Christmas — Andy James

A Strange Christmas Story

December 29, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 2:13-23
preached on December 29, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When you think of the Christmas story, what comes to mind?

There are of course the great biblical stories of Matthew and Luke that tell about the birth of Jesus, and the beautiful opening words of the gospel of John that put a more theological spin on the beginning of Jesus’ life. Then there are the more contemporary stories that define Christmas for many of us, ranging from simple tales that give wonderful portraits of a spirit of giving to the crazy family stories that get most of their meaning from the characters involved in them. And then there’s A Christmas Story, a movie from 1983 that has built such a broad following over the last few years that one cable channel shows it on continuous repeat for twenty-four hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day every year! Personally, I have yet to sort out exactly why this movie has so many fans—its storyline focuses on an elementary school-aged boy who desperately desires an air rifle for Christmas, even as everyone around him repeatedly warns him, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”

Yet even this strange movie about a boy and a BB gun seems more connected to our Christmas stories than our reading this morning from Matthew. This terrifying story is a strange postscript to the stories that have defined this last week or month or more for us. It features no shepherds and no angels, and the wise men have already gone home. There are no heavenly songs offered here, no manger welcoming shepherds and sheep, no Mary pondering these things in her heart. Instead, this Christmas story brings us a murderous and jealous king-in-name-only, Herod, installed by Rome to make the Jews feel like they had some control over their own destiny, who responds to a perceived threat to his power with infant genocide.

After Herod learned of Jesus’ birth through the visit of astrologers who had come to pay homage to the child born King of the Jews, he sent them on their way to Bethlehem with instructions to return and report to him about this child. When they went home by another road, Herod was so angry and frustrated that he ordered the death of all the children two years and younger in Bethlehem so as to make sure that this threat to his power would not survive. But Herod’s seeming cunning did not match up to God’s providence for Jesus and his parents. After the departure of the wise men, an angel appeared to Joseph and warned him of Herod’s impending search for Jesus. Armed with this news, Joseph took Mary and Jesus and fled to Egypt, where they stayed until Herod died and an angel delivered word to Joseph that it would be safe for them to return home to Israel. However, when Joseph learned that Herod’s son Archelaus was in power, he feared that this son would share a little too much in common with his murderous father and so resettled not in his hometown of Bethlehem but in Nazareth, where Jesus grew up.

This is a strange Christmas story, to say the least. Not only does it leave out the shepherds and the angels and others that have become an integral part of our idea of the Christmas story, this word from Matthew shifts our focus from birth to death, from celebration to mourning, from joyous new life to horrible untimely death, from hope to uncertainty and fear. This story of the massacre of innocent children just seems so very much out of place in our Christmas celebrations—yet the carol we just sang that lifts it up has been around for hundreds of years, and many medieval celebrations of Christmas included this story as an integral part of their tellings of the birth of Jesus.

Today, though we may try to push it out of our minds, this story serves as a reminder that Christmas just isn’t beautiful and simple and joyful for everyone. For some people, this story of what happened after Christmas is perhaps closer to the reality of their lives at this time of year. When everyone seems to be celebrating, some of us face tremendous challenges in our lives. When many of us are celebrating with our families, some of us are remembering the pain and struggle and sorrow in our family experiences—past abuse, neglect, or alcoholism; present depression, fighting, separation and divorce, or distance; the struggles of difficult relationships, political or religious differences, or expectations not met; chronic or sudden illness; recent or impending death; or some mix of any or all of these. When many of us are sharing gifts with great abandon, some of us are struggling to explain why there are fewer or no gifts this year—or even worse, trying to keep up appearances to hide more difficult realities below the surface. When many of us are rejoicing because God has come to dwell with us, some of us are crying out wondering where God is in the midst of our pain, sorrow, and doubt.

While these experiences and feelings are present all year long, this season magnifies them all the more as so many messages in our culture say that Christmas should be perfect and beautiful. We hear that there’s “no place like home for the holidays” even if that home is emotionally unhealthy or physically unsafe for us to go there. We hear that “Santa Claus is coming to town” even if there is no money for gifts this year. We sing that “everybody knows a turkey and some mistletoe / help to make the season bright” when there is no turkey or mistletoe to be found or when darkness of any sort casts its shadow over this season.

