There are times in ones life when the beauty of it all is overwhelming.
When, through the cracks in everything, the light gets in …
and the light that brings life shines all around in the darkness, giving life.
Choose life, please, choose life.
And this from the supper table, piped into a fantastic sound system:
and this article as an explanation: Isreal records in one take
Tonight:
Last Saturday, Christmas, I put this together from pieces from my wife and my thoughts and my wife then edited a few times. And it contains the essence of faith; Faith in a gracious God; Faith proclaimed by our church, the Lutheran Church, the E.L.C.I.C.:
Second Reading: Titus 3:4-7
4When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, 5he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. 6This Spirit he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
Darkness
We wrote to a friend whose wife, Joan, was diagnosed with a really bad kind of dementia:
“Today, as the snow falls on the still dark fields in the view to the west and as single cars traverse the road on this side of the darker trees,
“I’m thinking of you and all the inspiration you have been to us;
“And thinking how [deleted expletive/]unfair and typical it is that you must face this, as you’ve faced so many challenges.”
Christmas Works
Every Christmas we see people, people, people expecting, expecting, expecting, buying, buying, buying, preparing, preparing, preparing, travelling, travelling, travelling, doing, doing, doing, cooking, cooking, cooking, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, eating, eating, eating, and then we also see people grouchy and pressed, ornery and mean, exhausted and worn, hurting and torn, hungry in body and soul, upset and disappointed, disappointed, disappointed.
Christmas Grace according to God’s Mercy
God comes into our stress and hectic, joins right in with us, walks with us, runs with us to the store, the bedroom to wrap, the kitchen to cook, the living room to deliver, the drive to shovel, the store for the last minute food or gift, … God is with us, and the greatest gift is not any of our hectic, or our doing, or our meeting expectations, or even our great goodness.
Christmas is God’s Gift to us, to remind us: God is WITH us in everything: there is nothing we can do to make God be with us. God has done this already, and demonstrated it with Jesus’ birth more than 2 millennia ago. Demonstrated it because we humans need it made real obvious.
The rest of the world, even other religions and the Christian churches, and even us Lutherans get so lost in trying to be in control that we preach, teach and live that we need to do the righteous things, that we need to say the righteous things, that we need to believe the righteous things,
All in order that God will be with us.
That’s a formula for disaster in our lives. It is the formula of sin: we take over the place of God … and then all hell breaks loose in and around us, and we wonder why.
But the one True Gift that the Lutheran Church offers our members, the rest of the Christian churches, other religions, and all the world is simple:
First we confess: We cannot make ourselves right with God. We are too far gone, lost to sin, even the seemingly ‘smallest’ sin separates us from God. And we JUST CANNOT DO IT RIGHTEOUS enough, none of us, never, ever, no how!
AND
Second we proclaim: we don’t have to make ourselves righteous enough, because God has already made us saints, even as we are and remain sinners. God COMES TO US, each of us. Though we are lost, God finds us every day, every hour, every second. God finds us, comes to us, and God is with us,
Always. God is with us, God makes us good enough to be in God’s presence! It’s a gift! Free!
And the only thing we can do is respond: we don’t have to respond well, but we can. Knowing God is with us can change our lives, what we think, what we say, what we DO, and what we believe. And God IS with us no matter how we respond! Its grace, its free, its life-giving.
Giving as Giving Life; Because God Gives, Therefore We Give
Knowing God is with us can change our lives: we can give freely just as God gives to us, we can give forgiveness and mercy, grace and hope: love! WE can give others unconditional love!!
Story: Giving Freely
Nancy Gavin tells the story of her husband, Mike, whom she refers to as “The Man Who Hated Christmas.” Now it wasn’t Jesus that Mike hated. It wasn’t the Christian faith that he hated. But Mike hated what our culture had done with Christmas. He hated trees, and he hated presents, he hated “Jingle Bells,” and he hated all that stuff.
And he was a grouch every year at Christmas–not because of Jesus and the manger but because of the way we observe it.
