We Need A Little Christmas - December 20, 2009

Text: Luke 2:1-7


There is a “Peanuts” cartoon in which Lucy greets Charlie Brown by saying, “Merry Christmas! I think that during this time of the year we should be kind to one another.” Charlie Brown replies, “Why does it only have to be this time of year? Why can’t people be nice to one another all year around?” Lucy retorts, “What are you? Some kind of fanatic or something?”

There is something about Christmas. It is a time for sharing, a time for giving, a time for kindness. Of course, like Charlie Brown we would want it to be this way the whole year round, but Lucy unfortunately has it right – such generosity and love and attention to need is not the rule.

It was way back in October when I first started seeing Christmas displays in stores and by early November we were already hearing Christmas music. Not carols so much, not religious music, but Christmas songs. Songs involving jingle bells and drummer boys and chipmunks and barking dogs and grandma getting run over by a reindeer. Eartha Kitt purring “Santa Baby” and Bing Crosby crooning “White Christmas” and the Bruce Springsteen version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” There are a lot of happy, bouncy holiday classics, and one of those that has been stuck in my head is called “We Need A Little Christmas.” It is about as cheery as a song can be, so much that it can get on your nerves, and it’s on a looping tape in my head – with Johnny Mathis singing.

It turns out that this song is from the 1966 musical “Mame,” with Angela Lansbury. Just so you’ll know what I’m talking about, I’m going to play it – it’s a short song:

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The happiness and cheeriness may seem overdone, but when you know something about the musical, it makes more sense. “Mame” is set between the Great Depression and World War II – not exactly the sunniest of times. People really did need some cheering up. And when you listen to the words more carefully, tucked into the cheery, happy tune is this verse – maybe you caught it:

For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
And I need a little angel
Sitting on my shoulder,
Need a little Christmas now.

You might have missed it because of the cheery tune, but I think a lot of us can relate to these words. It’s not just that folks in that grim stretch of the 30’s needed cheering up, lots of folks in the grim stretch we are in today need some cheering up. Many of us have grown a little leaner, a little colder, a little sadder, certainly a little older. And we do need the angels – we do need the arrival of God With Us.

This is the last Sunday I will be in the pulpit in 2009. And as I survey the past year, much of what I see just feels heavy. There is…

More war.
More violence.
More genocide.
More hunger.
More animosity.
More terrorism.
More evidence of climate change and environmental destruction.
More stories of children neglected and abused.
More factories closing.
More folks out of work.
More homes in foreclosure.
More people struggling to get by.
More people who are homeless.
More people without adequate medical care.
More folks needing assistance just to survive, even in our relatively well-to-do community.
More loved ones facing serious illness.
More of us who have lost loved ones this year.
More folks who are worried about children.
More students struggling with what to do with their lives.
More people looking for direction.

That’s not the whole story, of course. There is much that is good and right with the world. But hard times is a big part of the story. And it has always been that way. Whether it was Isaiah’s time, when the prophet dreamed of a messiah who would be Wonderful (as the choir sang about), Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace; or the world into which Jesus was born, in which Israel was an occupied country, Roman soldiers were all over the place, and heavy taxes were placed on the people; or our world.

What we need most in the midst of hard times is to know that things will be OK, to know that we are not alone, to know that someone cares. We need to know that God is there. As Mame (or Johnny Mathis) sings, we need that angel sitting on our shoulder. Maybe that is what we need most: to know that God is with us.

And that is Christmas in a nutshell: we celebrate the birth of a savior, the birth of one who is God With Us. We celebrate that in all of our living – in the joys and celebrations as well as in the setbacks and disappointments and heartaches, God is with us.

We need a little Christmas, right this very minute. And that sentiment is as true in July as it is in December. We need a reminder that God is with us.

We seem to go from one obstacle or crisis or setback to another, and humanity seems to stumble along from one conflict and collapse to another. And we can so resonate, again, with this cheery song:

We need a little music,
Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter,
And we need a little snappy
”Happy ever after,”
Need a little Christmas now.

Into a world that desperately needed it, Jesus was born. It didn’t seem like an earth-shattering event. In fact, it seemed like yet another example of the pain and harshness of the world. A not-yet-married couple are on a journey when the time to deliver comes, and there is no place to stay, no room at the inn, and a baby is born in a stable – in a shelter for animals. Not an auspicious beginning. Nothing about the story is expected, but every step of the story gives us hope. If God can turn the world upside down through a baby born in such humble surroundings to poor parents in an unimportant country, then maybe there is hope for us.

We had lunch with friends this week who had a baby about a month ago. Their first child. It has turned their world upside down. Everything changes – schedules and sleep patterns, of course; finances, of course; but also the way a person thinks about the world changes. I think of Regan and Todd, who are experiencing all kinds of changes now with little Meyer.

