At one of many Christmas programs and concerts this season, I heard
the chorus from the Carlthorpe School here in Santa Monica sing “We
Need a Little Christmas.” Maybe you remember it, from the musical
Mame: “Haul out the holly; put up the tree before my spirit
falls again…we need a little Christmas, right this very minute,
candles in the window, carols at the spinet…need a little music,
need a little laughter, need a little singing ringing through the
rafter, and we need a little snappy ‘happy ever after,’
need a little Christmas now!”
When
Mame sang that song in the musical, it was a week before Thanksgiving.
She still had a ways to go until Christmas actually arrived. But here
we are, on this holy night of nights, poised at last on the dawn of
a bright Christmas morn. And in the beauty of this night we have everything
Mame and our hearts long for: candles, carols, singing ringing through
the rafters, laughter and God’s blessing of “happy ever
after” in the Christ Child. Christmas is here for us now!
Every
year our hearts look forward to this night of singing and promise,
this night of love and hope. There’s something so special about
the glow of the streets and lights as we come, the beauty of the sanctuary,
the music, the smiles and love in the faces of those we greet. There’s
nothing like this night. Whether you’ve come with family or
friends or neighbors or on your own tonight, you’ve come to
the place where the longing of your heart will be satisfied by God’s
gifts to us in this wondrous birth.
Gift-giving
and gift-receiving are a big part of what Christmas is about. We say
it all started with those three Magi, traveling great distances across
the desert sands to bring their precious gifts of gold, frankincense
and myrrh to the newborn King. But there are other gifts in the story,
too: the gift of Mary’s willingness to say “yes”
to God, the gift of Joseph’s love for her and the child, the
gift of the shepherds leaving their flocks to go and worship the babe,
the gift of a giant star to light the way, the gift of the angels’
song of comfort and joy, and, as legend has it, the gift of the animals’
warmth and breath to keep the tiny baby warm. Gifts from the whole
of the creation—humans great and lowly, animals, stars—given
in response to the greatest gift of all, God’s gift of coming
to be with us, to live with us as one of us, to save and redeem us,
in Emmanuel.
Human
gift-giving isn’t always so grand. Even those of us who still
believe in Santa know that sometimes, despite all our best hinting
and nudging and hoping, after all the gifts are unwrapped, the gift
we most wanted at Christmas wasn’t under the tree. Sometimes
we mere mortals fall short of being the mind-readers our children,
spouses, parents, best friend, imagined us to be.
And
because this is sometimes how things turn out, despite our best intentions,
it’s good that we’re here in worship this night. For in
addition to all the candles and music and beauty and magic of this
night, we find here God’s Christmas gifts for us, and this is
truly the Christmas our hearts most need.
On
this night, God gives us the gift of courage. We live in a world full
of fear and distrust, just like the world of Joseph and Mary and the
shepherds. They experienced, just as do we, the temptation of resignation
and helplessness. Then, as now, it is often not easy to “do
the right thing.” It is not easy to say “yes” to
God and God’s ways in this world. Can you imagine the trust
and courage the shepherds needed that night to believe that angels
were singing for them? To believe their song: “Fear not! We
bring you tidings of great joy for all the people”? To leave
their flocks just long enough to go and worship the newborn Savior?
It could not have been easy for them, nor is it easy for us, sometimes,
to have the courage to do the right thing, in the workplace, in our
closest relationships. It is sometimes not easy to do the right thing
vis-à-vis the needs of God’s people in this world.
The
power of this night to change our lives and to change the world is
given through the birth of a tiny, vulnerable little baby to show
us that courage begins in the small habitations of our spirit. It
begins in our affirmation to choose life and to choose God and to
choose to do what is right. To them, and to us, God sends Emmanuel.
For the birth of a baby, this baby and every baby, points to creation
restored, the goodness and righteousness of God. God gives us the
gift of courage.
And
God gives us the gift of hope. It has been said that “hope is
commitment to the future as a livable time.” That sort of hope
is a limited commodity in public discourse these days. We are perplexed
and often paralyzed by the dilemmas of global warming and famine and
the war, to say nothing of health care and impossibly clogged freeways.
The future as a livable time? Mary and Joseph, too, could have been
paralyzed by the present. They faced high taxes and poverty and a
problem pregnancy. They were nobodies on the world stage, powerless
to shape the conditions that determined their life. And yet, and yet…by
faith they found a way to perceive that God was acting through them
to change the course of history.
