Christmas All Year Long

Introduction: Christmas Begins Tomorrow

Finally, finally Christmas has come, and the busy world around us is hushed for the moment; the frenzied activities of the days and weeks of preparation are ended, or almost; the fears and darkness and uncertainties of the world are set aside and the great promise of the season of life opens before us as we gather together this night to worship God; open our lives anew or for the first time to the gift of Christmas. To open our lives to the gift of God’s love for you and for me, and to remember God’s love for the entire world.

I love Christmas. I love the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas. I love filling up the space between the floor and the Christmas tree with presents. Stuffing stockings so full that the hooks on the mantle won’t hold them. I love the thought that our extended families and friends are receiving little signs of our love for them though the mail; Thank God for the internet. I love the Christmas cards and the greetings of the season; I love seeing how many of you are doing; how beautiful your families are, and the creative ways we express the progress of our lives over a year. I love the food - too much; I love the special cookies and treats, the dinners and gatherings. I love the gracious fellowship and friendship that Christmas inspires.

I love, too, the way that people reach beyond themselves at Christmas time. I love how we reach beyond our families and friends to do something for someone else. How many of us do something for someone we may never meet this side of heaven? The gift to someone who may never give us something in return-food for the homeless in Norristown and Philadelphia; Christmas presents from our Christmas pageants for children who may receive no other presents this Christmas; World Gifts for the children and our partners in Guatemala and in Uganda; letters and packages to our men and women in uniform around the world.

But even more than the physical gifts that reach beyond our homes and around the world, I love the gentle kindnesses we show to one another in this season. Like the gentle consideration to the widow or widower on their first Christmas alone who receives a phone call, a visit or are invited to come for Christmas dinner with people who offer love to fill the cracks in their hearts. There’s something in the air at Christmas time. A freedom, an openness, a fearlessness to reach beyond ourselves to others to share our gifts with others and show them just how important they are to us, how much we cherish and love them, even if we don’t use the words.

Ahh, but the spirit rarely lasts. The season of unchecked generosity and unafraid love passes all too quickly like a dream or a fleeting thought. And some time Christmas night, when we’ve eaten our fill, put the presents away, and hung up on the last phone call to a family member or a friend, we’ll begin thinking about when the tree should come down. Our thoughts and our energies will begin to turn toward the next day of our regular lives and the rest of the year. Christmas will come and Christmas will go and we’ll pick up where we left off from our colder, quieter, more fear-filled lives putting Christmas and the spirit of love and generosity back in the box and allowing the spirit and love of the season to simply drift away.

But that’s not what God has in mind for us at Christmas. For God, Christmas is not a brief season of love and generosity that we pick up for a time and then set aside for our real life. For God intends that the gift of Christmas, God with us, to be our real life and this Christmas Day is only a beginning.

The Baby in the Manger

Every year at Christmas, in the midst of all of our other activities and celebrations we stop for a moment to gather together around the manger in Bethlehem, drawn in some way to the gentle poetry of Luke’s Gospel about the birth of Jesus and that first Christmas centuries ago. We are also drawn to the hope of the world, drawn to the hope of God revealed to us in the form of this baby child, born in a stable.

With no room in the inn where respectable people would stay, we enter the dusty, noisy, fragrant stable with Mary and Joseph and Jesus.We hear the pronouncement of the angels that a Savior has been born and walk with the poor, scared shepherds to Bethlehem to try to catch a glimpse of what started all of this. And it’s here, in the oddest, dirtiest of places that it all begins. Like our hearts and our lives, which are not always the cleanest, tidiest of places, God first reveals Himself in Jesus in a common stable. God comes to the lowest place to remind us that however muddy, sinful and fear-filled our lives may have become, He’s willing to come to us and to dwell in us — to be with us.

And what we don’t see fully as we linger by the manger on Christmas Eve, what we don’t know when we first make room for Jesus in our hearts, we find out soon enough. And that is that Christmas is only a beginning. For this child who is born in the lowliest of places grows up to be a Teacher, the likes of which the world has never known. A Teacher who will show us the way for living our lives today. This child born in a stable grows up to be a Healer who cures the lame who comforts those who mourn and who will bring healing and comfort to our lives today. This child grows up to show us how to live fearless lives, trusting in God moment by moment; becoming the persons God created us to be.

