Uncomplicating Christmas

Well, let's talk about the glory of when the Word became flesh and moved into our neighborhood. My name is René, I'm one of the pastors here, and I call this message tonight "Uncomplicating Christmas" because Christmas can't get a little bit complicated sometimes, right? Now, by way of introduction, some of you may have heard somewhere, I don't know how, that I have a grandson.

Now, it's kind of an inside joke at the church because I try to insert a picture or story about my grandson into every single sermon if I have any opportunity, but tonight it actually fits! Because he's only 16 months old, his name is Freddy, and he's already learning about the basics of Christmas. And for proof, watch this video. Baby. That's baby Jesus. Daddy. Oh yeah, that's Jesus' daddy. Daddy. Who else is there? There. Oh yeah, that's a sheep. Do you see the mama? Where's the mama? That's right, there's the mama. Come on folks, he's a genius, right? Let's give it up for my grandson, Freddy!

Well, with that prompt, let's talk about the mama and the baby and the daddy and the sheep for just a little bit. In fact, let's look at a classic Nativity picture here on screen. You've probably seen like a hundred of these this month, right? But this is similar to them all, and they all show a range of very serene emotions. Like, let's just have a shout out here. Audience participation. Shout out the kind of emotion, the kind of atmosphere that you see here on this typical Nativity scene. What do you see here? Love, peace, silence. Somebody said serenity. It's true.

Look at Mary and Joseph. She just gave birth, but she's totally relaxed. Look at even the donkey and the cow are happy, or at least they're completely mellow, right? All is calm. All is right. Now, in contrast to that blissful scene, here's what we usually see in our Christmas family portraits. There's a website you can go onto where people upload actual Christmas family portraits that they get in Christmas cards, and I looked at a few of them, but I want to show you my absolute favorite one.

Because you know they tried for about a half an hour to get a family picture, and this is the best they got. Grandpa's grumpy and dad's head got cut off by the photographer, and one of the girls is screaming at the top of her lungs. Christmas is often chaos for us, right? There's a video that's been making the rounds of an actual Nativity scene at a church last week. They tried to get the mellow on, right? But one of the sheep decides to steal the baby Jesus out of the manger, kind of rock him a little bit, and maybe even kind of swing him a little bit like crazy, and play patty cake.

And then Mary's like, "What's going on? That's my baby. My baby does not belong with a sheep. My baby belongs in the feeding trough the sheep eat from for some reason." And so she puts the baby down, but the sheep says, "No, that's my baby Jesus." And a tug of war ensues between Mary and the sheep, and it just gets more and more crazy because the sheep steals the baby Jesus from the manger, and now Mary's really mad. And what I love is now Joseph decides I got to get up and do something, and he's like, "Now ladies, ladies, calm down." Now it's professional wrestling, and now a mom has to solve the problem. It's just chaos.

Our Christmases are often crazy, like this. And what happens is stuff goes wrong in our Christmas. Relatives drive us crazy. Your stuff gets burned in the oven, or like at our house last night at midnight we discovered our hot water heater was creating a waterfall down to our bottom story. Stuff goes crazy, and we look at these serene pictures of calm where everyone's all blissed out and mellow, and there's an emotional disconnect, right?

Well listen, I want to give you some good news. That first Christmas was far from perfect. In fact, my favorite nativity scene I think that was ever painted was this one by Rembrandt, because I think this really captures the emotions that must have really been there that night. You can see Herod's fortress is looming up there on the mountain above Bethlehem, and kind of down in a corner, it's not the center of everybody's attention, right? Down in a corner cave there's a mommy and a daddy and a baby, and nobody even notices or cares except for a few scraggly shepherds.

And I think this kind of captures the feeling that must have been there that first Christmas night, a feeling of a little bit of fear and of darkness and some anxiety, and I'm not making this up because think of the picture the Bible actually paints for us. It says that Mary and Joseph are just recovering from near divorce. Then they've got to travel all the way to a strange town to register for a tax burden forced on them by a foreign dictator.

Once they get there they are homeless, so Mary has to place her newborn in a feeding trough for farm animals. Do you really think Mary was all, "It's okay Joey, this is going to look beautiful on Christmas cards in 2,000 years." I don't think so. Then the baby's hunted by Herod, they're forced to flee to Egypt, and now they're refugees. We are so familiar with this scene we forget that the picture the Bible paints of the first Christmas is not one of perfection and bliss. It's a picture of all the wheels coming off at the same time. It's a picture of chaos.

