It is hard for me to believe that December is already upon us. To be sure, it is a very busy and exhausting time for most of us. There are some who dread the thought of December and the Christmas Season. In 1974, Merle Haggard wrote the following country hit…
If we make it through December
Everything’s gonna be all right I know
It’s the coldest time of winter
And I shiver when I see the falling snow
If we make it through December
Got plans to be in a warmer town come summer time
Maybe even California
If we make it through December we’ll be fine
Got laid off down at the factory
And there time is not the greatest in the world
Heaven knows I been workin’ hard
Wanted Christmas to be right for daddy’s girl
Now I don’t mean to hate December
It’s meant to be the happy time of year
And my little girl don’t understand
Why daddy can’t afford no Christmas gift
If we make it through December
Everything’s gonna be alright I know
It’s the coldest time of winter
And I shiver when I see the falling snow
If we make it through December
Got plans to be in a warmer town come summer time
Maybe even California
If we make it through December we’ll be fine
Sadly, many people can relate as they try to make it through another December, struggling through Advent and the Christmas Season. When we find it difficult to join our voices with the chorus of other voices singing “Joy to the World,” it is most helpful to hear again the Christmas message of hope, peace, joy and love. We MUST hear the angel’s message “Do not be afraid, for I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”
I very much appreciate how this message of hope and love is expressed in the following stories…
Brian Abel Ragan’s father told him the same story every year, growing up, about a little boy so poor he had nothing but one toy: a little beat-up plastic car with two wheels and a broken windshield. It was Christmas, and at midnight Mass in that village, people would put gifts around baby Jesus in the crib—jeweled chalices, fat checks, baskets of food and so on.
It was the little boy’s first time to get to go to midnight Mass, so he worked shoveling snow and removing trash and earned two whole dollars to give God. He was so happy to have something to give, until his widowed mother spied the money sitting on the table. “O Son, what a good boy you are. Now we can have a real Christmas dinner,” and before he could explain, she’d run out of the house to buy food before the market closed.
Now what was he going to do? You know, don’t you? When he arrived at church, he walked timidly to the manger and put the broken toy amidst all the treasures. But it wasn’t two minutes later that an usher walked up, spied the car and flung it into the trash by the door, muttering “Who would leave a piece of garbage like that at our Lord’s crib?”
Then everything stopped and hushed. Jesus was getting out of the manger. He walked over to the trash and removed the broken car with great tenderness. Then he tucked it under his arm and walked back, lying in the straw and becoming a statue again.
Brian says he remembers resenting this Christmas tale. His dad was a mean drunk, and the sappy story was just a pathetic attempt to manipulate him into being a good little boy.
Only years later, he figured out what his father was trying to tell him. Here’s what he says: “As I think of my father’s story now, I realize I cast him in the wrong role. My father was not the good little boy who gave his last play thing to the Lord. My father was the smashed car… He was a wreck. But despite, or because of, all this, he clearly longed to be cradled in his Savior’s arms, to have Christ still seek him after he had been rejected by everyone else.” (from Dynamic Preaching XXIV, 4, p. 71)
The Christmas message is always the same: God has chosen to come to us in the way of a tiny baby and longs to cradle each of us.
Let me close with another Christmas story. The Church was having its kids’ pageant, so of course there were the kids in flannel bathrobes with towels on their heads. The divine manger itself glowed with the presence of the newborn Jesus. That’s because the divine infant was played by a light bulb nestled there to make Mary and Joseph’s face shine as they bent over. And all went well till a smart aleck shepherd said in a whisper all the kids could hear, “Well Joe, when ya gonna pass out the cigars?” which set those nervous kids giggling and giggling till the angel perched on a ladder fell flat on the stable, which came down on Mary and Joseph. No one was hurt, but Mary and Joseph were on the floor, laughing so hard. (Dynamic Preaching XIV, 4, p 78)
And it was all a disaster… except the light bulb. The fragile bulb just went on shining, which has to be a parable. Because the props around as we try to tell the Christmas story—the preachers, the institutional churches, the choirs, the music, the incense—sometimes work, and sometimes, through sin and hypocrisy, we all come tumbling down.
But the light… the light keeps shining. Jesus, the light of the world, with us today and always. Happy birthday, light of the world.
We will all make it through December if we but take the time to embrace the Christmas message!
Christmas Blessings,
Pastor Russel
Photo by Yutaka Seki