Are you ready for Christmas? Foolish question. We still
have 2½ weeks to go. I was visiting with Mary Knapp in the
hospital yesterday and we got on the subject of Christmas - she
said, "Why are you thinking about this now. You're a MAN.
You've got LOTS of time." Good point.
For what it's worth, if you ARE thinking about it, and you
are wondering what you might get for that special someone who
is difficult to buy for, I may be able to help. This week on
the internet was news you can use.(1) Now available: an eight-inch hand-painted "Jesus Bobble Head", designed to sit in the
space on a car's back shelf. The manufacturer says, "Of
course, nobody knows what Jesus really looked like, but this is
our best guess since we know he had a head that moved." Yup.
I think I'll pass on that one, but I know I'd better get
busy. This will be "Decorating for Christmas Week" around the
Leininger house - tree up, ornaments on, lights everywhere,
manger scenes out and Sounds of the Season - carols on the
stereo. All accompanied by the delightful smell of holiday
baking from the kitchen. Delicious.
But as I think about it, it occurs to me that the marvelous
sights and smells of 2002 are about opposite those of the first
Christmas. We hark back to the images that fill our minds and
note that a stable is not a pretty place. The light is not
that good. Walk into a stable and take a deep breath...if you
dare. Whew!!! No, those marvelous sights and smells we
associate with our modern celebration have nothing to do with
our conception of the original event.
But now it is the Christmas season and suddenly stables
take on a different image. Instead of the dark, grimy, smelly
places that they really are, we let our minds picture them as
much more socially acceptable. In our house, we have I-don't-know-how-many manger scenes - some wood, some plastic, some
ceramic, some paper maché. We put them on the coffee tables,
on the mantle or under the tree to help us remember the
occasion we commemorate...the coming of God in human flesh, the
birth of the baby Jesus. It is a rather romantic picture, the
way we do it at our house. At yours too? And the reason it is
romantic is the same as so many things we make romantic - they
are not real. And to be quite honest, our popular picture of
that manger scene is wildly inaccurate.
Be that as it may. I wonder whether we do the Christmas
story an injustice by trying to pretty it up. To be honest, I
do not think God wanted it to be pretty. If God had wanted it
pretty, it would have been handled differently. For years we
have heard that Jesus could have chosen a palace. After all,
King of kings and Lord of lords. But if the Lord's reason for
steering clear of palaces was simply not to scare us off with
too much majesty, or to demonstrate humility, there could have
been some middle ground, couldn't there? Some place decent, at
least; some place that smelled a little better, that had a
little better light? But no, it was a room shared with
animals... dark, grimy, smelly. I wonder why.
Actually, I do not wonder. I feel fairly certain that I
know. The Lord chose the location for that miraculous birth
precisely BECAUSE it was lousy. It was not any reverse
snobbery. It was not just to convey some image of humility.
No, I think the message was that God would be available to us
even in the most putrid circumstances we could imagine, those
circumstances when we would normally feel that God would be a
million miles away.
Think about it. I will give you some "Boy Meets Girl"
stories to show how it works.
Story #1. Boy Meets Girl. They fall deeply and
deliciously in love. They plan a beautiful life together.
They marry. They have children. They create a lovely home.
All goes well. And suddenly, it's over. You see, boy has met
another girl...younger, prettier, no stretch marks, no
independent opinions...and boy takes off, leaving girl number
one with the kids, the mortgage, and a boat load of broken
dreams.
That is HARD to deal with. The situation is miserable.
And anyone who has gone through it knows what I mean. There is
anger. There is hurt. There is grief. There is a feeling of
abandonment...and not just the sense of being abandoned by a
lover, but by everyone and everything good. Home is not the
same anymore. It may as well be a stable. Is God in the midst
of that? Or has God left too? The story of Christmas says God
is there!
Story #2. Boy Meets Girl. Love. Marriage. Eventually a
beautiful daughter, the apple of her daddy's eye. Anything she
wanted, she could get. She had daddy wrapped around her little
finger before she ever knew she HAD a little finger.
Oh, she was raised right - Sunday School and church, good
training in the home, a sound set of values. She did well in
school and was one of those who might be voted "Most Likely to
Succeed." One could easily have pictured her future as one
which would hold a successful career, a bright and talented
husband, a beautiful home, handsome children, and all the rest.
But time marches on. She has become an independent young
lady with ideas of her own. She meets a fellow who is somewhat
less than mom and dad might have hoped for - no job, no
education, no money, no future, and apparently no razor - just
a motorcycle, one earring, and a ponytail. She drops out of
school, runs off with him, gets pregnant, and dies in child
birth.
Mom and Dad sit there under the tent during the graveside
service hearing the preacher talk about life and hope and
resurrection...but they are not really listening. Both are
thinking the same thing: "Where did we go wrong?" Who knows?
Finally, the funeral is over. The people who came by the
house to offer their sympathy and condolences are gone. All
that is left is a kitchen full of uneaten food...and two people
full of unanswered questions. They have gone to bed now and
lie quietly thinking that this will be a miserable Christmas.
