The Ghosts of Christmas' Past

This is a repost of sorts. Last year I preached this lesson on the last Wednesday night before Christmas. I cleaned it up and edited a bit for the blog. Merry Christmas!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's funny to me how things stay with you the years. Some things just seem stick in your head, worm their way deep in and stay there, sometimes despite our best efforts to remove them. And for myself at any rate there's no accounting why some of the things that stick, should stick so stubbornly.

For instance, I can still recall, some 30 years later, the last line to William Faulkner's short story “A Rose for Emily”. I read that story exactly one time, for a high school English class. It was a good story I suppose, but not so good that it should still be with me. “There on the pillow next to him lay a single strand of iron-gray hair.”

Why on earth do I remember that?

But I also remember a time that Daddy and I had to tow my brother's car home from college. We lived in Hobbs, my brother was at ACU, and his Mustang had broken down. Daddy and I drove there to try and get it running, but it couldn't be fixed in the dorm parking lot, so we had to flat-tow it back home, 3 ½ hours away. It was a miserable trip. Wintertime, cold and windy. Of course, since the car didn't run I had no heat. 3 ½ hours bouncing and jerking on the end of a chain, cold and miserable. We got home, parked the car and went inside. My fingers ached, and I couldn't even feel my feet. Mom had a fire going for us, and I stood in front of it, exhausted, trying to warm up before I went to bed. As I stood there Daddy came up to me, hugged me and said “Danny I couldn't have done this without you. You did a good job today.” And like that the cold and fatigue melted, draining from the top of my head to
the soles of my feet and away. I can remember that like it was yesterday, in every little detail.

Not all things that have stuck are good.

To this day, if the temperature and wind and humidity are just right, I can close my eyes and
immediately I'm back in San Diego Recruit Training Depot. I'm almost afraid to open them, afraid that I might find myself on the grinder at the head of a Recruit Company, getting screamed at by a Navy CPO. It's that vivid.

We used to belong to a little home church in the Colony. Just 4 or 5 pretty close families, meeting in each others homes. I remember the time my friend Don, the best friend I suppose I'll ever have, lost his little girl. She got sick one evening, they took her to the ER, and bang, she was gone. I went to call other friends to let them know. Where we staying at the time we didn't have a phone, so I drove down the street to a pay phone. It was raining, and I pulled the van up close enough to stretch the phone into the cab. I remember calling Wanda Morris to tell her and breaking down before I could get the words out. The rain dripping in through the open window, the phone cold and wet, Wanda on the other end trying to figure out what on earth was wrong, me trying to speak through deep wracking sobs, wipers squeaking across the windshield.

I still remember that.

Most of the memories are pretty good ones though. In fact I have another memory from our home church, of Don Ledbetter, the friend who lost the daughter, a very good memory. He read a passage one Christmas about the birth of Jesus that has stuck with me through the years, not quite verbatim, but close enough. But I'll return to that in a minute.

I've always enoyed reading about the early Christian Church. It is always interesting to me the “strangeness”, the almost complete “other-ness” of early Christianity compared to the world around it. It was a odd off-shot Judaism, which was itself considered odd. We were weirdos and freaks. We were very different.

Christianity was strange because it was monotheistic.

All other religions of the time had a pantheon of gods. The Roman and Greek pantheon (recall that they were the same gods with different names) had 12 or so major gods, and dozens, perhaps 100's of lesser deities. In fact, each individual household might have its own particular god.

That's not all. Due to conquest, the Roman empire at the time was very cosmopolitan. And these conquered peoples all imported their own gods, as did visitors and travelers. So in addition to the Roman pantheon, the Egyptians brought along Isis, the Zoroastrians introduced Mithra, there were Druidish and Germanic gods...it is no exaggeration to suggest that there was no counting the number of different gods and religions in the Roman Empire.

Christianity though, like Judaism before it, insisted that there was One True God. All the others were either false or demonic. That was strange, and to many people, insulting and sacrilegious.

Christianity was strange because it was exclusive. No other god was to be worshiped.

Other religions of the time tolerated and/or assimilated each other. One of hallmarks of Roman conquest was it's tolerance of different worship. The Legions would come in, kick your behind, take your land, levy taxes. But if the conquered people would behave themselves, if they paid their taxes, sent men to the military when called, they were by and large left alone to live as they pleased and worship who they pleased. In fact, as a gesture of respect and tolerance you might do homage to your neighbor's god even if you didn't believe in that god. Christians were not only forbidden to do so, they rudely called the others false.

This caused problems with emperor worship too. The emperor was to be worshiped as a god, honored with sacrifices and oblations. This was blasphemous to Christians, and they were forbidden to do so.

Perhaps the biggest difference, the thing that non-Christians found strangest of all, was found in the character of Jesus Christ himself.

Other gods were, as a rule, super-sized and heroic figures. Jupiter was the King of the gods, standing with a lightning bolt in his hand, and Mars was the god of war, usually portrayed in full armor, with spear and shield. Venus was the beautiful and seductive goddess of love. Vulcan was the god of fire, at his anvil and furnace forging weapons for his fellow gods and sometimes, if his forge-fire got too hot, it would spew out of the earth as a volcano. And Mithra was often depicted as being born from a rock, already a strong and healthy young man, with a knife in one hand and a torch in the other.

Jesus, when the ancients compared him to the gods they knew, was so thoroughly ordinary, so disappointingly human, so frail. Not a mighty warrior, or a handsome lover. Not a stern dispenser of justice, ready to smite wrongdoers with a hammer or a lightning bolt. He appeared to be an itinerant preacher and malcontent, but that was about it.

