The Grinch Really Didn’t Steal Christmas
Galatians 4:4-7
John 1:1-18
Christmas Day, 2005
There was once this fellow called Grinch and Grinch hated Christmas. He disliked the whole season so much that one year he decided that he would do all he could to stop it. He decided to steal all of the packages, trees, foods, treats, and trimmings that go with the season from the people of Who-ville. So, while the people were sleeping, he went out and took everything, certain that Christmas would not come.
The Grinch woke up the next morning and couldn’t understand what was happening. People were singing and dancing and rejoicing. And only Dr. Suess could put it this way.
And the Grinch with his Grinch feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling: How could this be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags. And he puzzled three hours, till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas…perhaps…means a little more!
It seems that there is always someone trying to steal Christmas from us. How many Grinches have you noticed this season? There are many – perhaps too many – to name. We don’t like to talk about them because they represent the darker side of humanness. Nevertheless, they are there.
Some Grinches come in the form of Herod, who was so afraid of losing his throne that he sent his soldiers on a killing rampage, destroying all of the boy babies in the area of Bethlehem in order to try to kill the One born to be king.
Some Grinches are in the form of the monstrous atrocities brought into our living rooms each night on the evening news.
Some are in the form of the grinding poverty and hunger that afflict people around the globe and even in our own city.
Some grinches are in the form of terrorists who blow up themselves and countless innocents in order to make a political statement.
There are a thousand other people, situations, and movements that threaten our peace: Grinches galore who will try to steal our Christmas. But John, the writer of our gospel, breaks into our fear, into our violent world, into our apathy, into our brokenness – and assures us that such darkness will not overcome the light and the brightness of Wisdom, of the Word, of the Son of God.
John preaches that the Word has been made flesh. Think about that for a minute. The Word, God, has been made flesh. When you do, it is not hard to understand why the Greeks thought that this story was a whole lot of foolishness. The Word of God made flesh, indeed!
I remember early Monday morning on October 13, 1980. It was about 2:30 am and Toni sat straight up in bed and made that announcement. “I think it is time to go to the hospital.”
Now we had been through all of the prenatal classes and the birthing classes. We each knew exactly what was happening. We knew the schedule. We had been to the hospital to check out the facilities. We were calm, cool, and collected. I jumped out of bed, rushed out the bedroom door and said, “You pack the doctor and I’ll call the suitcase!”
About eight hours later, I witnessed the birth of our first son. He looked pretty much like all of those other babies that I had seen in the films. He was wrinkled and red. He didn’t have any teeth. He had this white gooey stuff all over him. He was a little bloody. He was so fragile.
John says that the Word became flesh. The Word of God was born as a human baby and looked a whole lot like this. Can this be God? No wonder the intellectuals of that day thought they must be crazy.
Six days later, Toni and Matthew and I traveled up to Greeley, Colorado with our friends Pete and Marsha. Pete was on the staff First United Methodist Church in Greeley and was scheduled to preach that day. I still remember the sermon he preached. It was titled, “A Peanut in Yankee Stadium.” He asked this question. “Have you ever felt so insignificant, so trivial, so small, of so little value, that you thought it didn’t really matter if you existed at all?”
He told about going to a ball game in Yankee Stadium when, looking down, he saw a peanut at his feet – unnoticeable in the vastness of that great stadium. How often do we feel like that? Yet Christ came into the world and found a place among all of the insignificant people and unimportant things. He was born along the back roads of the Roman Empire, in a stinky smelly barn, of peasant parents. He was born of flesh and blood; wrinkled, sticky, bloody, and so very fragile.
There is something very important about all of this we call being human, because God chose to enter our humanness. God chose to come down and reside with us. God chose to become just like us. God chose to take on our frail and fragile bodies and walk in our shoes.
A little over fifty-two years ago, Rev. Christian Kocher, who was then pastor of Forest
Park Methodist Church here in Fort Wayne, took a small infant in his arms, dipped his hand into the baptismal font, and let those waters run over the child’s head and down onto his shoulders. He pronounced those sacred words and then looking at the parents of the child, he announced that the boy was now a Christian. Through the waters of baptism, we believe that the Word of God comes to reside in a special way in the life of the baptized one. God had welcomed this child into the family, and made him an heir of all of the goodness that exists in creation.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but his words were to follow me through all of my life, taking me down paths undreamed and unexpected and sometimes unwanted. But through it all, the waters of baptism continue to flow and I receive the assurance that that act of God fifty-two years ago, has stuck. God continues to reside in my life. God has not deserted me. God has not forgotten me. God has not forsaken me. Even through the valleys and through the depths of sorrow, pain, and feelings of inadequacy, God has chosen to walk by my side.
The Apostle Paul, writing to the Church at Galatia, said that we who have taken on Christ, who have received the Word, are no longer slaves. Previously we had been slaves of sin and wickedness, but now we have become sons and daughters. And if we are sons and daughters of God, then it follows that we are also heirs to all that God has promised from the beginning of time. We come into the world in a most fragile state and we, from time to time, go through those periods of indecision, insecurity, and doubt. But we have been made heirs and God does not forget those to whom he has promised all of eternity. What a gift we have been given, to be made heirs of the Kingdom of God.
In a few days, the month of December will be over and the month of January will begin. January finds its name from the Roman god Janus. Janus has two faces – with one he could see the past and with the other, he could see into the future.
A new future awaits us. A new chapter in our lives is coming with the new year: new challenges, new opportunities, new adventures. We are confronted with the question, “How will we fill the empty pages of this new chapter?”
The future will be much like the past. There will be successes, joys, happiness, love, peace. There will also be sorrow, failure, ugliness, war, violence, loneliness. Life, as we have learned, is a mixture of the good and the bad. But into that mixed future, we carry the good news of Christmas and the babe in the manger. Into that not-yet-written chapter of our lives, we carry the hopes and fears of all the years, in the form of the Word made flesh.
The Grinch didn’t steal Christmas. He cannot. For Christmas is a gift of God to us. The Word has become flesh and the darkness has not overcome it.