Stories like this one from Matthew serve to remind all of us that there is more to Christmas than these visions of seeming perfection—and that God is the midst of all of our Christmases, that the incarnation of God in Jesus is for our perfect Christmases as well as our broken ones, that God’s presence is with us whether our Christmas is wonderful or awful or somewhere in between. At Christmas, God took on our flesh and bone and blood in Jesus Christ, not to make us immediately perfect but to know the fullness of our human life, not to paper over our pain and hurt but to understand them and experience them, not to fix us overnight but to fix us for good, not to transform us in spite of what we want but to push us and drag us and guide us into something new, maybe slowly, maybe quickly, but always certainly and hopefully and joyfully. And even when the powers of this world threaten to destroy this new light in Jesus, this story reminds us that God’s power is stronger than any of them, that God’s work of bringing justice and peace cannot be overcome by evil in the world, that even in his infancy Jesus would face great challenge and yet emerge victorious.

So as this Christmas continues, may God’s presence be in the midst of it all, in the midst of our joy and our mourning, in the face of despair and hope, in the glimpses of perfection that fit our best images of Christmas and in the times when we can only hope and pray that God’s grace and mercy will take hold soon, for God’s new life came into our world in Jesus Christ, to begin making all things new and make space for all of us to join in, here and now and always, until Jesus comes again.

Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

December 24, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on John 1:1-14
preached on Christmas Eve 2013 at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

When I was growing up, it would be about right now on Christmas Eve that we would be opening presents. In my mom’s family, we open most of our gifts on Christmas Eve, then Santa Claus brings us a few more on Christmas morning, though we’ve had to negotiate a new arrival time with Santa in the years since I’ve been working on Christmas Eve and can’t join them until Christmas Day! Every year, I remember some conversation about the schedule—when I was younger, it was usually me trying to get to the gifts earlier!—but it almost always worked out the same way: we would go across the street to my grandparents’ church for a 5:00 service, come home, finish preparations, and eat dinner about 7:00 or 7:30, then move into opening presents around 8:30 or 9:00. In the end, whatever the scheduled worked out to be, the gifts were really the focus of the evening. That’s what it’s all about, right? Why would we think of doing anything else on this holy night other than opening presents??!!

More and more, this whole Christmas season becomes about the gifts—about the things that we exchange with our family and friends, about making sure that the value of the gift we give matches that of the gift that we receive, about finding the perfect gift for the right price with the least amount of effort. In the end, there is something about all these gifts and presents that matters, but only as much as they point to the real gift of Christmas: the gift of God coming to us in Jesus.

Our reading from John tonight takes us right there. It may not be the familiar story of angels and shepherds in a manger, but ultimately it tells us everything we need to know:

In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it….

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

This is the real gift of Christmas, the gift that really matters, the gift that keeps on giving: the presence of God who comes into our world, who walks and talks with us, who eats and drinks with us, who laughs and cries with us, who puts up with us, who loves us and cares for us beyond our wildest dreams.

This is the best gift we could ever imagine: the presence of God among us, the vision of Immanuel, God-with-us, the reality of God visible and available and living right here, on earth, beside us, among us.

The greatest gift ever is that God comes to us, living a human life, struggling human struggles, walking the same ground and breathing the same air and drinking the same water.

God set aside God’s power, glory, and honor so that we could come close to that power, glory, and honor in Jesus, so that we could not just glimpse God from afar but encounter God up close, in person, face to face. As Quaker theologian Elton Trueblood is said to have said, “The historic Christian doctrine of the divinity of Christ does not simply mean that Jesus is like God. It is far more radical than that. It means that God is like Jesus.” (quoted by Rachel Held Evans) When we encounter Jesus, the ultimate gift, we encounter God.

So on this Christmas Eve, when it is so easy to look to our gifts to give our lives meaning and hope, we can turn our eyes instead to this ultimate gift that changes everything about our giving—not simply because we’ll never measure up to it but because this gift is truly unlike any other before or since. When we welcome this gift at its fullest, we can do nothing but set aside the presents that so easily define this season and instead embrace the presence of God in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, dwelling among us, the presence that really matters. We will find this presence of God around us and among us—maybe in the time we spend with family and friends over the coming days, maybe in the people who care for us and help meet our needs, maybe in the people who inspire us and challenge us and even frustrate us, and maybe even at this table, in this simple meal, where we trust that God will host us and meet us.

The presence of God in Jesus, embodied in these and countless other ways, gives us confidence and hope of God’s presence each and every day, not just to make us feel better or to get through the difficult moments of our lives but most of all so that we can be the presence of God for others. Ultimately the gift of God in Jesus Christ keeps on giving to us and to all people as we give it to others, because we take the light of Christ that we have received and reflect it out to others, because we embody the love of God in our daily lives, because we are not afraid to share this wonderful gift of glory, grace, truth, and love with everyone we meet.

