probably should have just paid the assembly fee? Like Clark, our intentions to plan a “good, old-fashioned, family Christmas” may not always live up to our ideal, or to what the pictures, movies, and marketing, have made it out to be. But then again, those visions of Christmas often replace the biblical meaning of “God with us.” And what a shame if they do. Because after weeks of preparation, all for the purpose of creating a perfect day in an imperfect year, someone will probably be upset because they didn’t get the present they wanted, a toy is already broken, Grandpa drank too much, and Grandma got run over by a reindeer!
It’s pretty sad, really. Our insatiable desire for something that so often evades us. The constant search for Christmas perfection often ends up making things even worse and less perfect than they might have been if we hadn’t been trying so hard. So we come through a stressful Christmas holiday with not much to show for it except for a feeling of disappointment. It’s all quite ironic when you consider the fact that the most perfect Christmas there ever was had all the makings of a complete disaster. But we have managed to forget even that, often sanitizing Christmas by taking Jesus’ birth out of its true biblical and historical context.
Have you looked at a Christmas card lately? They portray these peaceful settings where “the cattle are lowing” right next to “the little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.” Yeah right! It’s almost laughable. Jesus was born in a stable, a cave where animals were kept. And wherever animals are kept there is, well, you know…which means that it would have smelled bad. And there were probably flies everywhere. The animals were most certainly restless with these three strangers in their midst. Mary was surely a sweaty, exhausted [hot] mess. Joseph was probably pacing nervously, and the little baby Jesus was likely balling his eyes out itching with the hay sticking to him and making adjustments to this new world outside of his mother’s womb. I could go on, but you get the point; Christmas is pretty messy, and certainly not perfect!
In the first Chapter of Luke we see how complicated the situation of Jesus coming into the world is. “In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.” How emotionally prepared do you suppose Mary, just a teenager, was for this life experience?
Gabriel said to her: “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” What part of “do not be afraid” do you suppose Mary didn’t understand? Do you think the thought ever crossed her mind that her parents might not believe her explanation? And, of course, we already know from Matthew’s gospel that her fiancé, Joseph, rejected her explanations. By all appearances, the whole ordeal was nothing but a huge mess.
Yet, miracles often happen in the middle of a mess, don’t they? Jesus’ birth was certainly no exception. But look again at how it all began. The angel Gabriel appears to Mary bringing assurance and promise: “Greetings you who are highly favored!” he says, “The Lord is with you!” Christmas is a vivid reminder that amid the uncertainty, the messiness, the imperfection, God shows up to bring you peace, purpose, joy, hope, and wholeness. Who needs a perfectly trimmed tree and flawless festivities when you can have all that?!? It’s the first step of faith, really; letting go of the tangible and worldly in order to experience the blessings of God’s presence, and there’s no better time than Christmastime to practice such faith. It requires the knowledge that God is with us, that we are all favored, and that God is the one who comes to us for relationship, no matter what the circumstances! But even such faith does not mean that we will always have the perfect Christmas or that bad things will never happen to us.
Just look at the situation from Mary’s point of view. She had worked really hard to do what was right, yet it seemed like wrong still showed up. We are told in verse 34, after the angel’s announcement, that the only thing on Mary’s mind was, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” Have you ever found yourself in such a situation? Maybe you have done everything you know how to do to be both faithful to God and true to your family. Then, you are notified four weeks before the holidays that you will be laid off at the first of the year. Or, your wife tells you she doesn’t love you anymore and wants a divorce. Or, your four-year-old is diagnosed with some disease. Or the high school guidance counselor calls and says that he believes your son is using drugs.
“How can this be, God, when I have tried so hard to do what is right?” Can you begin to feel Mary’s pain? “What will my family say?” she must’ve been wondering! “My fiancé will divorce me, and the penalty for adultery is a torturous execution! How can this be?” But look at how Mary responded, look at how Mary prepared herself to be a miracle-worker and welcome the coming Christ. “I am the Lord’s servant,” she answered the angel, “May it be to me as you have said.” Wow. What faith. And Mary’s faith continued throughout Jesus’ life. Mary didn’t quit through the lean and dangerous years of Jesus’ upbringing. Mary didn’t quit when the religious leaders accused her son of blasphemy. Mary didn’t quit while standing at the foot of her Son’s cross, when life most certainly seemed demonically insane!
Mary was favored, highly favored, by God. But God’s love and favor on us don’t mean that the path of faith is going to be neat and perfect. I wish it did. Like all of us, I wish the life of faith would follow a predictable cause-and-effect pattern that always resulted in blessings for the obedient. But it doesn’t. Bad things happen to good people; all the best-laid plans go completely awry, Christmas does not go exactly as hoped, what with being away from home and the baby being born in a stable and all. And yet because of Immanuel, God with us, it ends up being a perfect Christmas anyway.
As we approach Christmas this year, I hope each of us will look to Mary as the model for our Christmas preparations. Mary is an excellent example of serving God even when life doesn’t make sense. After all, life isn’t about you and me, no more than Christmas is about you and me. And we miss life when we use God to get what we desire instead of allowing ourselves to be used by God for God’s desires. For each of us in our own way, this is an imperfect season of life, and some of us may not feel like celebrating Christmas. But remember, it’s not our birthday; it’s Jesus’ birthday, and by celebrating Christmas, we are celebrating someone else who suffered, too.
Life is not only about staying safe and living comfortably. We are to “take up our cross,” are we not? The call to follow Jesus is a call to give your life to him, to join God’s mission in healing the souls of the world. We are signing up for the most radical life possible when we say “yes” to Jesus! It will almost never be perfect because following Christ is messy business. But even in the midst of the unexpected, the messy, and the devastating, we can fully expect God to show up. No matter what you are struggling to overcome, God promises to show up! This is truly what Christmas is all about; in the midst of all the messiness of life, God shows up! Praise be to God! Amen.
