Wadhams United Church of Christ
2569 County Route 10, Wadhams, NY 12993
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Sermon by Steve Smith
December 28, 2008
It seems to me that each passing year makes time move just a little bit faster. While I realize that this is just an internal phenomenon, this perception colors my experience of the holiday season. While the culture tells me that Christmas should be marked with the bright and festive colors of green and red, my brain only seems capable of registering the murky, blurry blend of days and weeks moving in ever faster motion. My body, of course, prefers the slow motion mode, especially after cramming enough food into my body to stuff several top-heavy turkeys. As a result, it seems more and more like I show up at my family’s Christmas gatherings to go through the motions, strangely detached from the warm feelings and excitement I think I should be experiencing.
While millions of sermons have no doubt been preached which claim to have the solution for such an uninspired approach to the holidays (a few dozen of my past efforts included), I’ve become increasingly impatient with the offer of easy solutions to complex issues. I’ll grant you that my irritability may be yet another sign of my aging process, but there’s a part of me that wants to transform it into a holy discontent seeking a different approach to that which troubles me. If we look hard enough, there’s a rich supply of inspiration that can help us move beyond our detachment to engage ourselves in a renewed approach to a season that passes all too quickly.
The key, I believe, is to start preparing now for next year’s Christmas. I know, it sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Having already spent our financial and emotional resources on preparing for the holiday, who’s got anything left to start getting ready for next year’s Christmas? It sounds like your pastor got a little too doped up on that tryptophan high that’s supposed to come from eating all that turkey, doesn’t it? “Let’s just celebrate Christmas all year long! In fact, we could stimulate the depressed economy just by buying presents for each other every single week! Why haven’t the retailers thought of this?”
While the retailers might love us for it, that’s not what I had in mind. Instead, I want us to think briefly about the major players who showed up in the Christmas story while they were going through the motions of what was expected of them to see if they might share a quality or attitude that can inspire us in the living of our days. So we turn to the tiny town of Bethlehem in ancient Palestine where the divine story of Jesus’ birth unfolded. Joseph and Mary were going through the motions of registering for the census; the shepherds in the fields were enduring the monotony of yet another day of tending to their dumb flocks; the magi were plodding through the discomfort of travel in the days before automobiles, Comfort Inns or airplanes; and the village itself, while teeming with the extra travelers in town who came to register, was hard at work to feed them, house them, and perhaps even make a little profit from them.
It may well be the example of the magi that the merchants of decades past seized upon to establish a tradition of giving gifts at Christmas time. What modern Christmas would be complete without a pile of brightly wrapped gifts wedged beneath the tree? While it’s true that these sages from the east came bearing costly gifts, their main focus was to meet and greet the savior whose birth was foretold in the stars. Their true gift had been their grit and determination to make a difficult and perilous journey to witness firsthand the baby proclaimed in the heavens above.
For their part, the shepherds had been awakened from their mind-numbing monotony by a chorus of angels, and they came with a sense of urgency to see who the angels had been singing about. Their gift was non-existent compared to the exotic treasures the magi had left, but they offered it anyway: they came with a sense of wonder and awe, and left to tell anyone and everyone they met about the things they had seen that night. The angels had offered their heavenly choruses as their gift, and the night skies had lent the brightly beaming beacon of a star as their tribute to the one destined to be the Messiah.
People of faith and curiosity down through the ages have been touched by this birth, and the gift of heaven sent to take on flesh and blood as one of us has a way of engaging us as we ask ourselves: what gift can we offer in return for this wondrous treasure of knowing that God loves us so? The poor little drummer boy immortalized in song wrestled with this question, and finally concluded that all he had to offer was his music. The answer to the question for us is more profound than adding yet another name to the constantly growing gift list. It goes beyond the guilt-inducing query, “Did you buy anything or do anything for Jesus this Christmas?”
In fact, the gift of God’s love has the power to transform our attitude not just about Christmas, but about all of life, all year round. That’s why I suggested that we have to start now to get ready for next year’s Christmas. Some of what’s required of us is a shift in how we look at the world around us. If God came to us as Immanuel, to be God with us in all that we do and experience in this world, then God is present with us in good times and bad, in happy times and sad, in times of health and times of sickness, in times of peace and times of turmoil. Pope Benedict the 16th, the current pope, interprets this concept in a way that transforms my thinking: “And on this day, let us not forget the many in whom God suffers on earth.”
There was an article in the USA Weekend magazine that the Glens Falls Post Star inserts in its Sunday paper. It had to do with several towns in America named after the Bethlehem of the Middle East. The piece that caught my attention had to do with Bethlehem, North Carolina, a small town of about 3800 residents in the western part of the state. The author of the article writes, “Upon my visit to Bethlehem, NC, I find that goodwill toward men (and women) here isn’t a seasonal feeling but a way of life. I speak to people who have kept food pantries and clothing drives running because a furniture plant has shut down and so many need help.”
He talked with some of the modern-day angels who volunteer at a maximum security prison nearby, offering their time to staff the Ezekiel Room, a clubhouse setting in the same area of the prison where prisoners have family visitation days. These folks provide a respite for the kids whose fathers are incarcerated, “a place where they can read stories, do arts and crafts, and be with other kids whose daddies are serving time there, so they can realize that they’re not alone.”
He interviewed a local pastor who arranges for local inmates to help recreate a living nativity scene for the town’s biggest draw, a drive-through of biblical Bethlehem. They help build the village while on work-release, which counts double as days served. So a day spent on work-release counts as two days served as part of their sentence, meaning they’ll be released sooner. “There are men who get out in time to spend Christmas with their families instead of in jail, thanks to this drive-through,” explains the pastor.