And this child in the manger grows up to show us the face of God, the face of the God who loves us so much that He will do whatever it takes, even suffering death on a cross to take away our sins, giving us a resurrection that promises us life beyond the door of death to draw us close, to save us, to love us. The child of Bethlehem grows up to promise to be with us always. He promises to send His Spirit of love, hope and forgiveness to dwell in our hearts so that the love He shares with us we can share with others at Christmas and every day of the year.

You see, Christmas — Christ coming into the world — is not an end in itself, not something that happened once upon a time that we remember fondly once a year. Christmas is the beginning of the promise of a life lived with God now and always for there is no place and no life and no one that is not worthy of His presence. If we are willing, He will come to us. He will come and make His home in our hearts tonight and always, so that we may keep Christmas every day of the year.

Christmas All Year Long

Keeping Christmas every day of the year may be a lot harder than it sounds. Certainly it doesn’t mean that we need to decorate our houses with trees and lights and manger scenes and Christmas stockings on the mantle day in and day out. It doesn’t mean that we need to give and receive physical presents every day, or send cards and flowers and fruitcakes to everyone we know (and you can definitely keep the fruitcakes to yourself, anyway.)  Keeping Christmas throughout the year means that we make room for Christ to enter into our lives in some way, and that we remember Christmas is both Christ’s birthday in the world as well as a new birth for our lives.

Keeping Christmas throughout the year means that you and I remember this truth and make a place in our lives, however grungy or inelegant they are at the moment, that we make a place for Christ — for God — to dwell with us so that we know His love and generosity each day and can share that love and generosity with others fearlessly and hopefully all through the year.

Keeping Christmas throughout the year will look different in all of our lives, but the Spirit and love and gift of Christmas that we know this night is ours always. It is ours when we open our lives to God’s presence and the Christmas love and spirit we share will not fade from our lives, but only grow stronger as Christ comes to live in our hearts.

So this Christmas may God grant you the gift of the light of Christmas, which is faith;
The gift of the belief of Christmas, which is hope;
The gift of the warmth of Christmas, which is love;
The gift of the radiance of Christmas, which is truth;
The gift of the joy of Christmas, which is God.

May be peace in your heart and over all the earth, and good will for all in God’s love this night and every day through the year.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to All!

Introduction: God Welcomes Everyone

Merry Christmas! That’s got to be one of the sweetest greetings of the whole year: a greeting of hope, a greeting of joy and good humor, a greeting of love. And it’s a greeting that draws our hearts and our thoughts in some way to this night with Mary and Joseph, with shepherds and angels, and most importantly with the child, lying in a manger — with Jesus.

Every year we’re drawn in some way by the gentle poetry of Luke’s story about the birth of Jesus and that first Christmas in Bethlehem; drawn to the hope of the world, drawn to the hope of God to the hope and the light that pushes away the darkness of our fears revealed to us in the form of a baby child, born in a stable. Now some of us are drawn to the manger this night because we believe in our heart of hearts and in the way we live our lives, we believe. We believe that God came down in human form to show us who God is and to save us from ourselves, to save us from our sins and our loneliness and our fears, to save us so that we can really live.  We believe and are here this night to pay homage, to give thanks, to offer our lives anew for this great gift of God’s love revealed in the child. And I bid you Merry Christmas!

Now others of us are drawn here because we once believed & we’d like to believe again; we come with some kind of remembrance of the love, the peace and the hope that comes to us only from God’s presence and love at work in our lives.  We long to know and to live that fearless reality again. We’ve come because we long for our lives to be different. We want to know in our heart of hearts that God loves us and that we are His. We come, hoping for God to touch our lives, our souls, our hearts — to touch us in some way with His grace and goodness. And I bid you Merry Christmas!

And others of us are drawn here tonight because,  Although we’ve never believed or even hoped to believe in Christ as Savior; or to become involved in a Christian community and Christian life; we still respect the tradition or honor the wishes of family and friends. We come because we wouldn’t by our absence tonight, spoil the holiday for our loved ones. And I bid you all a very Merry Christmas!

