Merry Christmas...now what? (Sermon from 12-28-08)

There are a lot of weird things going on in Christmas carols. Some of them are just confusing: How does one go “a wassailing”? What is “figgy pudding” and why do we want it?
Many carols use words that we don’t even really understand anymore: How many times does the phrase, “haste, haste to bring him laud” come up in normal conversation nowadays?

Some of them are even rather creepy. The fourth verse of We Three Kings, the hymn we are closing with today is one of the creepiest, so much so that we usually just skip it an pretend it’s not there.

Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume breathes a live of gathering gloom; sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb...

Merry Christmas!

That sounds like something out of a Vincent Price movie.

The line is referring to the fact that Myrrh was used as an embalming ointment in the preparation of bodies for burial, a gift for Jesus that prefigured his own death, but it's still weird to sing about it.

A lot of carols reflect masculine language that we are told to shy away from now. "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" is therefore lost from our hymn book, as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlepeople" doesn’t have the same ring. It’s also one of the few Christmas carols to mention Satan by name: “remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day, to save us all from Satan’s power, when we were gone astray.”

One of the silliest carols to me is The 12 Days of Christmas.

We’re so far removed from this one that it makes no sense to us in our culture anymore. Christians used to celebrate Christmas from December 25th until the Epiphany, on January 6th (which makes 12 days), hence the title.

Even so, this is a song that’s purely about one thing: getting presents. It represents a lot of what Christmas has come to mean to our culture now, which might be one of the reasons that we like it so much.

It’s also a fun one to sing.

We love to sing this song. People go crazy for this song. The funny thing though is that most people only actually know one or two of the days. Everyone knows the first day – a partridge in a pear tree, and then we get a bit scattered over the next few days. Until the fifth day… EVERYONE knows the fifth day.

There is a British comedian named Eddie Izzard who talks of how astonished he was watching Americans sing this song, and how people seemed to run into the room from all parts of the house just to shout “FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!”

It’s as though we sing that song just so that we can sing that line. Who knows what the gifts are on the other days? What is day 9? Maids a milking? Jumpers Jumping? Plumbers plumbing? We don’t care so long as we get to sing five golden rings again.

Whenever they broke the group up into specific days, it was always a drag if you got stuck with one of the higher days, like day 12. You only get to sing once or twice, and half the time you aren’t even sure what it is that you are singing – what is it, bikers biking? But it always seemed like everyone, regardless of their group would jump back in for “five gold rings” – we love it.

Despite all that, by now, Christmas for us is more or less over.

We live in a culture that has “the one day of Christmas.”

We’ve had a glorious time of advent, getting ourselves prepared, we had a beautiful Christmas Eve service, and now it’s all done. Most of us have already started mapping out 2009. We’re ready to move on.

In a lot of ways, we move on in the church, too. We celebrate Jesus’ birth, and then we are happy to jump right from Jesus as a baby to 30 years later when Jesus begins his ministry. We don’t focus much on those 30 years. We don’t think about them much.

Sometimes, it seems as if we think of Jesus having gone from baby to man in about two weeks. It’s understandable that we overlook the bulk of Jesus’ early life as that is exactly what the Bible does. Luke is the only Gospel with any information about Jesus life in between infancy and adulthood, with a small episode of a 12 year old Jesus going to the temple to question the local teachers of the law.

So why is this left out? Is it not important? And if Jesus life isn’t important until he begins his ministry, why did he even come as a baby? Why didn’t he just show up as a full grown adult, ready to be baptized by John the Baptist? The answer is both simple and complex: while Jesus main purpose in coming to earth was to die for us, he also came to live for us.

Paul gets at this in Philippians 2:5-13

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross!

Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Paul is telling us here the core of his understanding of Jesus Christ.

He describes Jesus as God having clothed himself in human form, lowering himself to connect to us, and to save us.

To Paul, the act of the incarnation, of God actually becoming human flesh, is the key to it all.

Jesus understands us because he became one of us.

