Christmas All Year
The 4th Sunday of Advent is about rest, love, and joy
This was supposed to come out yesterday, but I had a slight case of food poisoning that kept me from writing. It has passed, and I am much better. I apologize for failing to get this out yesterday.
Two days ago was the fourth Sunday of Advent (12/18/2022.) The children lit the candle of Love, and my Sunday school class finished up with Joy, Perfectly Whole, as the lesson. The scripture for meditation was Luke 2:10
10But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people;
Luke 2:10 (NASB95)
"A Charlie Brown Christmas Tree" by kuddlyteddybear2004 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
The focus was on the words “all people.” While that meditation was being read, I was still focusing on a question that was asked during the children’s moment. “How do you know you are loved?” Pastor Kristen Lee asked that question of the kids, and they rattled off some humorous and poignant answers as small children do, but the question put to them resonated with me. How do I know I am loved by God?
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I switched that around, and it turns out I got ahead of things. Instead of asking how do I know I am loved, how do I show my family they are loved by me? We’ll come back to that later because now I know I’m ahead of things, but in the service, I did not.
Shortly after the meditation, Pastor Jim Perry came up and gave us a quote from his friend, who he says got it from an unknown source. He said, “Dr. Dale Cohen said, ‘Each of us is an innkeeper who decides if there is room for Jesus.”
The quote frames it as a question. That implies there really is room at the inn. We aren’t deciding if there is room at the inn or not. We are deciding if we will let Joseph and Mary come inside to have their baby or force them out into the cold night. We know the historical answer to that question and the circumstances surrounding it. I don’t think the innkeeper on that Bethlehem night had an open room and turned them away. I think he legitimately had no room, and they found what space they could in the stable.
I wonder if they were ready, Mary and Joseph? They knew the baby was coming soon, but I wonder if they were ready on that night? I recall the birth of my two children, and on neither occasion were we “ready” the evenings of their births. Oh, we knew it was close, and we even knew what to expect, especially with our second child. But we weren’t “ready.”
When Pastor Joe Palmer stepped up to deliver his message, he opened with a statement about his own household concerning the holiday seven days away, “We aren’t ready for Christmas.” He began to recite all the things they “had to do” to “get ready” around the house; cleaning, preparations, buying presents, putting up decorations, etc. He framed it, either intentionally or unintentionally, as a month of stress and work for one day of celebration on Christmas morning. For Joseph and Mary, and me and my wife with our children, there were months of preparation, then the day of the birth, which was its own celebration in each case.
Pastor Joe’s point was that there was a lot of preparation going into getting ready for one day of celebration, and a question struck me. How do we do Christmas all year long? There’s a book title in that, “Christmas All Year Long.” It isn’t on Amazon yet. I’ve created a OneNote tab under Book Ideas for it in case I ever get around to writing that one.
I think Pastor Joe’s point started to be, “Focus on the lessons of Christmas, but then we go back to normal.” We hold Christmas and that spirit for the month of December, from Thanksgiving on and, in some cases, earlier. But once Christmas is passed, we quickly shift gears back to life as usual after the New Year’s celebration.
All that earthly hustle and bustle begs the question, what does the birth of Christ mean? What should it mean?
As I pondered this question, Pastor Joe shifted to recount a beautiful mausoleum and the mosaic artwork within, the mausoleum of Galla Placidia of Revenna in Italy. Who Galla Placidia wasn’t the point. The point was a setup inside the mausoleum to show off the artwork. In years past, spotlights could be turned on, he said. You had to put coins in a box, and the lights would come on but only for a short time, revealing the wondrous beauty of the artwork. The lights would snap on, the onlookers would marvel, and then the lights would too quickly turn off, plunging the mausoleum back into darkness illuminated by the one amber-paned window above.
There’s a lot in that imagery, our lives partially illuminated for a time and then back into darkness, the light driving out the dark, a mote of illumination in the darkness, and beauty hidden by darkness. All these images come to mind, but in the context of the Christmas story and the light of the guiding star leading people to the Christ child, it strikes me.
We walk mostly in darkness as human beings. Our understanding of God is clouded, our understanding of each other is clouded, and our understanding of why we are even alive is often clouded by question and doubt. What hope have we for a better way?
Our hope lies in Jesus.
Our hope lies in motes of light shed by scripture, enlightening our understanding of how things work. We wander from personal revelation to personal revelation, sometimes asking, “how did I not see this before?” These little motes Pastor Joe said were what Wesley termed as Sanctifying Grace, that grace we live in as we walk with God. With God, which was the title of this Advent series, and is how we do Christmas all year long; with God.
The bulletin from Sunday held three questions based on the book both Pastors Joe and Kristin quoted from for this sermon series, With by Skye Jethani. The three questions were these
Is God my treasure?
How do I unite myself with God?
How do I experience God every day?
For that first question, Pastor Joe asked a follow on question, Was God the number one thing on my Christmas list this year? When he asked the first question, I wrote in my notes that my writing is my number one treasure but that the answer should be God. I also felt very convicted that my family didn’t come up to mind immediately. In my defense, there it was the phrasing that put me in mind of things rather than people, but I still feel bad about that. It occurred to me at some level because I also asked myself, “how do I show my family I treasure them?
Again, in my defense, my reaction to this question was and is that I am a Knight of Housework. Meaning I am the one on the homefront washing, cleaning, cooking, shopping, and taking care of our kids while my wife, a nurse, brings home the bacon. It is the path God has my family on and the service I am called to perform. Before you question any of it, get to know me. Beyond that, I am content with what I am doing.
That led to the second question how do I experience God? Right now, in this work, writing these words, I find great contentment and the presence of the Lord as I do this. I have quite a few tasks on my plate that have nothing to do with writing, but I have a few that relate to this medium. In all cases, when my fingers are moving on the keyboard, I feel the calm presence of God. Sometimes that presence is moving the words through my fingers, and other times that presence chastises me for what moves through my fingers. I am trying to create more of the former and less of the latter. The follow on question here becomes how do we make more of the with God time and less of the away from God time? In other words, how do we keep the with God time from ending? I don’t know the answer there.
Prayer comes to mind but for me, that is communicating with God. That is not being with God. It is at this point Pastor Joe inserted scripture from Matthew 11:24-30.
24“Nevertheless I say to you that it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.”
25At that time Jesus said, “I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.
26“Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.
27“All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
28“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
29“Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.
30“For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
Matthew 11:24–30 (NASB95)
That scripture led to my question, “What does God want from me?”
That question implies God needs something. God doesn’t need anything. God wants things from us. As His creation, He could make us do anything He wants, but He doesn’t. He wants us to choose Him. He wants us to want Him. He wants us to have a deep, personal relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus. It has no value if it is forced because, like honor or respect, love cannot be forced from someone. Why? Why is this a thing? Because God knows His creation better than the created knows itself.
We need rest. God offers us rest through Jesus. That is what Christmas is about. That’s what life with God looks like. Pastor Joe quoted Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas
“that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”
For all people. Not in spotlights illuminated for a moment, then plunged back into the darkness of our lives. All year long. The love of Jesus shines as a beacon from our hearts, illuminating a path out of the darkness to a better way, led by Jesus, Emanuel, God with us.
Merry Christmas.