Welcome this Christmas Eve, for behold, along with the heavenly hosts of God; behold, I bring you tidings of great joy for all people — for those of us who believe, for those of us who long to believe again, and for those of us who are here for other reasons. Fear not, for all of us a Savior has been born; for all of us a gift has come into our world and it’s good news; better still, it’s saving news. Christmas, the coming of God into our world as one of us, reveals God’s love for all people, for everyone, including you and me, and it’s a gentle love; a love that overcomes our fears, but a love that won’t overcome our free wills.

For God has not come to us tonight in His power and glory to force us to love Him. Instead God comes in the form of a baby child, helpless to overpower anyone; but willing to offer His love, His hope, and His saving grace for everyone. And we are just the people He wants to touch tonight — people He loves enough to come for Himself.

We Are in the Story

That God has come in human form for all people is one of the most incredible parts of the story tonight. And we know that God has come for all of us because we’re all there; we’re all there in the story. There are believers in the story, at least two of them – Joseph and Mary. Joseph sets aside his fears and believes. Believes that this child would be the Savior of the world, the Son of God. He had received a powerful message in a dream and was willing to take Mary as his wife and to care for the child as his own. Mary allowed the power of God to take away her fears because the angel had announced God’s favor on her — God’s love for her — and she’d been willing to offer herself in return to bear this child. The child who would save the world and offer the way back to God.

There are also people there in the story who once believed or who wanted to believe again. Every day people who were keeping watch over their flocks by night, watching, looking, longing for something more, ready to accept God’s grace and promise of a new life if offered. Even though the angels terrified them they overcame their fear and followed the angels’ calling and went to Bethlehem in the hope that their longing would be fulfilled.

And, like some of us here tonight, there are people in the story who didn’t believe at all. People who had no idea anything important was taking place in Bethlehem.  From Emperor Augustus and the Governor, Quirinius, to some of Mary and Joseph’s fellow travelers in Bethlehem to be registered by Rome for the census. It was just another day in their lives.

And the Christ child comes for all of them in the story;

         He comes without regard to their position in life,

         He comes without regard to their beliefs and practices,

         He comes without regard for whether they deserved God’s love or not,

         He comes for His own purposes,

         He comes to take away their fears and lift their burdens,

         He comes to draw them to a life that’s really life.

And He comes for all of us here tonight, too in the stories, in the reality of our lives. He comes to let us know that we are all His and He loves us. He comes to you and to me tonight to take away our fears, to lift our burdens. He comes to offer you real life, life in all its abundance.

God Showing Love as We Show Love

Now, like most of you, I like to communicate my love in some outward way. It doesn’t really do much good to keep our love quiet or hidden away. People won’t know the depth of our feelings if we keep them to ourselves.  And so we communicate, we show our love for others.

Whether it’s a friend to a friend, a couple falling in love with one another, parent to a child, a child to a parent,  we want to communicate our love and the most common way is to say those three words, I love you.  Or to use some other words that let’s  those we love know that they are in our hearts.

But we also like to act in some way to show our love for another person. We offer our hand in friendship; we give a hug or a kiss, make a special dinner on a birthday; send a card or give a Christmas present. We spend time with people we love, listening and talking, and sometimes just being quiet together. If we have love in our hearts for another we become pretty good at finding physical ways to show our love for them so that they know they have our hearts in some tangible way.

And it’s the same for God. God wants to communicate and show His great love for us in words and deeds. God’s communicated His love in thousands of ways throughout history — through the wonder of creation and the gift of your life and mine; through words in the scriptures and through human representatives who have a word of God’s love for us.    But apparently the wonder of creation, the gift of life, the words weren’t enough for us to really know God’s I love you.

So God did something new, something surprising; something mysterious, something very physical.          God communicated His love for us by taking every ounce of that love every beautiful sunrise and sunset, every word of hope and promise and sent it to us in the most fragile and vulnerable of packages in the form of someone like us.