He met with one of the original community founders who came up with a special Bethlehem postmark still in use at the local post office. This kindly soul helped launch the Habitat for Humanity program in the community in the early 1980’s. He did it because he saw some of those folks “in whom God suffers,” and felt the need to respond. “We had people who couldn’t afford to have homes, so we built our first Habitat home and the others because the people here needed them.” The inmates at the prison aren’t forgotten, either. On Christmas day they will be treated to an annual Christmas meal, with volunteers from Bethlehem and other surrounding communities serving plates of ham and sugar cookies.
You don’t have to live in a town named Bethlehem to be involved in projects that bring life and blood reality to the vision for peace on earth that the angels sang about. Mission workers in inner city Chicago have seen a significant spike in the demand for services this year, but none of them was prepared for what they encountered the other morning on their way into work. At six o’ clock in the morning, a crowd of more than two hundred people was already standing in line in frigid sub-zero weather, waiting for services. So the workers did the only thing they knew to do: they threw the doors open two hours early to let people come in and get warmed up, they handed out winter clothes to kids and adults who had nothing to protect them against the brutal cold, they gave them coffee and breakfast, and toys for the kids. They served more than two thousand people in whom God suffers on that day alone.
A group down near Albany raises money every year to provide supportive services for military veterans and their families. Christmas is one of their busiest times of the year in terms of requests for help. They had organized a fundraiser to help replenish their coffers, and were getting ready for one of the biggest events of the year when they discovered that someone had broken into their office and stolen the prizes being raffled off. They didn’t know what to do, but when the local paper reported on what had happened, the phone started ringing and kept ringing with offers of help. They got so much help that they have a surplus in their budget this year.
A school teacher from a small town in our region wasn’t sure he believed what he had been hearing, which was that kids have become so self-centered that they are incapable of thinking about other people, let alone do something to help them. So when he heard about the winter clothing drive that was being held in Plattsburgh, he decided to challenge his students to bring in some warm winter clothes for kids that didn’t have any. He wasn’t too surprised when his classes responded within a few days by filling the small space he had designated in his room for their gifts. He was surprised when his students’ brothers and sisters wanted to help, too. He was even more surprised when the huge piles of warm winter clothing made it difficult to get around in his room, so they had to move the collection point to a separate room.
Recently, the students from Ticonderoga High School’s junior class decided that they wanted to do a community service project. Since the news has been filled lately with stories describing the increasing numbers of people and families using community food shelf resources, they voted for a project to help replenish the empty shelves. They called it “Stuff a Bus,” or something to that effect, and got permission to park a regular size school bus in the parking lot at the local Wal-Mart, which promised to supplement whatever they were able to collect. Their challenge to the community was a simple one: fill the bus with food to be delivered to local food shelves. It was a recent event, and I haven’t heard the outcome, but the mere effort on their part warmed my heart.
No, you don’t have to live in a town called Bethlehem to make the generous spirit of Christmas come alive. And no, it’s never really too late to do something for Jesus this Christmas if you adopt the attitude that God’s Christmas gift to us can inspire us to give of our time and energy all year round. As Pope Benedict points out, God is not primarily interested in our wealth and possessions, but is much more interested in “our hearts, our minds, our whole being. God wants our faith and the life that is based on faith. And from this life, he wants those gifts of which he will speak at the last judgment: food and clothing for the poor, compassion and mutual love, a word that brings consolation, and a presence that brings comfort to the persecuted, the imprisoned, the abandoned, and the lost.” For in doing these things, I say, we become God’s gift to those among whom God suffers on earth.
Order of Service Sermon
28 Dec 2008
Welcome, Announcements, Joys & Concerns
A Prayer for Peace NC # 116 (Verse 7)
Opening Prayer (Based on Luke 1)
Leader: Mighty God, pour out your Holy Spirit on all of us gathered here.
People: May our souls magnify and rejoice in God our Savior, whose mercy is always near and who lifts the humble of heart.
Leader: As we follow in Mary’s footsteps, open our hearts, that we might be filled with your goodness and your love.
People: Let your love fill us up and nourish our hungry souls. Let your grace strengthen our lives of faith.
Leader: Live in us, that we might bear the light of Christ for all to see.
People: Overshadow us with your presence, that we might be truly blessed and offer your blessing of love to the world.
Leader: Let us sing and pray with hearts filled with joy and thanksgiving for all the many blessings of God.
Hymn NC # 135 O Come, All You Faithful
Responsive Prayer
Leader: Eternal God, we thank you for the covenant of love that binds us together.
People: We thank you for the gift of your love and presence, brought home to us in the birth of Jesus.
Leader: Ever since a Child was wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger in Bethlehem, your very presence surprises and sustains us when we least expect it.
People: Even when we lose hope and turn away from you, you reach out to us.
Leader: We can only marvel as we come before you in humility and awe.
People: Help us to reach out to others as you have reached out to us.
Leader: May those of us who are needy in any way experience your loving presence as surely as Mary and Joseph did.
Pastoral Prayer, Lord’s Prayer
Hymn NC # 133 O Little Town Of Bethlehem
Psalm 148, Galatians 4:1-7, Luke 2:8-20
Hymn NC # 134 Silent Night
Sermon O Little Town of Bethlehem
Offering, Doxology, Dedication
Hymn NC # 132 Joy To The World
Benediction
Leader: The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light.
People: Shine your glory into the shadows of our lives.
Leader: Like the shepherds in the fields, may we be stirred into action, to share our joy with others who sit in darkness.
People: Overcome our fear, Holy One, and inspire us to leave our busyness and seek anew the Christ Child.
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