"A New Appreciation of Christmas"
His name is Jesus, and he has come to save.
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Text: Luke 1:39-55
In the 1960s there was a marketing phenomenon to do with Porsche cars. Porsche, you see, had introduced a new model to the United States - the 356. It was a car I have dreamt of since I saw James Dean drive it! I can see myself in a 356! When this car came to North America, though, from Zuffenhausen in Germany, with a small, four-cylinder engine and only two seats, it was laughed at. Really! Amidst all the great, big luxury cars of the time, the Porsche was seen to be an anomaly.
However, in Europe, this was a very fancy and a well-respected automobile. But, for the life of them, the dealers in New York City could not sell them! And so, they priced them very reasonably to attract people. Still, nobody bought the cars. Car magazines, newspapers, everyone raved about the 356: What a joy it was to drive! Still, no one in North America bought it.
It was technologically superior to any other car built, but nobody would purchase it. So, somebody in the marketing department of Porsche had an idea: Why don't we just double the price and see what happens? Now, normally, you would think that guy would be packing his bags when morning came, but he was right. When people realized that this was not only an excellent car, but a valuable one, everybody wanted it.
What fools we are! We spend twice the real price of a car, simply because it now has status! It now has value! The history of Porsche in America is a phenomenon the likes of which most automobile companies have never seen.
You see, sometimes, it takes other people to show us the value of things. Very often, we devalue the things that are important and we place value on the things that are not. Even when it comes to ourselves, very often the person who least values us, is ourself. Frequently, it is others who see in us something of great value and importance, but sometimes we are loathe to see it in ourselves and we put ourselves down.
Even a great event like Christmas sometimes needs somebody else to tell us just how powerful and important it is, for we cannot see it for what it is. It has become commonplace, it has lost its value. I suppose it is only when I look at Christmas through the eyes of the poor, when I look at Christmas through the eyes of the oppressed, when I think of nations where Christmas is not allowed to be celebrated, that I realize it is something of great value that is meaningful and important.
Appreciating something is very difficult to do at times. Our vision is so crowded by what we know or what we already believe the value of something to be that we cannot really see it for what it is. So, I want us this year to have a new appreciation of Christmas, a new sense of what the dictionary says the word appreciation means, which is to value something. Appreciation is not only to value something, but also to hold it in high esteem, like a beautiful piece of art, or like a glorious piece of music as we heard from the choir this morning. We see the beauty in it, so we see value. We esteem it.
How do we do that? How can we look at Christmas through eyes other than our own? Well, I think we have to go back to the Bible. I would like to do something imaginative this morning. I would like us to appreciate Christmas through the eyes of those for whom it meant the most.
Believe it or not, I want to start with Abraham. He lived 2,000 years before Jesus, 4,000 years before us today. Yet, I want to go back to a man who is known as the first of the Patriarchs, the one who really began our belief in the one God. It was Abraham and his wife, Sarah, who comprised the family that constitutes the beginning of the story of Christmas, so much so, that the Magnificat, that glorious passage in Luke's gospel, speaks of Abraham. Did you hear it? This is what Mary sang, “He has helped his servant, Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants for ever, even as he said to our parents.”
You see, right here in the Magnificat, the early church writer captured what was in Mary's heart: Namely, that this first Christmas, the birth of her son Jesus had something profoundly to do with Abraham. In Abraham there was a foundation, and that foundation has now found fulfillment in the coming of Jesus.
It is fascinating that Abraham is today taking on perhaps even greater importance than he had done for many centuries. I think that with the emerging realization of the co-existence of the three great monotheistic religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity, there has been recognition of a common thread, a common bond in all of them, in the person of Abraham.
Whether we say Abraham in English, reflecting the Greek translation, or Avraham, which is the Hebrew, or Ibrahim, which is the Arabic, Abraham has a central place. So central, in fact, that Islam calls him Ibrahim-al-hanif, which literally means, Abraham, the Monotheist. A “monotheist” is someone who believes in one God. All three of the world's great monotheistic religions trace back to Abraham and Sarah and this belief in the one God. Now, other religions have come along, much, much later on like Mandaism and the Bahá'i faith and others, that have captured the same belief, but the idea is that Abraham is the foundation and the point of agreement for the world's major one-God-believing religions.
Christianity claims a particularly strong tie to Abraham. Abraham's faith is the foundation of our entire faith in God. Paul says in the Book of Romans that it was Abraham's faith that made him righteous. Here, in the Magnificat, there is this sense that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. Now, the promise to Abraham was this: that all the nations would know the One God through his descendants. Mary and the early church clearly believed that in the coming of Jesus Christ, the world would come to know, adore and love the One God.
So what do you think Abraham would say to us today? What would he say to us in Toronto about a new appreciation of Christmas? I think he would say this: “God keeps his promises.” It might have taken 2,000 years between Abraham and the coming of Jesus, but God keeps his promises. If God makes a covenant, God keeps that covenant. This teaches us patience, but it also shows that there is a great deal of room in God's covenantal love.
I don't know whether I made a mistake or not, but a number of months ago I visited the website of a U.S. manufacturer called Hammacher Schlemmer. Now, the only problem with this company is that it never lets you go. They send me e-mails every two days about new products, and this week I could have spent the entire budget of Canada on what Hammacher Schlemmer was offering! But, they have one particularly fascinating gift. (I think they have had it other years, but I didn't know about it until now.) It is an upside-down Christmas tree! The idea is that the bottom of the tree is at the top and the top is at the bottom. It has 800 lights, it costs $599, and it means that you can get more parcels under the tree! Who thinks up these things?! This is like the Porsche advertising people! The more I thought about it, the more it made sense! Doesn't it?