           

You see, Jesus Christ is nothing less than the full and physical communication of God’s I love you in word and in action for all people,  not merely for those who believe but for those of us who once believed and for those of us who have never believed or just aren’t sure. Whoever we are, whatever we believe, however we’re living our lives, God loves us and wants to communicate His love for our lives tonight and to give His love to you and me, just as we are, in our own lives. It’s what draws us to the manger, it’s what draws us here tonight. It is a love that we don’t deserve, that we can’t earn. And best of all, it is a love that we can’t lose, because it comes to us as gift from God, as the greatest of gifts for all people.

Receiving God’s Love

So whether you’re here tonight because you believe or because you want to believe again or because other purposes, not wholly your own, have drawn you to the manger. Remember that this story is your story, too, that the Lord of life who came that first Christmas night is here at our sides, beckoning us into a life with Him now offering us the gift of His love; and a life free from fear.

So now may God grant you the gift of the light of Christmas, which is faith. The gift of the belief of Christmas, which is hope; The gift of the warmth of Christmas, which is love; The gift of the radiance of Christmas, which is truth; The gift of the joy of Christmas, which is God; That there may be peace in your heart and over all the earth and good will for all in God’s love this night and every day throughout the year. 

Merry Christmas!

Light in the Darkenes

"The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." John 1:5

Dear People of St. David's,

I pray that you are well and that as the great day of Christmas draws steadily closer, that your plans and preparations are coming together. I pray also that your hearts are light and open to the coming of God among us this Christmas.

This has been a very hard week for light hearts. For along with the cares and struggles of our every day lives and long running conflicts and dangers around the world, the darkness that is still in the world broke out in such violent horror and death last week in Newtown, Connecticut that we are all still reeling. There are no words to describe the sadness and the heartbreak of the loss of so many young, innocent lives. The waste and brokenness caused by the actions of one person sent shockwaves around the country and through all of our hearts. It's enough to make you wonder about God's creation and the ongoing darkness and outright evil that flare up in our lives all too often.

But it is into just this kind of darkness that God's light shines. Sometimes we have a tendency to wrap Christmas up into neat little packages and into a celebration that rarely touches the struggles and darkness in the world and in our lives. We have nice decorations and Christmas worship services and we have times with family and friends that don't always reach into or even touch on the darkness around us. But the light of Christmas is not just another decoration at mid-winter. The light of Christmas, Jesus the Christ, shines light upon the real darkness of human sin and brokenness. The light of Christmas stands in opposition to a power that is seeking to undo and thwart God's purposes in our lives and in the life of the world. The light of Christmas came into the world in another dark moment and comes to us in our darkness. It is a light that seeks and one day will overcome the darkness we know all too well this week.

So, as we put the finishing touches on our Christmas holiday this year or race to the finish on Christmas Eve, look to the light. Invite the light of Christmas to shine on the dark places in your life to bring healing and hope and thankfulness. Invite the light of Christmas to fill you and direct you to be a person who brings light. Then find some way to let that light shine through you to others at St. David's, in your families, in your work or at school, and in every place where the shadows of darkness linger in our world. God's promise is that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.

May the blessing of the Light of Christmas be yours and may we all allow that light to shine through us so God can use us to bring more and more light to the world.

Merry Christmas!

Begin the Journey

Introduction: Making our Way to Bethlehem

Several Christmases ago the Allen family made a journey. It was long journey that took the better part of a day to get there and the better part of a day to return to our home, to Devon. It was tiring and the lines in the airport were particularly long, but it was worth everything we had to endure to be there.

“There” was my family’s home in Texas and “there” was the place where we were surrounded by the love and the closeness of family members of all ages, some of whom, including my sister, we hadn’t seen very often over the years. And when we came back, we weren’t the same people we were before our journey. For though we were tired out from the travel, there was a sense of renewal and life and an assurance for me that even though the location of home had changed as my Mother was living in a different house than the one on Lively Lane Where I grew up, the love we remembered and expected to find was still there and the journey made all the difference.

Each year during the season of Advent, we Christians begin a journey to take us home, to take us home to Bethlehem; to take us home to God. It’s an interior journey, a journey of the heart and we hope that this month-long journey will prepare our hearts for the coming of the Christ-child so that the road to our heart will be clear, so that this time there will be enough room for Him to be born in our lives again or to be born for the first time.

