John
6:38
[Very often, during the Advent season, I preached more than once on a Christmas theme. The miracle of Christmas, the Incarnation, should inspire us to think and to worship.]
For the
past few years I’ve been paying a lot more attention to the “secular” Christmas
songs which are so popular this time of year.
Lots of
them are just plain fun. Their lively
and easy to sing.
Take
“Jingle Bells,” for example. The only
people who might object to it would be the People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals, complaining about that one horse having to pull such a load.
Some of
these secular Christmas songs appeal to the imagination, like “Frosty the
Snowman” or “Rudolph.” They’re fun, even
if “Rudolph” does seem to promote a kind of conditional love. Let’s face it, if there hadn’t been that
foggy night, he still wouldn’t be playing any reindeer games. You can’t help but wonder: If Santa gets radar, what happens to Rudolph?
By the way,
have you heard the newer version of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland”. In it, the snowman built by the wandering
couple is imagined, not as Parson Brown, but as a “Circus Clown.” I suppose that in this politically correct
age not even snowmen can be too closely associated with a particular
religion.
Please,
don’t misunderstand. I’m not objecting
to these songs. I don’t even mind the
songs about Santa. Sadly, some of our
Christian brothers and sisters have made such a clatter about Santa that it’s
no wonder some folks outside the church think Christians are just silly. Still, I was listening to a familiar Santa
song the other day and as I heard about how Santa “sees you when you’re
sleeping” and “knows when you’re awake,” it struck me that Santa sounds a lot
like a stalker!
What I have
noticed is that a lot of the more “serious” secular Christmas songs are just
plain melancholy. There’s a note of
sadness and loneliness in a lot of those songs.
Whether you’re talking about Elvis’ “Blue Christmas” or Bing’s “White Christmas”
you’re hearing the lament of people who aren’t where they want to be. And where they want to be is often somewhere
called “Home.”
Have you
every listened to “No Place Like Home for the Holidays?” I’d heard it lots of times but I really
listened to it for the first time recently.
Remember how the singer speaks of meeting a man from Tennessee who was
“headed for Pennsylvania and some homemade pumpkin pie” and observes that “from
Atlantic to Pacific…the traffic is terrific.”
The mention of so many American’s being separated from their families
made me wonder about when the song was written.
You see, it used to be true that several generations of one family would
live close together. When the song first
became a big hit for Perry Como in 1954 that was no longer true. The Depression and the War made it necessary
for younger families to move away from home.
When our
youth were in Delbarton a few years ago, I met a man who had worked much of his
life in Columbus. He talked about how
every Friday he would drive down 23 to West Virginia to be home for the
weekend. That yearning for the security
of home is at the heart of lots of our Christmas songs.
This
Christmas is the first that David and Kelly are spending in their new
home; yet, they are also, for the first
time, away from home at Christmas.
They’ll be fine--others have faced the same experience but I can’t help
but think that those songs have a special meaning for them--maybe one they’ve
never thought about before.
Remember,
too, that after the devastating hurricanes of this past Fall, many people were
left homeless, literally. The
government, churches, and charitable institutions, along with kind-hearted
individuals, rallied to help provide homes for these displaced people. I’m pleased that our church is generously
giving to try to help some student families from New Orleans Baptist
Theological Seminary. Home for these
hurricane victims will be very different this Christmas than last. When some of these families hear Louis
Armstrong’s Christmas in New Orleans,
they’ll be as touched at those sailors in the south Pacific hearing White Christmas for the first time.
Of course,
this is not an essay on the sociology of Christmas songs. But what I want to impress upon you is the
fact that there’s an underlying theme of home in the Biblical account of
Christmas as well. Just consider:
The Bible
story tells of how the Son of God left his home in heaven to dwell as a man
among us. It’s hard to find the language
to describe how he left the praise-filled halls of heaven to live in among
people like you and me.
Theologians
call it the mystery of the Incarnation.
It speaks of the miracle of God taking on humanity so he might reveal
himself to us, so he might redeem us. As
Athanasius put it, “The Son of God became a man so men might become sons of
God.”