The birth of Jesus was like that – it changed things. Mary and Joseph’s lives would not be the same. But this birth did not simply change things for Mary and Joseph, it changed things on a cosmic scale. It changed things and continues to change things for us. In the darkest night, we know that God has come to us. Yes, we need a little Christmas.

We need a little Christmas because Christmas is a reminder that God is with us. And because Christ did not simply come into this world; Christ comes into our hearts bringing hope and peace and joy and love.

This is often thought of as a season of giving. As we exchange gifts with one another, we may remember the gifts given at that first Christmas. We remember the Wise Men who brought frankincense, myrrh and gold to the Christ Child. The greatest gift is the child himself. Jesus is God’s gift, a gift of hope and peace and joy and love for all the world. The gifts we give both in this season and in all seasons are, at their best - whether large or small - reflections of that gift. They are gifts of hope and peace and joy and love.

For some reason, in the past couple of weeks, I have heard of several who have given incredible gifts – literally, the gift of life. I have heard these stories both in conversations and in the news media. A number of people have volunteered as kidney donors, giving one of their two kidneys to someone whose kidneys have stooped functioning.

The first report came from Jill Leininger during our prayer time a few weeks ago who told us about a co-worker, Andrew Dinsdale, whose father needed a kidney transplant - but Andrew was not a match. At the same time, there was another person needing a transplant whose family members were not matches, but both Andrew and the son of this other man were matches for the other’s father, and they each donated a kidney.

On the news the other night was a story of a man who desperately needed a kidney transplant. His son was not a match himself. The son thought that it couldn’t hurt, so he posted as his Facebook status that his father had advanced kidney disease and asked if anyone would like to donate a kidney to his father. This was not a small request. He didn’t really expect a response. And so he was stunned when a friend, not even a close friend, volunteered to donate a kidney so that his father could live. This friend, as it turned out, was a match and his father has received a new kidney and is doing well.

I also heard of a very large chain of donors. If a person does not have a loved one who is a match, sometimes arrangements are made like that of Andrew Dinsdale where those in need of a kidney find a donor for someone else. On the news this week, I heard of that kind of sharing on a larger scale. Twenty-six operations put kidneys into 13 desperately ill people over five days. Earlier this month, doctors in Washington, DC performed a record-setting kidney swap. “A whole new doorway of hope opened,” said Tom Otten, a suburban St. Louis police officer who traveled halfway across the country to Georgetown University Hospital to give a stranger a kidney so that his wife would get one in return.

Relative after relative failed to be the match his wife, Irene, needed. Tests showed her body would not tolerate a kidney from 95 percent of the population. But a donor was found, while Tom was a perfect match for another person in need. To make it all work, amazingly, there were three donors in the group who did not have a friend or family member in need of a kidney. They were willing to give one of their kidneys to anyone in need – willing to give of themselves so that others might live.

In a sense, that is what Christmas is about – God coming to be with us, giving an incredible gift, a costly gift, so that we might have life.

Why do we need a little Christmas? We need to know that God is with us, that God cares for us, that God has offered us a wonderful gift.

And we need a little Christmas because like that chain of kidney donors, God’s gift of Jesus can inspire us to share good gifts with each other, and the hope and peace and joy and love are spread.

We need a little Christmas, need it every day. And the Good News is that we have it. We have the gift of Christ, God With Us, now and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Christmas Graveyard

Text: Matthew 1:1-25

It is now December, and our thoughts are turning toward Christmas. Our family had a head start on Christmas -- we exchanged gifts with my parents and siblings and their families when we were in Indiana for Thanksgiving. The run-up to Christmas continues: tonight is our Christmas Dinner and Program. I’ve got out the saxophone for another year to play with the Yuletide Orchestra. There will be caroling on campus next week, and shopping is in full swing.

We turn to the Bible and to the way the Christmas story is presented there, and it begins in a rather mundane way: with a genealogy. Some people would say, “What a terrible way to start a book – with a long list of names that are hard to pronounce.” And you have to admit that such an introduction would not get a very good grade in composition class. It’s just not a great attention-grabber, and folks are likely to give up on the book before they even get started. Dwight Eisenhower said that his family was required to read through the Bible every so often, but they had permission to skip the genealogies. Well, we’re not going to skip this list of names, we are going to join Matthew for a visit to Jesus’ family graveyard.