Now most of us think that we know the way to Bethlehem this Christmas. We can find it on the map, just a little way outside Jerusalem. It shouldn’t be a problem. But there is a problem; and the problem is that so much has changed since our last visit, that many of us have forgotten how to begin the journey much less remember where we are going.

A whole year has passed; a year that has brought many changes to our lives some of them good; some of them not so good; some of them heartbreaking. We’re literally different people than we were a year ago. So the starting point of this year’s journey is different, too.

Bethlehem is still there, waiting for us to come, but the geography, the location of our lives has changed so much that we may need a little help starting off on our way that is,
if we’re willing to set aside our fears and go there.

Meeting John on the Way

Now, if you were to ask the Gospel writer, Luke, the way to reach Bethlehem, the way to come home to the Christ-child and to God’s magnificent love for you, he would tell you to go out to the desert, to go out into the wilderness. “Keep going until you get to the Jordan River, you can’t miss it and there’ll you’ll find a man, a strange fellow standing knee deep in the water, just baptizing people as fast as he can.That’ll be John the Baptist. You ask him how to get to Bethlehem because if you want to go there he’s the only one who can help you to find your way.”

All the Gospel writers say the same thing. If you want to go to Jesus, if you want to walk the path that will take you home; if you want to live a fearless, hope-filled life with God then you’ve got to meet with John on your journey there you’ve got to meet John to hear and respond to John’s call to repent to change your life so that the road is open for Christ to enter in.

You see the season of Advent belongs, not to Jesus, but to John the Baptist, it belongs to God’s prophet in the wilderness munching on grasshoppers and wearing a camel hair shirt calling people to repent, calling people to change their lives because the Kingdom of God is at hand, calling us to turn away from the hardness of our hearts so that we can accept God’s forgiveness and find our way home to Bethlehem.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never been very comfortable with people

Insisting that I repent of my stubborn, selfish, sinful ways. After all, those ways are not really all that stubborn or selfish or sinful, are they? I’ve attended enough tent revival meetings with one of my grandmothers to last a lifetime, and they always left me unchanged, or even more committed to the way I was living my life. And John reminds me of those tent revival preachers, yelling at the top of his lungs to repent, to change, to turn your life around. And you could probably hear John long before you saw him, hearing his one sermon, “repent”, echoing off the barren desert landscape.

But whether we like to go to the wilderness to see John and hear his one sermon or not, the reality is that John’s message is the start of the journey to Bethlehem. It is the beginning that every one of us must make if we intend to find room for Jesus this Christmas and allow God’s love to bring us home. For it’s when we’re willing to admit that we’ve lost our way, a little or a lot; when we’re willing to admit that we’ve allowed other things to come first in our lives before God, that God will come to us. He will forgive us and will walk with us on our way to Bethlehem,                                             banishing our fears and offering us real life.

Repentance is the first step and the daily step

When we lived in northern Virginia, I had a friend who was Roman Catholic priest who worked in the hospital at Georgetown University. He was a hospital chaplain, visiting the sick, the mending, and the dying. But once a month he made journey to the city jail, and after that to a convent of nuns to hear confessions. He told me that on these days when he journeyed to the jail and the convent, he probably met with thirty people over the course of the day,  hearing their confessions and offered God’s forgiveness and grace. In the jail, he heard a lot of hard things from the people who came to repent of their sins.

He heard people confessing to hurting other people, to killing other people. He heard people confessing to stealing to support their addictions, and to stealing to support their wealthy lifestyles. He said it felt like being hit over the head with a club, because these were such shocking sins. But in every case, with every person who truly sought a different life he offered forgiveness as the sign of God’s love and the promise of new life in Christ. And he told me he could see the look of complete relief and wonder on many faces relief, because their repentance had made room for God to move in their lives and they could begin the journey again with God.

In the afternoon, he heard confessions in the convent. The sisters would come to him one by one and confess their sins in order to move on in their lives with God. He heard the nuns confessing to taking an extra piece of bread at lunch one day when they didn’t really want it and it left too little for the other nuns. He heard nuns confessing to having evil thoughts about another person. And he heard them confessing to letting their minds wander during daily church or during a talk someone was giving.