Let me
share this story I came across recently.
… missionary and college president George Murray of
Columbia International University, Columbia, South Carolina, wrote of the many
holiday seasons he had spent overseas. He and his wife were missionaries in
southern Europe for thirteen years. Not long after their arrival in Italy as
rookie missionaries, the holidays approached and they were faced with their
first Christmas away from home and family. They experienced genuine
homesickness. They longed for familiar sights and sounds and smells—like
pumpkin pie and cranberries, which were unknown commodities in the
Mediterranean basin where they now lived. They missed their family gatherings.
They missed their childhood traditions. They badly wanted to go home for
Christmas.
Then
one day as George was meditating on the meaning of Christmas, it hit him: Christmas isn’t about going home. It’s all about leaving home. That’s what Jesus did. He left…his heavenly to come to this
sin-filled world. He was obeying his
heavenly Father. He was representing God
to this world.
As a child
Jesus enjoyed a home here--even though its stability was temporarily shattered
by a hurried flight to the safety of Egypt while he was just a toddler.
But once
his earthly ministry began, any semblance of a home life was lost. On one occasion he told his followers, "Foxes have
holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay
his head."
Even
in death his “home” became a borrowed tomb.
Why
did he endure this kind of homelessness?
On the night before his crucifixion he gave a hint. “There are many
rooms in my Father's home, and I am going to prepare a place for you.” He had left home to invite us home.
So
when you hear those melancholy Christmas songs about people missing home, open your
hearts to others. But above all, when
those song make you feel wistful and lonely, remember Jesus’ word, “I’m getting
a room ready for you.” Of course, Jesus
was speaking of a future home, a home made possible because he chose to leave
his home to live among us.
As
a nation, we rightly moved to provide homes for those displaced by Hurricane
Katrina. As we move into December, I want us to be thinking
about a home for Christ.
To begin with, we need to make sure Jesus
has a home in our hearts.
“Inviting
Jesus into our hearts,” that’s a phrase
we often use with children. We like to
be just a little more sophisticated with adults, but the imagery is still
interesting. It means to make Christ the
center of our lives. It involves more
than a passing acknowledgment of our admiration for him, an admiration which
might or might not exceed that we have for
other key figures in history.
In
fact, if we only see him as just another historical figure, we will have missed
the point. Back in the seventeenth
century, poet and writer Angelus Silesius said:
Though Christ a thousand times
In Bethlehem be
born,
If He’s not born in thee
Thy soul is still
forlorn.
We’re
talking about a commitment to him at the deepest level of our being. We rest our hope and shape our lives on the
belief that he is who he claimed to be and has done what he claimed to have
done.
Making
sure Jesus has a home in our hearts is important because, as someone once said,
God has no grandchildren.
Each
of us has to open the door of our hearts to let Jesus in. Each of us must come to that place of
commitment. For some of us, that may
take place in a highly charged moment which we can remember with clarity; we can remember what was happening just a
surely as we can remember what was happening around us when we heard of the
Kennedy assassination or the World Trade towers falling. We can look back on the calendar to the day
when we threw open the door of our hearts and said, “Come on in, Jesus.”
Others of us just look around one day and discover Jesus there in our hearts, and,
perhaps, we're not even able to remember a time when he wasn’t
there. Some homes are so nurturing that
trusting Christ is just natural. It’s
rare, but it happens.
I
think it’s more likely, today, for men and women to take their time in
welcoming Jesus into their hearts. They
talk to others who’ve invited him in to find out what kind of “guest” he is. Then, they come to that point when they open
the door, without removing the chain, and ask Jesus a few questions of their
own. And, finally, they open that door
to let him in. I understand these
people. I appreciate them. I’ve found the often make the most committed
Christians.
What’s
most important is that we each invite Jesus to make a home in hearts.
But, of course, we need to make sure Jesus
has a home in our church.
The
Old Testament prophet Ezekiel tells of how God’s glory departed from the
beautiful temple of Solomon. Without the
presence of God, that temple--one of the most beautiful buildings in the
ancient world--became just another building.
