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If No Sound
Skipping Christmas
Guest Speaker Tom Betts
November 25, 2007 Christ the King, Cycle
C
Lectionary Texts (Common Lectionary)
Jeremiah 23:1-6
23:1 “Woe to
the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” says the LORD.
2 Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who
shepherd my people: “It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them
away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil
doings, says the LORD. 3 Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out
of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their
fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. 4 I will raise up shepherds over
them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed,
nor shall any be missing, says the LORD.
5 The days are surely
coming, says the LORD, when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he
shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness
in the land. 6 In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety.
And this is the name by which he will be called: “The LORD is our
righteousness.”
Colossians 1:11-20
1:11 May you be
made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may
you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully 12 giving
thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the
saints in the light. 13 He has rescued us from the power of darkness and
transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
15 He is the image of the
invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; 16 for in him all things in heaven
and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or
dominions or rulers or powers -- all things have been created through him and
for him. 17 He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold
together. 18 He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the
firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in
everything. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and
through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth
or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.
Skipping Christmas
Skipping the holidays.
It’s kinda tempting, don’t
you think? Disappear last Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, and reappear
on Wednesday, January 2, 2008. Avoid the holiday hoopla in its entirety. No
crowded malls, no out-of-control office parties, no stale Christmas letter, no
anxiety about finding the perfect gifts, no stretched-to-the-limit credit cards.
Best of all, no
fruitcakes.
By leaping over
this stressful season, you actually have a shot at experiencing peace on earth,
good will to all and maybe even a Silent Night.
But alas -- no
technology for this kind of seasonal time travel currently exists. About the
best we can do is buy a ticket to the multiplex and escape into the movies that
appear before Christmas. Or you could rent the 2004 movie with the Kranks,
originally called “Skipping Christmas” and based on a book by John Grisham,
starring Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dan Aykroyd.
Tim Allen plays
Luther Krank, a man who is incensed that his family spent over $6,000 on the
previous Christmas, and now they have nothing to show for it. With his daughter
in the Peace Corps, he convinces his wife to skip Christmas for a year, and to
put the money into a Caribbean cruise. They decide to forego parties, Christmas
tree, lights, Christmas Eve bash and any participation in the neighborhood
decorating contest — one in which all the neighbors put an identical Frosty the
Snowman on their roofs. The plotline is about how the neighbors react, in
particular the Dan Aykroyd character — a man who organizes the street’s
Christmas lights, and who gets mad at the Kranks for not participating.
But is it
easy — or even possible — to skip Christmas? The Kranks
discover that their decision unleashes enormous consequences. One of the biggest
involves the surprise arrival of their daughter, who expects them to be
celebrating the holidays as usual.
Apparently
Christmas is like Mother’s Day. You ignore it at great personal risk.
The movie
promised to be fine family fun, but it raised the question of what really
matters during the holiday season. Like it or not, most of us are going to do
the mall thing — with its to-ing and fro-ing from shop to shop, and the
Christmas tree thing, the present thing and the decorations thing — but in the
midst of all this frantic activity, there’s a strong chance we’re going to be
skipping Christmas after all!
We all know
that this passing thought to intentionally skip Christmas is not new. Back in
September of 2000, a pastor named Johnold Strey and his wife decided to do a
little shopping at a mall in Milwaukee. They were riding up the department store
escalator when suddenly Strey’s wife said, “Johnold, don’t turn around!” That,
of course, was his cue to turn around and see what was behind him. Sure enough,
right in front of him at the top of the department store escalator — in the
middle of September — was a large, fully decorated Christmas tree: lights,
ornaments and all! “It seems that every year the ‘Christmas warning signs’ are
out even earlier than the year before,” he later said to his congregation. “It
also seems that we are so bombarded with Christmas music, gift ideas, sales and
the like, that, by the time Christmas finally comes around, most people are
‘Christmassed out!’” Makes you want to consider skipping Christmas.
We who are
costumers are not alone in this. Consider those of us who work in the stores and
malls. According to an Associated Press report in December of 2003, shop workers
in Austria demanded compensation for the “psychological terror” of being
subjected to hours of piped-in Christmas music. A study by trade unions found
that listening to endless hours of “Silent Night” and “Jingle Bells” made shop
clerks “aggressive and confrontational.” Many people might simply say, “There
are too many lawyers out there.” Management types among us might blame the
unions for such a demand, but the story does strike home with anyone who works
in a store this time of year.