So as we go forth to celebrate this Christmas, exchanging gifts with our family and friends and celebrating a bit of time away from the everyday routine, may the gift of God’s presence in Jesus Christ be the only present that we need, and may we share the wonder of God’s love with everyone we meet, in word and in deed, this Christmas and always, until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, forever and ever! Amen and amen.

Where’s Jesus?

December 24, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-14
preached on December 24, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

One of my most memorable Christmas gifts growing up was the wonderful series of Where’s Waldo? books. They featured a tall, lanky, strange, bespectacled man named Waldo who popped up in a variety of very interesting scenes. The goal of the books was to find him amidst these very busy scenes. He was best distinguished by his bright red striped shirt, but sometimes when he hid behind a tree or something he was a little more difficult to spot. For several years, each Christmas brought a new book in the series, and I remember spending many hours looking carefully for Waldo and the many other things hidden in these scenes. It was a fun game and a great way to spend those lazy Christmas days with family and friends—and even a welcome break from all the toys that seemed to get a lot of attention too!

Sometimes, I feel like we are playing a bit of a game of “Where’s Jesus?” in our world at Christmas nowadays. Signs of the holidays are everywhere, but Jesus is a bit more hidden. Our streets and homes are decorated with trees, garland, Santas, and even nativity scenes, but too often for me at least it just feels obligatory and not all that real and meaningful. Religious celebrations that talk about Jesus take a back seat to family gatherings that focus on gift-giving and eating. Many people are now even saying “Merry Christmas,” but do they even know what that means? Even one of our own parents in the church told me the other day that her child had never made the connection between Jesus and Christmas—to this youngster, Christmas was all about Santa Claus and giving and receiving presents, and, based on our celebrations, I for one am not really all that surprised. Some in the church go on and on about the “War on Christmas”—all the supposed places in our civic culture where the seemingly more generic “holidays” have replaced a proper celebration of Christmas—but I think we have to answer for our own actions and reclaim Christmas for ourselves before we can point to anyone or anything else.

You see, regardless of how we might act or behave in the church or elsewhere, Christmas is not about Santa Claus, giving or receiving gifts, or even the glorious music that shapes these days. When we focus on these things, the world can so easily close in around us. The very shallow joy of this view of Christmas becomes insincere when things get hard or tragedy strikes as it has so often in recent months and years. Between the destruction of Superstorm Sandy and the highly-visible gun violence around us that culminated in Newtown and continued even earlier today, we need something more than the traditional holidays has to offer, a deeper, more real, more transformative joy that brings us new life.

At its core, Christmas should be exactly that. This is the day when we celebrate God’s presence in our world, Immanuel, God-with-us, God’s coming to us in human form, in the birth of Jesus. This is the day when we remember that God doesn’t ever give up on us but shows the greatest possible love for us: love in a simple babe in a manger, love in a wise and challenging teacher, love in a miraculous and astounding healer, love in a life-giving death, love in an astounding resurrection. This is the day when we see that God can’t be pinned only to the powerful, only to the religious, only to Christians, only to the church, for on this day we celebrate how God in Christ was born to Mary, a poor, unmarried girl, in a dark, dank, messy manger, with only strange shepherds to greet him.

So when we look around in these days and wonder, “Where’s Jesus?” the answer may surprise us. We might like to try to get Jesus more fully into our holiday celebrations. We might want to confine the religious element of this season to life in the church or to something that we can do when there is time. And we might even recognize that Jesus is the reason for the season. But when we ask “Where’s Jesus?” the answer may be more like those Waldo books than we could ever imagine, for he is dwelling in our world, not so much hiding as hanging out. He is very much present with us, even when we don’t know it, even when we least expect it. He is ready for us to watch and look and search for him, waiting for us to discover him when and where we least expect it. Our reading tonight from John puts it beautifully:

The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.

The Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory,
the glory as of a father’s only son,
full of grace and truth.

And so our call this Christmas and every day is simple. Live like this all this has actually happened. Act like Christmas is not about giving gifts or gathering with family and friends but about celebrating God’s life in our midst in Christ. Make Christ’s presence real in our world. And keep asking “Where’s Jesus?” as we look for him to be at work in the expected and unexpected places in our world, for we will certainly encounter this baby boy, this radical teacher and preacher, this astonishing healer, this self-giving servant, this resurrected Christ, in our world.