Well, I think Abraham is like Hammacher Schlemmer's tree! Suddenly, the world is turned upside down, there is room in God's grace, and the room is in Jesus. Jesus comes along and fulfills the promise of Abraham. Even in Toronto, devoid of any good hockey teams, we can still enjoy Christmas, and we can still praise God! No matter where we are, the nations worship the one God, because of the grace of Christ.
What about Mary? Oh, I love Mary! What would she say after Christmas if she was in this pulpit today? Well, we have her Magnificat that says so much about what she loved and what was true to her, but she really had the original “Mission Impossible.” Maybe she heard from God, “This is your mission, if you decide to accept it, to give birth to a son, who will save the world…..if you decide to accept it.” The grace and the courage of Mary is that she accepted it.
I have been doing something this Christmas that I haven't done since maybe 25 years ago, when I first went to an art gallery in Cape Town the week before Christmas. I made a point of looking at the great art depicting the Christmas story. Artists can say things that we can't, for a picture is worth a thousand words. I have been looking this last week at, for example, Raphael's depiction of the Madonna and Child. Raphael captures something: There is on Mary's face a degree of misery and sadness and pathos. In her arms is Jesus, and he is turning away and not looking at her anymore. He is looking at somebody else out there.
Botticelli did a similar thing. Again, he depicts a rather sad Mary, but a Mary who has Jesus on her lap, and Jesus has other children around him. Another Botticelli painting has Jesus sitting with Mary, but then, just at the side, John the Baptist is looking on at his cousin Jesus. They are sad, though. In almost every face of Mary, there is a melancholy. And yet, the painter Solaria has Mary with a different look altogether. Here is a mother who has a smile on her face and a beaming look as she holds Jesus on her lap, and Jesus is looking up adoringly - very similar to the stained glass window right up there.
You see, Mary has mixed emotions. All the depictions of her show these mixed emotions, because all the artists know that she knew what would eventually happen to her baby. There is a sense of joy, of love and of pride. There is also a profound sense of pathos and sadness. Never underestimate the cost that Mary had to bear. It tells us something. If Mary was in this pulpit this morning, what would she say to us? She would say that sometimes through great suffering comes great glory. Sometimes, by enduring great hardship, great things can come to pass. For Mary was the progenitor of her son. She was the one who suffered first for her son, who was to follow. To those who at Christmas suffer, Mary speaks a word of hope.
What would the shepherds and the angels say if they were to speak to us about a new appreciation of Christmas? I don't know about you, but the shepherds and the angels seem an odd part of the story to me, and yet they represent two very powerful themes. The shepherds represent the humanity of the event: the earthiness, the incarnation, the God who comes into our midst. The angels represent heaven, and the power of heaven on earth, and the breaking forth of heavenly powers on this earthly world. I have no problem believing in angels, because I have no problem believing in God. I believe that the power of heaven breaks into earth. We don't always know how, we do not always know why, but as sure as I stand here, I believe that God is active in the world.
Now, how we depict this story can get very confusing. Many of the artistic and literary depictions of the story of Christmas get awfully confused over time, and baffle us. It is like the little girl who was asked by her Sunday school teacher to do a painting of the Christmas story. The little girl worked away and she was so proud of it that she brought it home for her mother to see. She said, “Mummy, Mummy, my Sunday school teacher wanted you to see what she calls an extraordinary painting of Christmas.”
The mother said, “Let me see it.” She looked at it, and she said, “Well, dear, it is extraordinary! What does the airplane represent?”
The little girl said, “Mummy, that is the flight into Egypt.”
And the mother said, “Well, who is that miserable man in the front of the plane?”
She said, “That is Pontius, the pilot.”
Then, the mother said, “Okay, who are the three people riding on the plane? I can see Mary and Joseph, but who is the other person, the fat man?”
She said, “Mummy, that is Round John Virgin.”
Everyone has his or her own depiction of the story - and everyone can miss the point!
The story of the angels and the shepherds and the Christmas message is profoundly rooted in what was said and proclaimed: that at Christmas there is good news of great joy; there is peace on earth amongst those with whom God is pleased; there is goodwill; and there is the power of God's light. Therefore, the Christmas message captures the essence of God's will and intention for humanity. This is not a light story told frivolously. It is a story that has been recounted with the greatest depth and sincerity, for what comes out of the mouth of the angels, what comes out of the mouths of the shepherds, is the word of God.
There is one last and most important voice we need to hear. It is the voice of Jesus himself. He says, “I want you to have a new appreciation of Christmas.” He wants us to understand the fullness and the power of his name. A few years ago, Mark Cuban, the owner of the basketball team the Dallas Mavericks, wanted one of the radio broadcasters, a friend of his in Chicago at WGS, to change his name, and said that he would pay him to do it.
He is a famous host, named David Kaplan. Mark Cuban asked him to change his name to Dallas Maverick, and said that he would give him $50,000. Kaplan thought about it, but didn't get back to Cuban. Cuban then upped his offer to $100,000, and then after a year, another $100,000, because he thought it would be very valuable if David Kaplan changed his name to Dallas Maverick: How many millions of people would hear the name of Cuban's team!
David Kaplan got back to him and declined the invitation. He said, “I can't for two reasons. First of all, it is my birthright. The second is, I am called David, and David is one of the most important names ever.” The naming of Jesus is no accident. It is his birthright, for he too was the son of David, but his name was Jesus, and Jesus means “He shall save.”
What would Jesus say to us? He would say, “I am not just a child. I am Jesus. I have come to save. What is broken, I mend. What is sinful, I forgive. What is lost, I find. What is shattered, I put back together. My name is Jesus. That is all I want you to know. That is all I want you to understand, and I want you to carry me in your heart forever.”
A new appreciation of Christmas! Amen.
This is a verbatim transcription of the original sermon.