The house is dark - just a little light shining through the
window from the street lamp outside. Probably not much more
light in that room than was there that night in Bethlehem -
stables tend to be dark. But the story of Christmas tells us
that GOD is there in that dark.
Story #3. Boy Meets Girl. More love. More marriage. No
kids this time. Just two people who will grow old together in
great contentment. They had stood before the minister years
ago and vowed to love and care for each other "till death us do
part" and they had kept their promise. But now one of them is
no longer able to do that. He hardly even knows who he is
anymore. Not only can he not love and care for his sweet wife,
he cannot even take care of himself. SHE has to do it all.
Oh, she does not really mind. She loves him more now than she
ever did. But there are times...oh, there are times...when she
gets exhausted and wonders how she can go on. She gives and
gives and gives some more...and gets nothing in return. Not
even at Christmas. That is hard.
It is almost what one would expect in a stable. After all,
people do not come to stables looking to be cared for. When we
go to a stable, we expect there is work to be done. No thanks,
no rewards, just drudgery. And the story of Christmas says
that, in the midst of the drudgery, God is there.
Story #4. Boy Meets Girl. They fall in love. They marry.
They have kids...two good ones and one miserable wretch. Two
"A" students, one drop-out. Two with successful careers, one
who could never hold a job. Two who were pillars of society,
one the dregs of society. Could the conclusion be "two they
loved and one they didn't?" Not at all. They loved each one.
And now it is December 24th. The phone rings and the voice
on the other end says that their child is in jail...caught
selling drugs to an undercover cop. Ho, ho, ho, Merry
Christmas.
They go down to the police station to bail the kid out. No
luck. Bail has not been determined yet and arraignment cannot
happen until after Christmas - the judge is out of town. It
does not matter how much money you have. If Santa is going to
see THIS kid, this year it will be in a cage. Hmmm...a stable
with bars.
There is something in that story we should probably note
about stables - money means nothing. How much you have or how
little you have make no difference. And for people who have
grown up in a money economy as we have, for people who have
learned to keep score of how well we are doing by how much we
have, for people who have almost made a god of money, that is
hard to deal with - to hear that all your money is worthless,
that it is a false god, is a shattering experience. No, that
god has no place in a stable. But the story of Christmas says
that the God of heaven does.
Now, I will grant that the stories I have told are
extremes. But extremes happen...all the time, and we know it.
For most of us, though, the stables in which we sometimes find
ourselves are much less dramatic: the disappointments that come
when our youthful dreams sink into the quicksand of grown-up
reality; the day-to-day grind of a job that is just work; the
dull pain that hangs on and on about which the doctors cannot
seem to do anything; the emptiness of a home that is now just a
house where people stay - the love is gone; the boredom that
comes in retirement after a life of fulfilling activity.
Nothing dramatic, but then stables rarely are.
The trouble with stables is not that they are dark and
dirty and smelly - that is the nature of a stable. No, the
trouble with stables is that there are so many of them. They
are everywhere... not just in Bethlehem. They are everywhere
that people reach the end of the line, when there are no more
choices...no more rooms in the inn...when all that is left is
to just desperately hang on.
In Robert Fulghum's best seller of a few years ago, All I
Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, he writes that
what he wants for Christmas is "to be five years old again for
an hour. I want to laugh a lot and cry a lot. I want to be
picked up and rocked to sleep in someone's arms and be carried
to bed just one more time...I want my childhood back."(2) To put
it in this morning's terms, he wants the stables of life to be
clean and neat and to smell good, just like the one sitting up
on the mantle. But that is not possible.
What IS possible is the realization that we are not alone
in our stables. The story of Christmas tells us that God is
there in that undramatic, dingy, dreary place. God is there in
those hours of our lives when it seems that everything is
wrong, when all is dark, when things just STINK - precisely the
hours when we need God most. The Christmas story tells us that
GOD IS THERE WITH US! And the reason is that God wants to be.
That is awfully important. God's home was no stable.
God's dwelling is all the glories of the universe, but the
choice was made to leave that. God chose to come SEEKING us.
On that night of nights, heaven reached down to earth, and that
reaching has continued, and WILL continue, until heaven and
earth finally pass away.
Thou didst leave Thy throne
And Thy kingly crown
When Thou camest to earth for me.(3)
Will God lead us out of the stable? Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The promise is that even that stable will turn out to be
something or someplace good for God's children. We might not
be able to SEE that good for a time, but we can count on the
certainty of the promise. And more than that...we can count on
the certainty of God's presence. It may be a stable, one of
MANY stables, but GOD IS THERE!
Yes, again this Christmas we will walk into our dens and
living rooms and kitchens and be confronted with an array of
delights that signify celebration (but no bobble-head Jesus,
please). Just remember that the OTHER sights and sounds and
smells, the STABLE sights and sounds and smells, are real life.
They may be your life right now. If they are, the good news I
have for you this morning is those are the REAL sights and
sounds and smells into which our Savior came and comes and
comes again...to be with you. Have a blessed holiday.
Amen!
1. Reuters, 12/6/02
2. Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, (New York, Villard
Books, 1989), pp. 97-98
3. Emily E. S. Elliott, 1864
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