Dr. Ron Sumners
December 4, 2005
In a book called "Outrageous and Hilarious Letters to the Pastor," a dentist wrote his pastor:
Dear Pastor,
I write to remind you again this year to lay off the Christmas candy. Candy rots your teeth. You need to stick to nourishing food - period! And while I am at it, let me remind you that if you go for the Christmas "sweets" spiritually - I mean if you sentimentalize about Christmas and get a gooey glow and do nothing about letting the living Christ into your daily living - if, I say, you eat Christmas sweets instead of feeding your soul real nourishment, what you rot is your soul.
P.S. May we please have some payment on your account?
Do we need to be reminded that Christmas has to do with the bitterness as well as the sweetness? Consider the New Testament record concerning this. When Mary first knew that she was going to give birth to the Child Jesus, she gave a little speech we call "The Magnificat." We Baptists have been so concerned not to give attention to Mary as do The Roman Catholics, that we have missed the power of this song of Mary.
Today she would be branded as a revolutionary agitator for saying the things she said. She spoke of how the rich are going to be cast down and the poor are going to rise up and have their way. She spoke of how kings are going to be cast down from their thrones. (This was a reflection on the social, political, and economic repression of the common people in Mary's time, and the hope for change to something better).
When Mary was about to give birth, she journeyed on a donkey for three days down the rocky roads from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
When she and Joseph reached the town of Bethlehem, there was no room for them in the inn. We see this scene repeatedly portrayed so sweetly in Christmas pageants. We should not forget that the reason that there was no room for the young couple was poverty. If Mary and Joseph had had money, they would not have been sent to the stable. If they had had money, a room inside the inn would have been available. But out they went to the stable and it was there that the Christ Child was born, in the most humble of circumstances.
Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the newborn became political refugees. They became displaced persons. Herod, the king, became insanely paranoid of this new king and had all the boy babies under the age of two killed. God warned Joseph in a dream that he had to flee Palestine to save the life on the toddler, Jesus. It had taken some time for the Magi to travel to Palestine to worship the Christ child. By the time they found him, he was a toddler. That is why Herod had all the boy babies under the age of two slaughtered.
The children of Bethlehem were murdered on the direct orders from the government. Do you think that terror is a new tactic? Killing infants was nothing but a terrorist act to suppress rebellion as well as kill a future political rival.
I have never seen the killing of the babies depicted in any of our sweet Christmas pageants. Yet it is a part of the Christmas story. Here is the murder of babies, representing all the hard, grim, realities of life - in the Christmas story! We tend to ignore it or gloss it over. And yet, it is an essential element of the full Christmas story.
The New Testament writers are telling us that because God loves us so much, He comes to us not only amid the pleasures and joys of life, but also amid the pain and the sorrows of life. He comes to us right in the middle of the whole package of life, just as it is.
This is what Jesus' coming means. If we miss this, we'll have nothing to carry us through the months ahead until next Christmas. The days, weeks and months until next December 25th will not be all sweetness and light. Many of us will experience pain, sorrow, disappointment, loss, and real terror. We need to understand that the coming of Christ has a word for us in those moments as well as the ones of sweetness and joy!
The story is told of a pastor whose congregation tended toward sleep whenever he preached. One Sunday he came prepared with a solution to this problem. When he went to the pulpit, the very first thing that he said was, "l feel I must confess to you, as your pastor, that I spent several years of my life in the arms of another man's wife." Immediately, he had everyone's attention. They were hanging on his every syllable. There was no chance that anyone would sleep through this. Then the preacher said, "My mother!" The congregation had a good laugh, and the pastor accomplished his purpose.
Another pastor tried the same thing, but it didn't work so well. This preacher could not tell a joke because he could never remember the punchline. One Sunday, he went to the pulpit and soon noticed that half the congregation was drifting off into slumberland. Now was the time to try the "shocker" on them! He said, "I must confess to you, as your pastor that I have spent several years of my life in the arms of another man's wife." Immediately, he had everyone's attention. The slumberers were awake. Then he frowned, paused, scratched his head, and said, "But for the life of me, I can't remember who she was."
Unfortunately, we tend to tell the Christmas story with equally sorry results. We tend to tell only the sweet parts and leave out the hard, disturbing parts. We tend to forget the punchline, which is that God loves us down in the depths of all of life - the sweet and the bitter, both!
The kind of joy and renewal that will carry us through the months ahead - through the pain and the joy - will be absent to those who forget the Christmas story's punchline.
There are some of us who are not hurting much now (although we know that sooner or later the deep hurt will come). And there are some of us who are hurting deeply right now (although we know that our pain will dissipate, and joy will come again). Part of being a Christian family is to know that those who are not hurting can give strength and support to those who are!
Christmas is a time that we want to be home. We want members of our family who are not home to come home. We want family dinners and Christmas hugs and the security of being with those who love us. But isn't Christmas also for those who have no home or family to go to? What is the church's message to them?
Christmas is a time for giving our loved one’s gifts that symbolize all the good things that occur in close, warm relationships. But isn't Christmas also for those who mourn the loss of a loved one to whom they can no longer give to in that way? What is the Church's message to them?
We thank God for the joy of the toys and the tinsel, but most of all we thank God for the bittersweet Christmas story. We thank God that we are never abandoned, even in our deepest hurt. We thank God that whatever our life situation, we can always go home to
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