Wayne D's Blog

Here is another of my very occasional sermons. Sermon sound so preachy and is almost gauranteed to scare away those without a Christian predilication. If that's you consider it an essay instead. I am fighting a cold and didn't follow my usual procedure of revising and rewriting this essay within an inch of it's life so please forgive and rough edges.

Merry Christmas! Did I see you cringe just a little bit? Are you sick of Christmas yet? Or are you just tired from the merry making, visiting, buying, wrapping and all the hustle and bustle that is inevitable at this time of year. Everyone in my family appears to have picked up a cold as you can probably tell from my voice.

Christmas is a time of gifts, the gift of good times with friends and family, the exchange of gifts with people we feel a closeness to. You might have heard of the term "regifting". Wikipedia says the term originated in a Seinfeld episode when Elaine one of the characters accusing Jerry Seinfeld dentist of giving Jerry a label maker that Elaine had originally given to the dentist. The practice certainly predates it being given a name though. Samuel's mother Hannah was a regifter. She asked God to give her a son and when God did she turned right around and give him back to God. She had promised God that if he let her have a child she would dedicate him to service to God. Hannah didn't forget Samuel though, she brought him new clothes each year when she and Elkanah would come to the temple to make their sacrifice.

Mary also received the gift of a son from God and it's Jesus' birth that we celebrate each year at Christmas time. We don't know precisely when Jesus was born but it seems appropriate that we celebrate his birth at the time of year when the days are short and the nights are long, dark and cold. The birth of God's son comes at the time of the year when the days start to get longer. Fast forward a week and Jesus is twelve, driving his parents insane like most twelve year olds do. The whole extended take a trip to Jerusalem for Passover and after traveling for a day back to their hometown they realize that he is missing. They look and look, among all the friends a relatives and Jesus still can't be found. When they finally found him it's three days later. They were besides themselves with worry. Mary so much as says that when they finally find him. How does Jesus respond, not with an apology but with a simple statement "Why were you searching for me, Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" They didn't understand, but Jesus did. Even at twelve years old he knew that he was special, that he was God's gift to the world not just a typical, troublesome twelve year old. He went back to Nazareth and was an obedient son, waiting for the time when he would begin his ministry of love.

Jesus especially focused his ministry to those who were deemed the most unworthy to receive God's gift. The sinners, the tax collectors, the outcasts of society. He saved his venom for those who thought that their piety, made them more special in God's eyes.

I read an article before Christmas that reported that less than half of British children between the ages of seven and 11 are aware that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Only 44 percent of 1,063 children questioned understood that Christmas returns each year for the birth of Christ. Only one in four said that Christmas was more about giving than receiving presents. If that's not bad enough one in six felt said they felt sad, nervous or left out during the Christmas season. I saw some television footage of people who had lined up for the boxing day sales on Christmas day and had dispensed with their Christmas dinner in order to be first in line to buy cheap Christmas electronics. One woman interviewed said that Boxing Day was the day to buy the gifts that you wanted but hadn't received on Christmas Day. The forces of secular society are working to turn a celebration of Jesus' birth into a holiday about consumption and excess. Maybe it's time we moved the celebration of Jesus' birth to another date and left Christmas to the pagans. No, that's a bad idea, Jesus wouldn't want us to give up so easily.

Maybe we should try to follow Paul's advice and set ourselves apart form the rest of society by doing everything in the name of Lord Jesus. By letting Christ's words live richly in us and clothing ourselves with love. Live richly in us, clothing ourselves with love? That's bible talk, what the heck is that supposed to mean? Paul's language can get a bit flowery at times but the heart of his message is always the same. As Christian's we have a responsibility to be regifters. We are to take the grace love and forgiveness that God has given us and regift it to the people we encounter in our daily lives. We aren't to be Santa Clauses, keeping a list of who's naughty and who's nice but to spread God's love and forgiveness liberally. The essence of God's love is that we receive it even though we can't ever deserve it. When Martin Luther realized this his life became much better and when we too really convince ourselves that we don't have to do anything to earn God's love our lives become better but not necessarily easier. Christmas can be a difficult time for many people for a variety of reasons, the best gift we can give them is our understanding and love. When we fail to pass on God's love we cheapen it. The best thing about God's love it that unlike a Sony Playstation 3 there isn't a limited amount, the supply is inexhaustible.

St. Paul's was the recipient of an undeserved and unexpected gift when we received our bequest. Like God's gift to use there were no strings attached. The people of St. Paul's have decided to use this money to build. When all is said and done we will have a nice, shiny, new box but it's what's inside the box that counts, and I don't mean the pews and the furnishings. The other problem with a shiny new box is that we can't get Fedex to deliver it. We have to get the people we want to give it to come here to unwrap it.