One December when their son, Kevin, was twelve years old, Kevin was wrestling on his Junior High Wrestling Team. During that month of December they had an exhibition match against a church team. [A] church team … from … the inner city, a team made up of the poorest of the poor …. When the day came for the wrestling match, Kevin and his team came out in their sparkling wrestling uniforms…. [E]verything was as high tech and glorious as it could be. The [other] team … came with sneakers that weren’t really wrestling sneakers. …they didn’t even have the helmets that wrestlers wear to protect their ears from being pinched and pulled and scraped [while] wrestling.
As the match progressed … the church team [lost] every match. Mike… leaned over to [Nancy] and said, “I wish they could win just one match. They have talent, but they don’t have any coaching.”… [It took some doing but somehow] a light bulb went off in Nancy’s head.
The very next day she went down to the local sporting goods store and bought wrestling headgear and wrestling shoes and sent them anonymously to the church whose team her son had wrestled the day before. Then on Christmas Eve she wrote a little note to Mike: “Dear Mike, I know how you feel about Christmas. … Remember that wrestling team from the inner city church? This Christmas, they have headgear and proper shoes … as your Christmas present.”
She put the note in an envelope and stuck the envelope up in the branches of their Christmas tree. When morning came, the children unwrapped all their presents, and there was the usual festivity. Then one of the children spotted this envelope up in the tree and said, “Look! What is that?” Mike took the envelope down and opened it and read the note. With tears in his eyes, he looked at Nancy and said, “This is the best Christmas that I have ever had.”
It became a tradition in their family. Every year there would be an envelope, with no name on it, just an envelope in the tree. One year Nancy sent a group of mentally challenged kids to camp. Another year she sent some funds to a family whose house had burned down during the month of December. Year after year after year some sort of gift like this was Mike’s Christmas present.
Then, Nancy wrote, there came the fall, about the time their children were grown, when Mike died of cancer. When Christmas rolled around, Nancy could hardly put up the tree. But she did, and somehow in his memory she felt that she ought to once again put an envelope in the tree to make some sort of gift in Mike’s honor, just as she had during his lifetime. The three grown children came home, and Christmas morning came. And there in the branches of the tree were four envelopes. For, unbeknownst to each other, each of their three children had also made a gift in honor of their father.
And that too has become a tradition in their home. Nancy Gavin writes, “For generations … as my children become adults and have their own families, there will be an envelope for Mike in their tree.” And when her grandchildren have families of their own, there will probably still be envelopes for Mike in their tree. For the Gavin family is a family that “got it.” …. (SERMONSHOP December 1999, JOE PARRISH)
They began to understand Christmas, God’s gift of life for us.
Giving as Works
But our giving gifts at Christmas, not even an envelope in Mike’s memory, is not supposed to be our way to earn love from others, or from God. It is supposed to be BECAUSE we love them, and we love them because God loves us first, even though we do not deserve it, never, ever, no how.
Giving as Response to Mercy, to Grace
This Christmas, not in order to gain anything from God, nor from others, but because we recognize all that God has given us, let us Give to others. Give something just because God loves you, accepts you as you are, forgives you, and because God walks with you.
Christmas Grace
But whether you give because God loves you unconditionally, OR NOT; whether you are caught up in the hectic of making it perfect so that the traditions are not lost and are there as a loving structure that gives life to you and yours, OR NOT; whether you have quit giving gifts and you hate Christmas, OR NOT; whether you love the snow and the possibilities of the Christmas season, OR NOT; whether you have or will give all the right gifts to all the right people, OR NOT;
NO Matter What: God walks with you each day, each hour, each minute, and loves you unconditionally.
Christmas Light
We ended that note to our friend with these words:
“As the light of Christmas dawns, and the details become clearer, of the landscape before us, it is with deep gratitude for your gifts, part of God’s gifts for us, that we say,
“Know we pray for you and Joan,
“Know that if you need whatever, we will find it, in ourselves or organize it with others, to provide for you, as you have provided for so many people, us included.
“May the light shine even now brightly for you and Joan.”
Christmas Blessing
Breathe easy; you’re in God’s hands also this day. So let God’s light of love shine through your heart, mind and soul to all those around you.
Have a blessed Christmas!
Amen