Sometimes it will be easy, with joyful music and easy signs to point the way. And sometimes it will be hard, when we are lonely, when the walls seem to be closing in around us, when violence and war seem to have the last word. Yet in joy and in sorrow, when we ask “Where’s Jesus?” we know that he is among us. In our songs, in our words, in our celebrations, in our sacrament, we trust that Jesus is among us. In our sorrow, in our sighing, in our living, in our dying, Christ walks with us all the way to show us God’s love each and every day.

So may we seek Jesus and find him this Christmas and throughout the year to come so that our joy might be complete, our hope restored, and our world renewed for these days and always.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all, this night, this Christmas, and always. Amen.

That Day

January 1, 2012 By Andy James

a sermon for the first Sunday of Christmas on Luke 2:15-40
preached on January 1, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

I won’t ever forget that day in the temple. It was a strange time back in those days of Caesar Augustus, back when we all got called to our hometowns for the great census and taxation. I didn’t ever move very far from home, so that day I was making my normal trip up to the temple to offer my prayers and sacrifices, joining with the crowds to fulfill our obligations under the law. We all had our different requests and concerns – some people like me just were making our regular trips as we always did, but there were others who wanted a blessing or sought healing from a priest and still others who came because something important was going on in their lives.

I won’t ever forget this one young couple I saw that day, though. They came to the temple with their very, very young baby boy. It was clear that they were not from around here – they seemed to be poor folk visiting Jerusalem from the countryside, probably among those forced to travel because of the census and tax collection. I could tell that they took advantage of their many days of travel and stopped at the temple while they were here in Jerusalem to dedicate their child to God. They way they talked and acted, he must have been their first, so it was especially important that they set him apart for his life ahead.

Now they weren’t the only young couple in the crowd that day – I saw plenty of families seeking to dedicate their children to God. But this family I remember, not because of their simple country clothing, their very young age, or any special features of their son. I remember them because of what happened afterward on that day.

Now after seeing this young family in the courtyard, I went on about my own business and made my offering and prayers. As I was getting ready to head home, though, there was a bit of a commotion in the courtyard, and these folks were at the center of it. An older man had come to talk with them, and they had handed the baby to him. He lifted the tiny child up in his hands and raised his head to the sky. The man’s eyes lit up, as if he had seen something he had been waiting for for his whole life. I walked over toward them, hoping to get a closer look. Then I heard the man break forth into song:

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word;

for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,

a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.

It was an incredible sight. This man and this family had never met before, but there was something special going on. There was something special about that baby that I didn’t know or understand, but I have never forgotten that day.

As incredible as that was, there was still more that happened that day in the temple. After this old man – I think people in the temple knew him as Simeon – after he passed the little boy back to his mother, I saw Anna come up to them too. Like everyone who came to the temple regularly, I knew Anna. She was there every time I was there, and she always greeted me by name. She had told me before about how she had made her home there in the temple after her husband had died, about how important she knew it was to spend time in prayer, about how she was looking for something new – maybe even someone new – to come and make a difference among the people. Anna must have seen what that old man was doing that day and wanted a glimpse of her own.

I watched as she too made her way over to the mother and father and little boy. When she got there, her eyes lit up as I had never seen them before. She too got excited and started telling this little boy’s parents that he was going to be someone important for his people, that he would be a part of the redemption of Jerusalem. She too started singing songs of praise like I had never heard her sing before.

I’ve always wondered what might have been going on that day. Why were Simeon and Anna so struck by this little boy? Did those old folks at the temple know something that the rest of us didn’t? Did they think that God was up to something special in that family? What was going on that made them so excited to see this little babe?

Even though I don’t really understand why they did what they did, I still wonder what it would be like if all this were true. What would it mean if the things they said were true? How would our world change if salvation really had become real that day? What would be different for us? How would I be different?

There was something special about that day. For once, I felt like something was starting to change, that the help we so desperately need was coming into the world, that we were taking a step in the right direction for once. So often, people are just going through the motions and doing what they seem to have always done even though we all want it to be different somehow. None of us seem to have the time or space or way to make a difference in the world. But that day, something was right.

I wish I knew what I could do to have more days like that one. I wish I could be like those faithful people at the temple and could see special things going on in the world.I wish that I could believe that a little baby could make a difference. I wish I could do even some easy things to make things different. I haven’t seen it yet, and a lot of people I know have given up on it all, but I for one am still looking.

That day, something special happened – and maybe something special will happen again sometime. I’d sure like to see it for myself – to see a way out of our current mess, to see the world change for the better, to see our salvation come and be real, here and now, for everyone. I’m not expecting it today or tomorrow, but I know it will come.

