During the summer, if you drive by Thorncliffe Park, for a few days you will see something that is erected in a parking lot of a store. It is a fairground. The fairground goes up over a few days and there are rides and tents and food, and children from the neighborhood go and play there. It really is quite a carnival atmosphere.
Every year, I am amazed when I drive by it how quickly it goes up, but I am even more astonished how quickly it is taken down. In fact, you can be there one evening and go back the next morning and it is completely bare. The trucks have left town, the things have been dismantled: it is an empty, rather desolate looking parking lot, where only a few hours before there were children singing and playing and families having fun. It is amazing how quickly they take it all down.
I notice the same thing with the Toronto Indy race. They come in for days, and they bring their great big trailers and the cars, and they set up pit lane, and it is a big fuss, and everything seems to be very well organized, but when I go there and say the prayers and head out, I am astonished that between the end of the race, which is usually four o’clock, and maybe nine at night, nearly everything is gone. It is incredible!
I love something that William Self said, he is a minister from Georgia: “Nothing packs up and leaves town faster than the Christmas spirit.” I know what he is getting at. In fact, we have been on a high. It is like we have been culturally in this place of goodwill and joy and frivolity, but that spirit very quickly becomes something entirely different and dissipates.
Yet, for believers, for people of faith, Christmas is not the tear down and the end; it is the beginning, it is the start of something. Christmas is not the end of a book and then we wonder what the next chapter will be; Christmas is the beginning of the book, and the chapters that follow are the most exciting. For those who experienced the first Christmas, the joy and the ecstasy and the glory of believing that God’s only son had come to earth was such a source of joy that it made them praise God to the heavenly heights.
For two thousand years, we have in different forms and different dates within the Christian calendar, for the eastern Christmas is this week coming, we have nevertheless celebrated that seminal event knowing that it is not the end of something, but the beginning. I want us therefore to look back a little bit at Christmas so we can see it as a beginning for something to move forward.
I had to learn a new driving technique over the last few years. The new driving technique is to use something that happens to be on my car, and that is a backup camera, which so many cars have now. When that first came out, I was very reluctant. I mean, I thought it was really “Driving for Dummies” and what you really should do is just turn around and swivel and to back a car into a spot, and to do it the old fashioned proper way. The way cars were meant to be driven!
I remember the sales person saying to me quite, quite firmly actually, “You know, Reverend, you have got to start using that backup camera, for you will end up maybe even saving lives.” The more I thought about that and actually used it over the last two or three years, the more I understand what he was getting at, for the backup camera allows us to see things that we actually with a naked eye cannot see no matter how good and observant we are.
We cannot see below the bumper of our vehicles. We do not know if there is a toy or a child or a cat there. We do not know if there is some unsightly piece of concrete or ice, but the camera does. The camera has a broad angle view and it can see things that our eyes cannot. So, it is an aid to good driving technique – not a replacement for it, but it allows us to see things more clearly from a wider angle.
I think the Book of Ephesians and today’s passage is exactly like a backup camera for Christmas. It allows us to see what the real meaning of Christmas is, although it was never written about Christmas per se. The Apostle Paul, when writing to the Ephesians was writing during a time of conflict and imprisonment. He was probably using a scribe to write, but in this most poetic and in Greek, most incredibly well written passage in Ephesians 1, he gives us the backup camera that allows us to see the full scope and gamut of what Christmas is really about.
When we see that, we realize that it is something that causes us to look forward and not back. What does it get us to look at? I think it gets us first of all to look at an invitation that is implied in this text. It is an invitation. Paul sees that coming of Christ as God’s great invite to humanity. In recent years in particular, maybe the last fifty or sixty years, because of the influence of the Evangelical movement, we have had a tendency when we have talked about Christianity and the Christian faith to talk about receiving Christ, about accepting Christ, letting Christ into your heart.
This is the language that has become the dominant language of faith. While there is clearly biblical precedence for that, it is not an anomaly; it is not heresy or an apostasy. Nevertheless it is not the entire picture. In fact, I would suggest that rather than us inviting Christ into our lives, the predominant motif of The Bible and of The New Testament is God inviting us into His life.
You see that so clearly in the Book of Ephesians. I counted five times in these few verses where the phrase “in Him” was used. In verse four, it says, “And God chose us to be in Him in Christ.” In verse seven, it says, “In Christ we know and experience redemption.” In verse 11, it says, “In Him we are chosen. In Him we hear the words.” Notice the theme? We are “in Him” not “Him in us.” We have been called in The New Testament to live in Christ, in his kingdom, at his invitation. It is he who initiates the invitation to us. It is in coming to us that God invites us in.