He didn’t take any short cuts. He doesn’t spend just a day as a human, or even a year.

Jesus lived a full human life, understanding the hardships, the frustrations and temptations that we all experience, as well as the joys.

In becoming Immanuel (God with us), Christ is not simply a God who saves us, or a God who loves us, but a God who is among us, who becomes one of us, that there would be no boundaries.
To do that, though, Jesus had to humble himself, as Paul puts it, to become obedient to a human life, a life that had been bound by death.

Jesus came here to destroy that power that death held, to save us.

Or to put it more bluntly, Jesus came to earth to save you.

Not simply "you" meaning the whole human race, or "you" meaning all the Christians, but you as an individual.

St. Augustine put it this way, “God loves each of us as though there were only one of us.”

Or to put it in even simpler terms, Jesus would have come to earth and died for your sins even if you were the only person on earth.

Think about that.

God became human, lived a full life to connect with you specifically, and then died to save you.

Christmas marks that beginning of that.

So now what? What are we going to do about it?

The Philippians passage and this passage in Isaiah give us some ideas:

Isaiah 61:10-62:3

I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the soil makes the sprout come up and a garden causes seeds to grow, so the Sovereign LORD will make righteousness and praise spring up before all nations.

For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, for Jerusalem's sake I will not remain quiet, till her righteousness shines out like the dawn, her salvation like a blazing torch. The nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory; you will be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD will bestow. You will be a crown of splendor in the LORD's hand, a royal diadem in the hand of your God.

Humble yourself.

Be one with Christ in having the humility to empty yourself of your own selfishness and stubbornness, and to be open and willing before God. As creepy We Three Kings reminds us, on our own, we are all destined for a “stone cold tomb.”

God’s plan is better than that, and he promises us salvation, a future that doesn’t end in a creepy tomb, but in heaven. Our response to that salvation should be humble service, just as Christ show us.

Work out your salvation according to God’s good purpose.

A better translation of this would be make your salvation mean something according to God’s purpose.

This isn’t about us earning salvation, as we see over and over that we can’t do that on our own.

We need Christ’s saving acts.

Our work is merely a response to salvation, not a means of our salvation.

But as a sign of our humility, we should respond to God’s offer of salvation with a willingness to serve, just as Christ showed us. Remember that we are a saved people, that God came here to save us, and that everything we do is a response to that.

As "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" tells us, we are to remember at Christmas that our Savior came to us, to save us from power that we cannot resist on our own. In Christ, we are changed, to the degree that we have nothing to dismay, nothing to fear.

Both Isaiah and Philippians give us an imagery of this change, of putting on a new garment, of being given a new name by the Lord, of God working in us to make us something that we cannot be on our own, just as a seed sprouts up from the ground.

Do not be silent.

The passage in Isaiah gives us this direct command. More than anything, this is both Isaiah and Paul are urging. You are a saved people. Christ came to save YOU. Don’t just sit there in the midst of that gift and remain unchanged.

If we are to be moved by this salvation, the best way to show it is to NOT BE SILENT, that we should confess that Jesus is Lord.

Are we doing this in our lives?

Do our lives show someone who is proclaiming Christ as Lord, not just in our words, but in our actions - in everything that we do?

Think of how crazy people get to sing the line “five golden rings.”

Are we that excited about our faith, that we are willing to run into rooms and proclaim it, or are we living like the people who got stuck with day eleven or day seven, not really sure what we are singing, and with no enthusiasm or passion?

Are you silent?

If you are proclaiming Christ in your life, are shouting, or are you just mumbling.

Hear this:

Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger… Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Jesus Christ was born for you.

Jesus Christ lived for you.

Jesus Christ died for you, and through his resurrection, destroyed the power of death.

What are you doing with that knowledge?

How are you letting that change you?

How does Christmas help you grow?

Are you willing to humble yourself, to let God work through you, and to serve as a reflection of God’s love and grace in your daily life?

Are you being silent?

Has Christmas changed you?

What are you going to do about it?

Merry Christmas…

...now what?