Matthew begins his gospel, begins the story of Jesus, by taking us for a stroll through Jesus’ family cemetery and looking at all the tombstones. Now, some people think that cemeteries are morbid, but I kind of enjoy visiting cemeteries. Last year I went with my parents on a whirlwind tour of several cemeteries in southern Illinois. I found the grave of my great-great grandfather, David Garrison, buried in – where else? – Garrision Cemetery. My grandmother, Beulah Tennyson, had a brother who died as a young boy, before she was even born, named Chalen. We have a family picture that was made in the early years of the 20th century that is a kind of a composite of four different photos – one of my great-grandparents, one of my grandmother, one of her sister, Aunt Maude, and one of her brother Chalen. Chalen is pictured as a little boy and my grandma is a teenager even though Chalen would have been older than my grandma, had he lived. I found Chalen’s grave there at Garrison Cemetery too, a very simple homemade marker – I had to get paper and pencil and scribble on the paper so that the worn inscription would come through to be sure, and it was exciting to find little Chalen.

In Centerville, Illinois, where the population of the cemetery must be 50 times the population of the town, I found the grave of a great-great-great uncle, son of the first Russell who settled in southern Illinois, the first of our clan of Russells anyway, Lewis Jackson Russell, who had come from Ireland. Lewis is in that cemetery too somewhere, but the marker is no longer there, if there ever was one.

You know, it can be inspiring to visit a gravesite. I’ve been to Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield. Several of us were in Atlanta a couple of years ago and visited the Martin Luther King Center and saw his grave and the eternal flame there. It’s very powerful. Visiting a grave can be a moving experience. You can go and visit the grave of a loved one, as I know some of you do, and that can make the cemetery a sacred place.

Sometimes it can be embarrassing to visit a cemetery. Doing a bit of genealogy, I came across an ancestor who was a horse thief, which seems kind of humorous now but it was deadly serious at the time. Cemeteries can be reminders of scandal. At another cemetery in Illinois I visited the graves of a second cousin and her daughter who were murdered by her husband.

As we go through Jesus’ family cemetery with Matthew, we find all of this. There are heroes and patriarchs. There is delight and surprise and inspiration. And there is embarrassment and scandal.

We enter the cemetery and there at the entrance is a tombstone for Abraham. He was the patriarch of the whole bunch. There is a small inscription on the marker that says, “He shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.” There were stones for his son Isaac and grandson Jacob. Jacob’s stone said, “He shall be called Israel.” But there were no markers for Abraham’s wife Sarah or his daughter-in-law Rebekah or his granddaughter-in-law Rachel -- which is a shame. Women weren’t given a lot of honor in those days. You may remember that Jesus fed the 5000, “not including women and children.” They literally didn’t count. But there are women who have tombstones in this cemetery. Tamar, for one. She was involved in an unseemly affair in which after her husband died and her father-in-law Judah’s wife died, Judah didn’t treat her fairly and so Tamar schemed and when Tamar turned up pregnant, Judah was going to have her burned to death - until she proved that he was in fact the father. She had twins, and Jesus was a direct descendant of one of those babies.

Then there is Rahab, who was a prostitute – she had helped the Jews as they entered the Promised Land. And there is Ruth, whose love for her mother-in-law is often read about and sung of at weddings: “Entreat me not to leave you... where you go, I will go, your people will be my people and your God my God...”

And then there is Bathsheba. She is not mentioned by name but referred to as “the wife of Uriah.” King David had seen her bathing, called for her, had an affair with her, and then when she became pregnant he had her husband Uriah, fighting in the army, sent into the most heated part of the battle where he was killed.

When I was in Zurich I visited the Grossmünster, the great church. There were huge bronze doors to the church with panels featuring characters from the Bible, and I noticed these four women mentioned in Jesus’ genealogy - Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, each with their own panel.

It is surprising, given the culture of the day, that there were any women with markers in this cemetery at all. Perhaps this is prophetic, pointing to the culmination of this genealogy, Jesus of Nazareth, and foreseeing the day when in the spirit of Jesus Christ, distinctions of gender will not matter, certainly not in churches. We can hope.

What strikes me about these women is that none of them were Jews. Tamar was an Arab. Rahab and Bathsheba were both Hittites – Palestinians. Ruth was a Moabite. The Jews absolutely hate the Moabites, and today she would probably be a Jordanian. This is prophetic too, anticipating that in Jesus Christ, distinction of race and ethnicity will not matter and that the blessings of God are for all people, Jews and Gentiles alike.

There are some big, important tombstones in this cemetery. Judah – one of the brothers who had sold Joseph in to slavery, the same one who fathered a child with Tamar – gave his name to the land, Judea, and to the people, Judeans, or Jews, and to the religion – Judaism.

The tallest of all the markers is for David. He was a shepherd and poet and musician and warrior and king. He was described as “a man after God’s own heart,” and at the same time he could be cold and calculating and capable of great sin. He had a tortured relationship with his son Absolom and was guilty of taking Bathsheba and having her husband killed. David also wept over his sin: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.”