Are we going
to miss what this holiday is really all about?
In today’s
prophetic text God, speaking through Jeremiah, laments the loss of good
shepherds to watch over his people Israel. He is especially disappointed in King
Jehoiakim, a monarch who lived 600 years before the time of Christ.
Jehoiakim
abused his people through misrule, unrighteousness, injustice, economic
oppression and creative accounting. When the powerful Pharaoh of Egypt demanded
that his nation pay 100 talents of silver and one talent of gold, Jehoiakim
raised this money by levying a tax on the whole land
(2 Kings 23:35). Worse still, he kept some
of this money to upgrade his personal penthouse.
He was a bad,
bad shepherd.
“It is you who
have let my flock scatter and go astray” is one translation of the Hebrew. The
NRSV has it “It is you who have scattered my flock,” charges the Lord, “and have
driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for
your evil doings, says the LORD” (Jeremiah 23:2).
God promises to gather the remnant of his flock and to put his people under the
care of a new generation of kings — kings who will be good shepherds; who will
watch over their people, protect them, and keep them from getting lost.
Better yet, God
will “raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal
wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land”
(23:5). This righteous Branch is none other
than Jesus the Christ, the one born at Christmas as King of Kings and
Lord of lords. Jesus comes to reign with justice and righteousness, and to
provide safety for all of God’s people. And this is the name by which he will be
called: “The LORD is our righteousness” (23:6).
The Lord is
our righteousness. It’s an odd name -- an unexpected name. It’s not as well
known as the other names we encounter during the holidays, not as likely to
appear in Christmas cards and carols and decorations. But if we miss it, we
might end up skipping the true meaning of Christmas.
Humorist Dave
Barry noted once that aliens from another plant visiting school children today
would assume they all belong to the Church of Meteorology. To avoid offending
anybody, the school dropped religious references during the Christmas season and
started singing about the weather. At the school program they sang increasingly
non-memorable songs such as “Winter Wonderland,” “Frosty the Snowman” and — this
is a real song — “Suzy Snowflake,” all of which is pretty ironic given these
kids live in South Florida.
If we skip
Christmas, we will end be skipping the true meaning of Christmas.
For starters,
let’s get clear about names. Jesus is not a Frosty the Snowman. Sure, you
could argue that he is something like the fairy-tale snowman in that he
surprises us by showing up one day, but he doesn’t do this as a “jolly, happy
soul / With a corncob pipe and a button nose / And two eyes made out of coal.”
Jesus is not a person who runs and laughs and plays, but then melts away at the
first blast of heat or adversity.
Jesus is
steadfast -- not temperature-sensitive. He is with us when things get really
hot. At the same time, Jesus Christ is not Santa Claus. He’s not a
ho-ho-ho-ing, gift-giving, “right jolly old elf.” He doesn’t come down our
chimneys to shower us with expensive toys and treasures, nor does he do his duty
by doling out good stuff to good people and lumps of coal to naughty people.
If we believe that piles of presents are a sign of Christ’s favor, then we have
missed a key component of the character of our king.
Jesus is a
Shepherd, not a Santa. He gives more attention to lost sheep than to lambs
that are safely at home in the flock. His joy comes not from seeing 99 people
exchanging gag gifts, but from watching one solitary sinner repent.
Take away
Frosty and Santa Claus, and you are left with the name that has been given by
Jeremiah: “The Lord is our righteousness.” There is nothing cute or cheerful
about it, and it may not fit our fantasies about what goes into generating “the
Christmas spirit.” But if we ignore the role of righteousness in who Jesus
was — and is — then we run a huge risk of missing the true meaning of Christmas.
Jesus the
Christ is all about righteousness. He came to earth to make a connection
between people and God, and to help people see that their righteousness comes
from God.
This
Lord-righteousness is the exact opposite of the self-righteousness that so
dominates our society today, so different from the self-centered smugness that
leads us to believe that we somehow deserve our good fortune, along with piles
of presents under our Christmas trees. The problem with so many Christians in
the USA is that we make the assumption that doing well is synonymous with doing
good. We are born on third base, and we go through life believing we’ve hit a
triple.
In the face of
this self-delusion, Jesus reminds us that our righteousness comes from God
alone. It is God who makes us righteous, and he does this through Jesus.