Who has heard of the TV show "My Name is Earl"? Earl is a former minor criminal who has experienced an Epiphany after winning a small lottery prize and has made a list of all the people he has wronged in the past. Now Earl talks a lot about karma, the idea that what we do in life effects what happens to us. I think he just uses that as an excuse now that he has experienced some good fortune in his life. Every week he finds another person he has wronged and tries to make it right. In a show I saw this week he searched for a girl who he made fun of when she was in elementary school who had a small mustache. When he finally finds her he spends some time getting to know her and when he is about to leave he asks what he can do to make right the offense of so long ago. She replies that she had long ago forgiven him and that him spending time with her and getting to know her as a person is enough for her. Through the rest of the show Earl helps her and her friends who work with her in the circus come to terms with their fears of being different and unlock their potential to do things that they really want to do and not live off by themselves. Earl gives them the courage to confront society, to ask people to look past their surface impressions and see the worth of the person inside. Jesus challenges us to do the same, not to take people at face value but instead to see the worth of all individuals. In the same vein we must have the courage to break through the preconceptions about what being a Christian is when we spread the good new of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Though some people may view Christians with the curiosity of a bearded lady others may are indifferent or otherwise hostile to them message of salvation and forgiveness that Jesus brings us. This occurs when their road to the message is blocked because of some experience in their past that has turned them off of the church experience. It doesn't take much. Pastor Claudine gave me a gift, she loaned me the book "What's so Amazing about Grace" by Philip Yancy. Her gift to me was not pestering me to return it after I had had it for a number of months. I will eternally grateful because I finally finished in. It's a challenging book, one of the reasons being that Yancy steadfastly refuses to define grace. That's a bit of a knotty problem for us Lutheran's because we put so much store in God's grace. One of the central tenets of our faith is that we are saved by the grace of God alone -- not by anything we do. Yancy believes the lack of grace in the churches of North America is their biggest problem. Instead of a definition he instead offers stories that he believes illustrates what what grace is and what grace isn't. He relates one story from Erma Bombeck's newspaper column.

'In Church The Other Sunday I was intent on a small child who was turning around smiling at everyone. He wasn't gurgling, spitting, humming, kicking, tearing the hymnals, or rummaging through his mother's handbag. He was just smiling. Finally, his mother jerked him about and in a stage whisper that could be heard in a little theatre off Broadway said, "Stop that grinning! You're in church!" With that, she gave him a belt and as the tears rolled down his cheeks added, "That's better," and returned to her prayers....

Suddenly I was angry. It occurred to me the entire world is in tears, and if you're not, then you'd better get with it. I wanted to grab this child with the tear-stained face close to me and tell him about my God. The happy God. The smiling God. The God who had to have a sense of humor to have created the likes of us ... By tradition, one wears faith with the solemnity of a mourner, the gravity of a mask of tragedy, and the dedication of a Rotary badge.

What a fool, I thought. Here was a woman sitting next to the only light left in our civilization-the only hope, our only miracle-our only promise of infinity. If he couldn't smile in church, where was there left to go?'

What do you think the chances are that little boy grew up to be a regular church attender? We sometimes have trouble breaking out of our our shell of fear of offending God.

When I was a kid we weren't allowed to play cards on Sunday which I believe comes from my maternal Grandmother's Missouri synod roots. I'm trying to remember which closing hymn it was we sung a few weeks ago when I was assisting Pastor Claudine and we were clapping and swaying in time to the music at the end and she leaned over and whispered to me "I hope we don't scare away our Anglican brothers and sisters", I told her not to worry but was silently thinking "I hope we don't scare away any of our Lutherans". We Lutheran's are a resilient lot and I was happy to see that no one was bolting for the door. I believe this is the last Sunday before we lock up the Christmas carols until next year so I encourage you to follow Paul's advice and sing the hymns today with the joy befitting the Christmas season. One of God's gifts to us was the ability to sing and singing is another of the gifts that only grows in the giving.

God wants us all to be regifters. He wants us to take his gift of grace, forgiveness and love and pass it on to someone else. Saving the world isn't isn't an abstract concept but instead about clothing ourselves compassion, kindness, meekness, patience and love as we move through out troubled world. Saving the sinner isn't about convincing them what bad people they are but instead about clothing ourselves with love and seeing them through Jesus' eyes, as the people most worthy of our compassion and love. God's gift of forgiveness and love is one gift that is never too late to give. My New Years wish is that as we continue throughout the year God's gift of grace, love and forgiveness spreads throughout our community with the people of St. Paul's as the messenger.