Merry Christmas 2007

Christmas is a lot like Good Friday and Easter in that there is very little a preacher can say that will enhance what Scripture already teaches about these Holy Days. There are great mysteries involved with each that transcend our human capacity to comprehend and while we can and must offer up praise for the birth of Messiah, can we really appreciate it for what it is? For what it means to us? For what it means to the whole world?

I've shared before the conflicts I have with our American Christmas traditions so that there must surely be some who would refer to me as "Rev. Grinch" who tries to steal the joy of Christmas! In retrospect, I think I've been a little too hard on we Christians who spend too much time and money in stores worrying about and preparing for this coming Celebration, and I don't think I've been entirely fair - especially when I look at the wonderful thing the precious children of my little congregation have done in partnering with Heifer International and leading us with their enthusiasm and purity of heart.

I think we all agree that Christmas has become too commercialized, and I think we agree that many good people lose sight of what it all means because the true value of the Holy Day is lost somewhere in one of the many financial transactions which take place. I have opined that there are too many who claim the name "Christian" who just do not get the whole Christ-centered Holy Day, including Christians who write "hate mail" to newspapers virtually cursing and spewing condemnation toward those who would dare to use a holiday greeting other than "Merry Christmas".

In spite of my disdain for the commercialization of the Holy Day and its Advent season, however, it still must be important for me - and for others who think like I do - to get over the distaste, stop focusing on what's wrong, and choose to focus instead on what's right. It is the same argument I've made for so many other issues that haunt Christianity in the public realm - that we not be so focused on the negative that we fail to celebrate all that is right; by making our case and our cause for Christ to be that of LIFE and LIBERTY, REDEMPTION and HOPE.

Ours is the case and the cause that believes not only that there is a God but that He is also the God who cares enough to do this magnificent, mysterious, and marvelous thing to send into the world a Savior as a very personal and interactive God. This is the God who freely chose to walk among us, to teach us, to heal us, to comfort us and, yes, to confront and correct us.

This is the God who could just as easily have come to us in a way more reminiscent of the images of The Revelation, with blaring horns and sword-bearing angels charging and the whole Armageddon battle thing – but chose instead to come to us as a baby; quietly and with little fanfare, not to frighten us but to offer to us the Peace we so desperately need.

And perhaps in the still of the night the earth stood still and the world silent if but for a moment to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace by reveling in that moment of pure, unadulterated peace; peace unencumbered by the works of man.

Let this be for us a season when wrongs are made right, and negatives are pushed aside in favor of positives. Let this be for us the season when hard hearts such as my own will finally come to terms with the Spirit of the Christ Mass, having been led by the faith and purity of our children to the hope and the promise of the Christ Child.

Merry Christmas, dear friends.