Being just, honorable and free from guilt is not a human achievement, but
instead it comes to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ.
Only the Lord
is our righteousness -- not our nationality, our political party, our social
class, our race, our denomination or our alumni association. This iron-clad
connection between righteousness and Jesus is at the very heart of the meaning
of Christmas.
It’s simply
too good to skip.
So let’s look
ahead to Christmas and open our hearts to what Jesus brings us. He comes to
us as a sign of God’s great love for each and every one of us, and he offers us
the gifts of forgiveness, new life and new righteousness. He comes to
earth at Christmas to put us back into a right relationship with God — a right
relationship that contains all the elements of a righteous life.
The coming of
Jesus is not about religion — us finding God. Instead, his coming is about
relationship — God finding us.
The message of
the season is this: Righteous living is a relationship with God. Nothing
more, nothing less. It means:
• living in
harmony with the Lord and our neighbors
• enjoying the
world that God has created, while taking care of its resources
• finding ways
to resolve conflict without rushing immediately to violence
• caring for
the poor and the powerless, following the example of Jesus
• obeying the
commandments of God, because they are the keys to inner harmony.
To
experience the righteousness of Christmas is to be drawn deeper and deeper into
a close and personal relationship with God. It is to discover that social
justice and personal peace are parts of a godly way of life, one that is made
visible to us in the life of Jesus Christ.
Jeremiah knew
that you couldn’t be a good shepherd and abuse the sheep, and that you couldn’t
be a righteous ruler and misuse your power. Jesus felt the very same. This is
why they both invited us into a right relationship with God, one that took
seriously the need to look beyond self-interest and “execute justice and
righteousness in the land” (v. 5).
Bob Kaylor of
Park City Community United Methodist Church in Park City, Utah writes, “A lot of
us are re-evaluating, rethinking, re-imagining our values, our responsibility.
Skipping Christmas — well, at least skipping the ‘holly-jolly-jinglebell-rock-Rudolph-and-Frosty-and-shop-’til-you-drop’
kind of Christmas, seems to be on everyone’s mind whether they admit it or not.
Maybe, if only for a moment, we are beginning to realize that a real Christmas
has nothing to do with purchasing power. Instead, in an uncertain and dangerous
world, the most valuable currency we can save and spend -- is hope.
Kaylor added,
“God so loved the world that he didn’t give up on us. He loved us so much that
he came himself to show us another way, to reveal what we have been missing, to
offer us a new opportunity to make it right, to enjoy his presence, his love, to
once again be formed ‘in his image.’
Kaylor finished
by saying, “There is no barrier, no terror, no body and no thing that can
keep us from God’s love. To me, that is an awesome reason for hope.”
So today I
say, go ahead: Put your Frosty on the roof, and clear a place or path for Santa.
But don’t miss this opportunity to focus your attention on the coming of
Jesus, the One who shows us that the Lord is our righteousness.
If you miss
it, you’ll be skipping Christmas.
=====================================================================
Our guest minister today is
the Assistant to the District Superintendent of the Central District. Tom and
his family were charter members of Highlands during part of his high school and
college years and he was active in our MYF during the years Emory Burton and
then Lamar Davis were our pastors. This charge conference approved him to be a
ministry candidate. Tom completed his license to preach course, was licensed in
1965 and appointed as student pastor to Boyd’s Chapel and Bethel Methodist
Churches in June of that year. He graduated from Athens College in 1966 and from
Chandler School of Theology, Emory University in 1971 and has been an elder in
full connection in North Alabama Conference since June, 1971. He served several
local church appointments, completed a year of Clinical Pastoral Education at
Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham and then served appointments beyond the
local church at Partlow State School & Hospital, Church’s Ministry to UAB, 20th
Special Forces Army National Guard. In July, 1979 he began active duty as a Navy
chaplain and served aboard USS EISENHOWER, USS ENTERPRISE, Navy and Marine Corps
bases in Illinois, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and
California before retiring in March, 2006 and being appointed to his present
ministry in June of that same year. Linda Heath Skaggs and Tom were married in
August, 1966 and were blessed with Debra Heath Betts in September 1967 and
Michael Timothy Betts in October 1968. Their two granddaughters, Faith Nicole
Stewart and Savannah Heath Stewart, live in Greenback, TN with Debra and her
husband Tony Stewart. Michael resides in Birmingham.
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