And don't you love that? Because here's the big idea today. Christmas is not about perfection, and it never has been. Christmas is about light coming into darkness. Real chaotic darkness. Maybe like the darkness you sometimes feel you're in. Listen, maybe you have been feeling like, "Man, I just can't get my Christmas joy on." Because there's so much darkness in the world, maybe in your own life or maybe you look at the headlines every single morning there's a new reason to be freaked out, right? The world is so dark and you're wondering if Christmas has anything to say to you this year.

Well, it's especially for you if you feel like that, that Christmas happened. Tonight's verses are from the Gospel of John chapter one. You heard Adrian read them. They're written by the Apostle John when he was a very old man. He's the last of the surviving 12 apostles. He's seen all of his friends die, most of them killed for their faith. He's seen Roman armies surround his beloved city of Jerusalem and then invade it and torch the temple and put the whole city to ruin.

And then John himself gets sentenced to a prison island and then as an old man he sits down to write his gospel. And in the introduction he actually tells the Christmas story and he uncomplicates it. He gets down to total basics. It's like he's saying, "I'm old. I don't have much time." Here's what you need to know and here's what you need to do. And he pairs it down even more basic than the mama and the daddy and the baby. He says, "Here's what you need to know." And I can imagine him going, "How can I summarize this? The most, what words can I use to make it the shortest, most memorable sentence possible, summarizing what happened at Christmas?"

And here's what he comes up with, John 1:9, and let's read these words on the screen out loud together. Let me hear you. "The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. That is it." That means God knows the world is dark and he didn't leave us alone in our darkness. He came into our darkness.

Now of course that doesn't mean the world is perfect now. John says in verse 5, "The light shines in the darkness." And listen, he must have been thinking about the darkness around him, the prison years, and everybody who's been taken away. And in spite of that, the light shines in the darkness. And then he says, "And the darkness has not, has not." And I think he must have been thinking, "What's the perfect word for this?"

Because in his life it felt like the darkness, as in forces of terrorism and political forces of darkness, and evil people were trying to put out the light, trying to snuff it out, trying to imprison it, trying to silence it, trying to kill it. But he says, "But the darkness has not overcome it." And the word he uses for overcome is a Greek word, kata lambano, which means to pounce on and overpower, to overtake, overwhelm like a wild animal.

John says, "I look around and the Roman Empire couldn't do it, Herod couldn't do it, Nero couldn't do it, they tried and they tried and they tried, but the light of Jesus is still here and it's still shining and they couldn't put it out. And maybe you really need to hear that tonight. Maybe you feel like a man named Phillips Brooks. Let me tell you his true story. He lived in the mid-1800s. He was known as the most incredible, most famous pastor in America.

In his 20s he and some friends, about 30 of them, went to Philadelphia to start a church. Within a year they had over a thousand people and it just kept expanding from there. His sermons were so popular they were printed in daily newspapers and then comes the Civil War. So much darkness. At funeral after funeral at his church he tries to be inspirational, just feels depressed. And then his friend Lincoln is assassinated. Phillips Brooks delivers the eulogy at Lincoln's funeral. Talks about hope, feels like a fake.

And so he goes to his church and he says, "I think I'm losing my faith because of all this darkness in the world and I need to take a break as your pastor and I don't know if I'm ever coming back." So he leaves on a sabbatical, he goes to Israel to try to reconnect with God somehow in the Holy Land and he looks around, he sees the sights, he explores the countryside, and on Christmas Eve he borrows a horse and he rides six miles south of Jerusalem to Bethlehem.

And he rains up the horse and he sits on a hillside overlooking the old town and he thinks to himself, "If the story's true, somewhere on these fields the shepherds heard angels say to them, 'A Savior's been born to you.'" And he said, "Suddenly it felt like the message of the angels was personal to him. Phillips, a Savior's been born to you." And in that moment he prayed a prayer, he said, "Christ, be born in my heart today. I need you so bad." And he sat all night on that hillside and cried and cried and cried, tears of joy.