(Ezek. 9-10)
A
church which isn’t a home for Jesus, isn’t really a church. The repeated warning to the churches of Asia
Minor in the opening chapters of the Revelation was that they might lose their
identity as churches.
A church where Jesus is at home will be a
worshipful church.
One
of the great tragedies of modern Christianity is the fact that we Christians so
often quarrel over the form of worship and lose sight of the essence of
worship: Honoring God for the great
things he has done. The Magi, though
rank pagans, seemed to understand that God was doing something special in that
Child born in Bethlehem; in response,
they worshipped.
We
need to make sure that our church strives to engage believers of all ages,
backgrounds, tastes, and personalities in worshipping God.
A
church where Jesus is at home will be a welcoming church.
We’ve
become so familiar with the Christmas story, whether through the reading of the
Bible or the singing of carols, that we miss some of the scandalous aspects of
the story.
God
graciously sent a special invitation to outsiders to come celebrate the arrival
of Jesus. The Wise Men were not Jews,
not believers in God, yet God showed his care for them by leading them to
Bethlehem where they could see the Child born to be King of the Jews.
Of
course, that was a little later; on the
very night of Jesus’ birth. angels invited a bunch of shepherds to see the
child. I can imagine many a mother
washing dad’s robe so she wouldn’t be disgraced when her son played a shepherd
in the Christmas pageant. I can’t
imagine her saying, “You’re playing a shepherd, better throw this robe out in
the barnyard for a while so it will smell right for the pageant.”
The
shepherds smelled. They were on the
lowest rung of the social ladder. Yet,
they received an angelic invitation to the manger.
A
church where Jesus is at home will welcome those who don’t look like us. It will welcome those who have accents (and
not just the posh ones), tattoos, piercing, right-wing wacko notions, left-wing
weirdo notions. The church which is a
home for Jesus will love the people Jesus loves.
A
church where Jesus is at home will be a winning church.
A
few weeks ago, Pat and I met an English Christian. We didn’t meet him in England. We met him after we got back home. In fact, he told us he had recommitted
himself to Christ after coming to the States.
We
told him about our recent visit and he commented on the state of the church in
his homeland. He spoke of all the
beautiful church which are virtually empty on Sundays and how Christianity is now so weak in a nation that once sent missionaries to every corner
of the world. He seemed genuinely troubled.
As
he talked about the empty churches, I recalled a story I heard years ago.
It
seems a group from America was touring one of those beautiful churches in the
English countryside. The guide pointed
out the furnishings in the sanctuary, commented on some of the famous
worshippers who had sat in the pews, and praised the artist who had designed
the stained glass windows. After a
while, the guide asked for questions.
Some of the group asked about the artworks in the church and the
organ; but then a woman in the group
shocked everyone by asking, “Has anybody been saved here lately?”
She
rightly understood that a church ought to be a place where sinners find
salvation.
We
sometimes complain about all the materialism evident this time of year, saying
that it robs Christmas of its real meaning.
Yet, if our church claims to be a home for Jesus and we don’t offer the
gift of salvation to our neighbors, our families, and others, aren’t we missing
the meaning of Christmas?
Conclusion
Several
times during the past few weeks I’ve heard references to the so-called “war on
Christmas.” It’s a references to what
appears to be a concerted effort to expunge the spiritual and religious
elements of the Christmas story. Those
who believe in such a war point to the banning of Nativity Scenes from
courthouse lawns, stores telling their employees they may say, “Happy Holidays”
but not “Merry Christmas” to customers, and other attempts to minimize the
Biblical elements of the holiday.
The
truth is, there is a war. But it wasn’t
started by the secularists. It was
started by a tiny baby who left home to invade enemy territory two thousand
years ago.
He’s
been recruiting soldiers for this war ever since, soldiers who love this home
enough to endure hardship and misunderstanding to proclaim his message of
deliverance to their neighbors, soldiers who know they have a better home
elsewhere.