Recall Mithra. He was the most commonly worshiped god in the Roman army of the time. A fine god for a soldier, strong and virile, chipping and breaking his way into the world out of solid rock, weapons in hand and ready to fight and conquer.

Remember I mentioned the passage my friend Don read, about the birth of Jesus? I thought of that the other day while reading of the Romans and their ideas about Christianity. Compare those ideas with this passage from “Moments with the Savior” by Ken Gire.

“The night is still when Joseph creaks open that stable door. As he does, a chorus of barn animals makes discordant notes of the intrusion. The stench is pungent and humid, as there have not been enough hours in the day to tend the guests, let alone the livestock. A small oil lamp, lent them by the innkeeper, flickers to dance shadows on the walls. A disquieting place for a woman in the throes of childbirth. Far from home. Far from family. Far from what she had expected for her firstborn.

But Mary makes no complaint. It is a relief just to finally get off her feet. She leans back against the wall, her feet swollen, back aching, contractions growing harder and closer together.

Joseph's eyes dart around the stable. Not a minute to lose. Quickly. A feeding trough would have to make do for a crib. Hay would serve as a mattress. Blankets? Blankets? Ah, his robe. That would do. And those rags hung out to dry would help. A gripping contraction doubles Mary over and sends him racing for a bucket of water.

The birth would not be easy, either for the mother or the child. For every royal privilege for this son ended at conception.

A scream from Mary knifes through the calm of that silent night.

Joseph returns, breathless, water sloshing from the wooden bucket. The top of the baby's head has already pushed it's way into the world. Sweat pours from Mary's contorted face as Joseph, the most unlikely midwife in all Judea, rushes to her side.

The involuntary contractions are not enough, and Mary has to push with all her strength, almost as if God were refusing to come into the world without her help.

Joseph places a garment beneath her, and with a final push and a long sigh, her labor is over. The Messiah has arrived.

Elongated head from the constricting journey down the birth canal. Light skin, as the pigment would take or even weeks to surface. Mucus in his ears and nostrils. Wet and slippery from the amniotic fluid. The son of the Most High God umbilically tied to a lowly Jewish girl.

Mary bares her breast and reaches for the shivering baby. She lays him on her chest, and his helpless cries subside. His tiny head bobs around on the unfamiliar terrain. This will be the first thing the infant king learns. Mary can feel his racing heartbeat as he gropes to nurse. Deity nursing from the breast of a young maiden. Could anything be more puzzling-or more profound?

The baby finishes and sighs, the divine Word reduced to a few unintelligible sounds. Then, for the first time, his eyes fix on his mother's. Deity straining to focus. The Light of the World, squinting.

Tears pool in her eyes. She touches his tiny hand. And hands that once sculpted mountain ranges cling to her finger.

She looks up at Joseph, and through a watery veil, their souls touch. He crowds closer, cheek to cheek with his betrothed. Together they stare in awe at the baby Jesus, whose heavy eyelids begin to close. It has been a long journey. The King is tired.

And so, with barely a ripple of notice, God stepped into the warm pool of humanity. Without protocol and without pretension. Where you would have expected angels, there were only flies. Where you would have expected heads of state, there were only donkeys, a few haltered cows, a nervous ball of sheep, a tethered camel, and a furtive scurry of curious barn mice.

Except for Joseph, there was no one to share Mary's pain, or her joy. Yes, there were angels
announcing the Savior's arrival-but only to a band of blue-collar shepherds. And yes, a magnificent star shone in the sky to mark His birthplace-but only three foreigners bothered to look up and follow it.

Thus, in the little town of Bethlehem...that one silent night...the royal birth of God's Son tiptoed quietly by...as the world slept.”

No mighty warrior. No thunderbolts or hammers or spears.

No goddess of love, or fertility.

No glorious palace on Mt Olympus, or dramatic emergence from solid rock, chipping and breaking and fighting and conquering the very earth to emerge ready for battle.

Christians worshiped a puny little God. Born to humble circumstances, he grew to be a carpenter as an adult. He had no home. His family thought he was nuts. His friends were common laborers, or worse, prostitutes and tax collectors (and in the Jewish world of the time, one was as bad as the other). And in the end He died the most humiliating of deaths, crucified between two common criminals.

No wonder they thought Christians were crazy.

Remember how things stick with us? Another of those things that really stick with me are Christmas cartoons. I remember the first time I watched “Frosty the Snowman”, and how horrified I was when towards the end Santa walks into the green house and finds the little blond girl crying over the puddle that used to be Frosty, with his hat and pipe lying in the water. Frosty was melted! A few minutes later Santa of course does his “Christmas magic” and Frosty comes back, but for those few moments I was inconsolate. I remember being absolutely heart-broken.

“A Charlie Brown Christmas” is another one. I love the whole thing, but that one moment, when Linus explains the meaning of Christmas...It doesn't matter how many times it's been on, or what's going on in the living room at the moment. When Linus walks out on the stage and says “Lights please?” the volume must be turned up, everyone has to be quiet and still, so I can listen, just as I did as a 6 year old boy.

And there were in the same country shepherds, abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And Lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shown round about them, and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them “Fear not! For behold, I bring you tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you. Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying Glory to God in the highest, and on earth Peace. Good will towards men.

Remember the words to O Holy Night? His law is love, and His gospel is peace.

He didn't come to conquer with the sword, to enslave, to beat down. Rather He came to offer peace, to conquer with love, even to the death. To give His life a ransom for many. Let us resolve, as much as is possible in our human frailty, to do the same.

Merry Christmas my friends, my brothers, my sisters.

And Joy. Joy to the world.

The Lord is come.