He went back to his church and he said, "I can't explain it but I've rediscovered my faith. There's a light that overpowers all darkness." And he tried to explain his experience and they just stared at him blankly. In fact, for three years he tried to explain what happened to him that night at Bethlehem. And finally he decided since regular words weren't working he would try his hand at poetry. Now he'd never written a poem before but he picks up a pen and in about a half an hour these words came flowing out as he remembered his experience that night.

"O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by, yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight." And what impresses him is it was dark in Bethlehem just like it's dark for him but the light came but few people noticed how silently how silently the wondrous gift is given.

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven. No ear may hear his coming but in this world of sin where meek souls will receive him still the dear Christ enters in. Very few people noticed even though it was the light of the world. Why? Because he came as a baby. Someone said hands that once sculpted stars now clung to his mama's finger.

Very few noticed as the apostle John wrote back in John 1, "He was in the world and though the world was made through him the world didn't even recognize him." And by the way it still happens like that today. If you're waiting for God to show up with a PA system and announce his existence to you that's probably not going to happen. What he does is whisper to your soul and that night above Bethlehem Phillips Brooks heard the whisper and he prayed this prayer and he made it the last stanza of his poem, "O holy child of Bethlehem descend to us we pray cast out our sin not just the darkness out there the darkness in here and enter in be born in us today."

And what he discovered in that moment was what John wrote, "Few recognize the light yet to all who received him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God." He said that's what you need to know. Now what you need to do is just receive and believe. Just make it personal. You say what are you talking about? What does that look like? I'll close with this story.

Rose Kennedy, very famous, wealthy. She was the mother of course of President John F. Kennedy but she experienced a lot of tragedy. A daughter was born with severe challenges. One of her sons was killed and then two sons assassinated and she was devastated understandably. She said she would pray over and over, "How could you have done this to me God?" One night she and her husband were supposed to go to a Christmas party and at the last minute they're going out the door and she tells her husband, "I cannot go to a Christmas party. There's so much anger inside of me I can't even think straight. You have to go without me."

And so he leaves and she's turning away and a maid who had worked for them for years walks up to her and says, "Mrs. Kennedy, if I may be so bold, I have watched this darkness inside of you just consume you, this rage." And she said, "I think you should pray this prayer. Oh Lord, make my heart a manger where the Christ child can be born." And Rose Kennedy said, "Is that what you think?" Well you know what I think? I think you're fired and she fired that maid on the spot but that night when she went to bed she couldn't sleep.

She couldn't get that simple prayer out of her mind and finally she got up and she knelt by her bed and in an act of deep surrender she prayed, "Oh Lord, make my heart a manger where the Christ child can be born." And something happened from that moment on. She changed. She later said, the funny thing is I've always been religious. I was raised in the church but she said this was different because this was personal and this is still the invitation from the Lord to you. Receive and believe.

Maybe like Rose or like Phillips, you've been coming to Christmas services for years, you've been religious, have you made it personal? You know, that's why I think these candles that we're going to light in a few minutes are such a great metaphor for this because candles can't light up themselves. They can only receive light but when they receive light they're transformed and then they can spread light without diminishing their own light a bit.

And in a world of darkness that's what we do as a church in our community together. Now you might feel like what uses my little candle flame even if it is from Jesus Christ against all the darkness in the world. You may feel overwhelmed by the dark, depressed by the dark in your life right now or in the headlines. Listen, remember what John said about that light. Again, John had seen so much of this world's darkness more than we can even imagine in his life. So how did he not just give up?

Because he was absolutely convinced that no matter what happens in your life, no matter how sharp the heartache, no matter how big the fear, no matter how deep the depression, that there is a light that shines in the darkness and there is no amount of darkness and there is no type of darkness that can ever put it out. And that means there's always hope. That means there is a God who hears your prayers. That means there's a reason to wake up every single morning and take the next step because Christ's light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Not then, not now, and not ever. Amen? That's what we celebrate at Christmas.

Let's pray together. Let's pray to that light. Heavenly Father, for some of us we feel like the light of hope is almost extinguished. For others, this is a reminder of what we believed as far back as we can remember, but I pray that in these next few moments that meek souls all over this room would receive you still. That we'd pray the prayer that Rose prayed and that Phillips prayed, "Oh Lord, make my heart a manger." Where Christ is born. Mangers are inadequate. Mangers are unclean, and we can feel inadequate and unclean, but you chose to be born into a manger and to be born in us. Amen.