Whether it be on a day as memorable as that one or as ordinary as this one, I know that I will see it with my own eyes. So I’m ready for it – I’m looking for it. Are you?

The Meaning of Christmas

December 24, 2011 By Andy James

a sermon for Christmas Eve on Luke 2:1-20 and John 1:1-14, 16
preached on December 24, 2011, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

What is the true meaning of Christmas?

People have offered countless answers to this question over the years. Ask a child, and you might hear something about receiving toys and other gifts. Ask a parent of a child, and you’ll hear about how much more expensive the toys get every year! Ask a corporate executive, and you’ll hear about the importance of the holiday season in cementing the year’s sales and profits. Ask a worker, and you might hear something about the gift of time off to spend with family and friends. There are probably as many different meanings of Christmas among us as there are people in this room.

One of my favorites, though, comes from that insightful character Charlie Brown. In the great and wonderful Charlie Brown Christmas special, Charlie Brown asks his friends about the meaning of Christmas as he struggles to get into the spirit of the season. They give him a lot of different answers, and his dog Snoopy even gets into the act as he wins first prize for the decorations on his doghouse! If that weren’t bad enough, even Charlie Brown’s attempt to find the perfect Christmas tree goes awry, and he ends up with the world’s smallest and scrawniest tree. As his friends berate him for his bad taste in trees and inability to grasp the meaning of Christmas, he ends up wondering out loud, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”

In response, his friend Linus takes the stage and begins to tell the story that we heard tonight from the gospel according to Luke. Gradually the mood shifts, and Charlie Brown’s friends finally warm up to his little tree as they all realize that Christmas is about something more than they had expected, about a baby born in a manger in a very different and distant time and place.

But there is more to Christmas than even this. The manger, the angels, and the shepherds are wonderful elements of the story, and they help us begin to understand what was going on when Jesus came into the world. But our reading tonight from the gospel according to John gets even closer to the real meaning of Christmas, I think. While Luke – and also Matthew – give us important details of the birth of Jesus, John focuses on the meaning of Christmas without getting into any of these details at all.

For John, Christmas is a part of something more – a little piece of a much bigger puzzle, a glimpse of God’s larger work in the world, a candle lit in the darkness to make things brighter and clearer. So John’s reflection on the meaning of Christmas starts much earlier – “in the beginning,” as he puts it. The Word – Jesus Christ, the one who comes at Christmas – was with God in the beginning. The Word always had a real and vital part of everything that God had done and was doing and would do, and the Word was an active and present participant in the difficult and wonderful work of creation. This Word brought life and light to all people, and there was no way that darkness would or could overcome it. John the Baptist came and testified to all these things, but still not everyone understood what God was doing in those days. And yet God’s purposes were not thwarted. God became real and human, revealing glory unlike any other glory, showing grace and truth to all the earth, and giving all of us the grace we need for each and every day.

And so this is the real meaning of Christmas to me. That God became human; that God became like us; that God became one of us, walking the earth with us, journeying the twists and turns of life alongside us, knowing the fullness of our humanity. As our opening hymn tonight put it so well:

…he feels for all our sadness,
and he shares in all our gladness.

But God didn’t stop there. Jesus came and transformed our world, bringing light to our greatest darkness, sending justice and peace into every corner of our world, showing us that we cannot fix things ourselves but can and must rely on the powerful grace of our merciful God.

There is little that can measure up to this. Not even the latest and greatest toy received by the most excited child can match the wonder of receiving the very presence of God in human form in Jesus at Christmas. Not even the greatest profits from the sales of the season can compare to the great gift that we receive in Jesus Christ. Not even the best time spent with family and friends can measure up to the power and possibility that comes as God journeys beside us in the human form of Jesus Christ. The best we can do to measure up to this probably comes tonight as we gather at this table, this place where we get the best possible glimpse of this great gift. As we receive this bread and this grape juice, we join with the faithful of every age in anticipation and hope, celebrating God’s presence here and now in this feast even as we look forward to the time when we will know the fullness of God’s presence in Jesus Christ at the great feast of all the ages.

And so this Christmas, may we remember the true meaning of Christmas – the wonder of God becoming human as a little baby, the power of God stepping into our world not as a wealthy and powerful ruler but as a tender child, the justice of God transforming the darkness and pain of our world into the greatest glory we can imagine, and the grace of God journeying with us wherever we go to make us and all things new, once and for all, until Christ comes again.

Glory to God, tonight and always. Amen.