Hope
drove them to find a safe place for the baby to be born. Hope drove
the shepherds to the manger. Hope propelled the Magi across endless
miles. Hope scripted the angels’ song. Everything about the
improbable birth of the Christ Child bears the mark of hope for the
future as a livable time, a time of peace, a time of promise, a time
of joy. God gives the gift of hope.
And
on this night, God gives us the gift of love. Love is perhaps the
most mysterious and elusive gift of all. We long for it, run after
it, despair when it fades. We know that it cannot be measured or calculated,
that it is sometimes returned and sometimes not. We know that we are
to offer it nonetheless.
The
bottom line, the most amazing gift of this night, is the gift of God’s
love for us, each of us, every single one of us, just as we are. In
God’s love, we are accepted. We are received. We are cherished
as God’s special, beloved child. The assurance of God’s
love for us grounds us in a kind of confidence and peace that is unshakable
and opens us in return to love of God and love of neighbor. To receive
this gift is the beginning of wisdom. God gives us the gift of love.
One
of America’s great preachers once said: “God speaks to
us about eternity in the little events of time.” The birth of
Jesus was one such “little event” that speaks to us of
eternity and opens the present moment into a livable future. But how
could this be? How could the birth of a tiny baby long ago and far
away make all the difference in the world for us?
To
bring God’s gifts home to our hearts this Christmas, I will
close tonight with a lovely little Christmas story from Ira Williams,
called “The Piano Man’s Christmas.” It’s a
story about an old man and a little girl one special Christmas night
and it reminds us, in very simple and direct ways, just how the birth
of Emmanuel brings us God’s gifts of courage, hope and love.
An
old piano man named Amos ran his fingers up and down the keys of a
run-down instrument. He sang a few sad notes to himself. It was Christmas
Eve and old Amos was feeling pretty sad. He was all alone, with nowhere
to go. He once had a wife and a beautiful little girl but somehow
they had slipped out of his life.
Walking
through the streets of town, he saw a small girl standing alone in
front of a department store window. She was looking at a display of
the Christmas story. The decorators had spared no expense in creating
the scene—a marble pillared inn, an immaculate manger made of
finished hardwood, a stable of solid polished mahogany. As the girl
stood and stared at the display, a security guard chased her away.
She began to cry. Amos came over to her.
“I
just wanted to see the baby,” she kept repeating, over and over.
“That’s
not the way they looked,” Amos said. “Let me show you
how it really was.”
In
another part of town, Amos gathered some of his friends. Together
they recreated the Christmas story for the little girl. “When
the baby Jesus was born,” Amos said, “it wasn’t
in front of a great big inn with marble columns. The crib was in front
of a crumblin’ down hotel and the stable wasn’t much different
from this old tattered awning hanging over the sidewalk.”
The
little girl watched in awe as Amos’ friends acted out the Christmas
story. So did other passersby who stopped to watch. “Angel,”
Amos whispered to the little girl, “the baby Jesus is one of
us. Don’t ever let anybody make you feel different. He walked
the same road as we walk. From now on, wherever you go, you just remember
that he’s walking right there with you, and there ain’t
nothing the two of you can’t handle.”
There
you have it. God’s Christmas gifts for us of courage, hope and
love. All in Emmanuel, God-with-us. Walking with a little girl, with
Joseph and Mary, with the shepherds and the Magi. Walking with us.
Sharing this life with us. And even if we just take it in in small
doses, just “a little bit of Christmas,” as Mame might
say, we need it and it’s all here for us this night—in
the singing, the candles, the carols, the laughter, the “happy
ever after” that confounds the wise and brings joy to heart.
Christmas—God’s gifts for us of courage, hope and love.
May
God bless you and those dear to you this night. May a little bit of
Christmas be the gift of your heart’s desire. And may the promise
of ages, God-with-us, Emmanuel, walk with you and bring you joy and
peace.
Amen.
Notes:
F. Thomas
Trotter. God Is with Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas. Nashville:
Upper Room Books, 1997. (for inspiration on “gifts” and
the definition of “hope”.)
Ira Williams,
Jr. The Piano Man’s Christmas and Other Stories for Christmas.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986. Quoted by Rev. Peter Perry, First
UMC, Phoenix, Arizona, in “Good News”, 12/18/06.
©Patricia
Farris , 2006. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
First
United Methodist Church
1008 Eleventh Street
Santa Monica, CA 90403
www.santamonicaumc.org
(310) 393-8258
God's
Christmas Gifts to You