A lot of kings are buried in Jesus’ family cemetery. Uzziah became king when he was 16 years old and died a leper. Jehosaphat ruled for 25 years and had generally good reviews, and somehow we get from him the expression “Jumpin’ Jehosphat.” Manasseh ruled 55 years, the longest of all the kings, but he had no conviction, no backbone, he didn’t just compromise in order to govern well, he compromised the faith, and during his reign the worship of all kinds of deities became commonplace. And there was Josiah, who was as much preacher as king, who brought about religious reform and renewal to the nation.

There were other names on markers, names that were lost to history, people who were not kings, people who were not famous, and yet they too were a part of this family. They, too were part of the family line leading to Jesus.

Then we come to the last tombstone: Joseph. Joseph was the father of Jesus – or not, depending on how you look at it. Joseph was engaged to Mary. At that time, engagement was a more serious matter than it is today. Families signed the papers and when the young people became of age, they were married. Engagement was legally binding, and so in a sense it had the same effect as marriage. Joseph and Mary were engaged and perhaps had been engaged for years. But then before the wedding, Joseph finds that Mary is pregnant.

What is he to do? He is a good man, Matthew tells us, a righteous man, and he wants to do the right thing. But what is the right thing in such a situation?

How do you know what the right thing is? Well, one way is to ask around. Get advice from others. Go to the coffee shop and ask, “What do you think I should do?” Ask the people at work. Did you here about Mary? What would you do if you were me? Do a poll on Facebook and ask your friends how you should handle the situation.

Well, that is one way to figure out what to do. Let everybody know about it and see what they think. But it wasn’t Joseph’s way. He didn’t want to humiliate Mary, didn’t want to expose her to ridicule and shame.

So, how do you know what the right thing is? How about, just do what he Bible says. How often do you hear that? Seems simple enough. Well, what does the Bible say? Deuteronomy 22 says, “She is to be taken out and stoned to death in from of the people.” That’s what the Good Book says.

A lot of people will say that you should just read the Bible and do what it says, but it isn’t that easy. It isn’t that simple. You can quote the Bible in order to justify all kinds of things. The Bible says, “If a man finds something displeasing in his wife, let him give her a divorce and send her out of the house.” It’s in the Bible, along with “stubborn and unruly youth should be stoned outside the city gate.” If we just did what the Bible said, we would all be divorced except that we never would have lived that long, we all would have been stoned to death as teenagers.

If you just did what the Bible said, Joseph wouldn’t have been there because at least half the people in his genealogy should have been executed because of one transgression or another.

Joseph is a good man, a righteous man. He knows the Bible and he loves the Bible. But Joseph does an amazing thing, a remarkable thing for his day. He reads the Bible, but he reads it through a certain lens, through the lens of a caring and loving God. And so he says, “I will not abuse or degrade or humiliate Mary. I will protect her.” Matthew tells us that “being unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, Joseph determined to dismiss her quietly.” He must have been hurt, he must have been angry, he must have been shocked by the whole thing. His life was turned upside down, yet he still was concerned for Mary’s welfare.

Fred Craddock examines this passage and said, “I am absolutely amazed that Joseph is the first person in the New Testament who learned how to read the Bible. Like Joseph, we are to read it through the spectacles of the grace and goodness and love of God.”

If you are using the Bible to find justification for abusing or humiliating or harming or hurting others, especially when it makes you feel better about yourself, your reading of the Bible is wrong. The Bible is to be read in the light of the character of God.

Folks use the Bible to justify killing, to keep women in their place, to support attitudes of racial superiority, to support discrimination against gay people, and to condemn to hell folks they disagree with. But when you read the scriptures in light of the character of God, that’s not what you’ll read.

Joseph decides not to make a scene, to break off the engagement quietly. But then, an angel comes to Joseph in a dream. Through the angel, God said, “Joseph, I want you to go ahead and marry Mary. I want you to protect and care for that child.

You know, maybe Joseph grew up hearing that genealogy at family reunions – that’s the way it was handed down - and maybe it had an effect on him. Maybe, from hearing about all of those ancestors, he learned something. Maybe he knew that in God’s family, there was room for everybody. Maybe he learned that women were of worth. Maybe he learned that even the best of people can mess up and fail badly. Maybe he learned that everyone counts. Maybe he learned not to be so harsh, to be forgiving, and to be caring. Maybe he learned that God can use all kinds of people – even common people like him and Mary. And maybe, when God spoke to him through an angel in a dream and said, “Don’t be afraid, this child is of the Holy Spirit and I want you to take Mary as your wife and help raise this child,” Joseph believed and Joseph was ready.

When Jesus is born, it is in humble surroundings. But we know he is going to be OK. We know that his mother cares for him and we know that she is willing to be a servant of the Lord. And we know that Joseph is a good and righteous man who knows that doing what is right means reading the Bible and living our lives in light of the goodness and love and grace of God. When we can all live that way, it will be a Merry Christmas indeed. Amen.

(I am indebted to Fred Craddock’s sermon, “God is With Us,” from which I have drawn heavily.)