He said that it felt like cotton balls bouncing off his face after being in the jail, but for these women, who had devoted their entire lives to God, who sought God’s way in all that they did,                       these were real sins and came with all the hardness of heart,  with all the separation from God and the loneliness, of the hardest criminal in the jail. And just as in the jail, he said, when he heard the confessions and offered God’s forgiveness, grace and the promise that they could begin their walk with Christ anew, freed from their sins, the look on their faces conveyed utter relief.

I suspect that most of us here this morning would find ourselves somewhere in between these two groups of people most days—somewhere between being a convicted criminal and a nun. But we do have sins to confess, you and I. We do have patterns in our lives and ways of living that keep us from living with God in our lives, and from beginning our journey to Bethlehem this year.

And so I invite you this morning to repent, to change. I ask you to admit to God where you’re falling short in your relationship with Him, to admit to God where you’re falling short in your relationship with others. Because when you and I confess, when we ask for God’s forgiveness, He promises to forgive us and to touch our hearts with His grace and love. Promises to come to us and lead us by another road in life; a road that offers hope and light and love. A journey that will bring us home.

Repentance, turning, seeking the forgiveness of God in your life is the map to Bethlehem that John the Baptist offers each one of us this morning. And it’s the first step on the journey to Bethlehem the step that will make room for the Christ-child to come this Christmas and every day of our lives.

So when we get to the confession of sin in the service today, don’t just read along; be honest, say it as though you mean it.   For if you and I will confess our sins, we will begin the journey to Bethlehem in earnest where we will find God Himself, the merriest of Christmases, and life that is really life.

Amen.

The Promise

"Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." Luke 1:30  

I pray that you are well and want to thank all of you who have made commitments to give and to care for those in our community who will have very little Christmas, except for people like us making sacrifices for them. We fed over 1,000 people over Thanksgiving and the giving for Christmas outreach looks equally promising and generous. Bless you for being a blessing to others.

I've been getting ready for Christmas in my heart and in my mind by pondering and reflecting on the God who promises us a life of hope and a life that is connected to Him in some real ways. It's really quite a fantastic story, and not in the imaginary sense. It's fantastic that God would show the depth of His love for us by coming down and living among us. It's amazing that God would reveal His promise in the birth of a child, born to a "nobody" from "nowhere" in the darkness of a lowly stable, a child who would grow up to show the world the face of God's love in His life, His death, and His resurrection.

The promise starts out so small, in the visit of the angel Gabriel to a young woman, who is favored by God, not because of her wealth, or her intellect, or her experience in birthing and raising children, but favored only because she was willing to accept God's presence and follow God's call for her life. Oh, I know that the stories that have surrounded Mary through the centuries raise her up to a place where she appears to be "worthy" to be the one to be the first to bring Christ to the world and she may have been. But the scriptures suggest otherwise. A worthy person would not have to be told by Gabriel to set aside her fears. She's just like us in that respect. No, Mary is worthy because she accepts the promise of hope and God's presence in her life and is willing to follow in God's way, a way that brings light and life to the world in the most beautiful form we know - a baby.

And the promise of a life of hope and God's presence is available to you and to me in this busy Advent season. We don't have to earn the promise. We do not have to have some earned measure of success in our lives. We don't have to "be somebody" for God for Him to be present with us. You and I only have to be ready and open to receive God's promise and the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives when it comes our way. Now, it's not likely that our openness in following God's call on our lives will make us 'famous" like Mary. But it will make us stand out for those to whom we bear Christ - to those souls we reveal the presence of Christ to through our giving, through our loving, and through our hopefulness. To those souls we will be revealed as God's people. We will be like Mary, living in hope and God's presence, making our little difference in God's kingdom.

And so in these days of Advent, listen carefully to God's call on your life. Don't be afraid, as Gabriel commands us, for you have found favor with God and God is coming to fill you with hope and life and the ability to share the love of Christ with the world.


Grace and Peace,
WFA

P.S. Drop by the St. David's Facebook page each week for a special Advent message, and please leave a message of blessing for your St. David's family.