Throughout the whole Book of Ephesians, the concept of being “in Christ” is the dominant theme. It even suggests later on in the book that we are one in Him, in Christ: that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one Lord and God, and this one Lord and God is the one in whom we are. And before time, we were chosen and called. Before the creation of the world, we were invited in. This was God’s plan, this was God’s purpose: we are chosen and, by “we” he is talking in general terms about the Church, but also those who believe in Jesus Christ, those who accept the invitation and say “Yes” to the invitation that has come from Christ.
This is important because it means that Christmas takes on a whole new meaning. It is not as if when the babe of Bethlehem” comes into our midst, we say, “Well, we will accept him or we won’t.” We will invite him into our lives. We will invite him into our inn. Whatever the language we like to use, the fact of the matter is, and this is absolutely critical for understanding the power of Christmas, in the babe of Bethlehem, God is inviting us in to his kingdom, to his reign, and to his place. The language of The New Testament and the language of Paul is a high one: It of a cosmological Christ, a Christ that embraces heaven and Earth. It says, “And the glory shone around him” and the reason the glory of the Lord shone around him was the affirmation of God’s great invitation to us.
I watched with interest this past week as Dion Phaneuf signed his contract to be the Captain of the Maple Leafs. It doesn’t seem to have made much difference, but anyway, he signed a new contract, and I am not going to get into the politics of that, but one of the things that was interesting was a flashback to when he was first appointed by the Leafs and he put the Captain’s jersey on. The moment that he put the sweater on, his words were, “I am now a Leaf” and for him that was an incredibly emotional moment. To become a Maple Leaf – the dream of so many children over the years – he had attained it! The Leafs had said “yes” to him. He put on the shirt. He belonged.
Christmas is an invitation for you not to be a Leaf, but to be in Christ, to accept his Lordship over your life, to recognize the wonder and the majesty of his grace, to be part of what it is that God does through his son. What an incredible invitation! But we also look at Christmas another way, and I think that it causes us to look at it not as a commodity, but as a living thing. I know we all get het up and we always bemoan the fact that Christmas has become commercialized. We do that a lot.
We get upset with the commercialization of Christmas. The way I look at it is no harm is done in most cases. People enjoy getting something and giving something. The economy rolls along. Well, so be it! The problem is where the commercialization and the commodities stand in the way of understanding the true meaning. That is the real issue. When it obscures the meaning of Christmas, then I think humanity loses out.
The real danger for me is not so much the commercialization of our culture, but the turning of our faith into a commodity. You see, I think that the spirit of Christmas can ebb and wane in people’s lives if Christmas is treated like a commodity and if the faith is treated like a commodity. If it is something that we just sort of pick off the shelf, and we say, “Well, you know, Christianity works for me right now. When I was sick, I felt that it healed me. When I was depressed, it gave me a lift. When I needed companionship, I felt it.” It is a commodity, and it meets our needs. We approach Christianity, and we approach Christmas as meeting our needs.
The problem is that when that is the only understanding of what Christmas is about, or what Christianity is about, then Christianity becomes nothing more than another commodity that you can pull from the spiritual bookshelves of our society. You can say the same thing about Oprah or Dr. Oz as you can about Jesus Christ when you turn Christianity into a commodity. You can just say it is a matter of personal choice that it works for me, which sounds very nice, but then someone else might say that it doesn’t work for them.
In other words, it becomes a commercial thing, and the faith gets reduced to just a matter of a personal choice that we may or may not make. That is not the language of The New Testament! It is not the language of the Apostle Paul. The language of the Apostle Paul is that we are chosen by God, and that from the beginning of time it is God who chooses to reveal himself in his son. It is God’s revelation and initiative to come to us.
When you grasp that reality then Christianity is not a commodity, it truly is a faith, and a faith that has substance, and a faith that has demands and expectations, a faith that can not only just appease a world who wants to pick from the bookstore to make oneself happy, but one that might call us to embrace justice or to embrace the poor or to reject our sinfulness or to change our ways. Paul says, “In Him, we are chosen.” What for? It is for holiness and righteousness and redemption and reconciliation. There is God’s side, you see, to Christmas. God’s side to Christmas is the offering of the gift. But the fact of the matter is that with that gift comes this great call.
I was on an elevator the week before Christmas, and the power had gone out in another building, and a lady came on the elevator and noticed that I was carrying with me a Timothy Eaton Memorial Church shopping bag. She didn’t know who I was – she just looked at it, and she was frantic and said, “I need spiritual help!”
And I am thinking, “What! And a shopping bag is going to give it to you?”
She continued, “I really do! I need, I need, I need spiritual help!”
Then, she went on about all the disasters that had occurred in her home over the last twenty-four hours. She needed help, but it was more than spiritual she needed, believe-you-me! She was in a real tizzy! But, she really felt that there was the need for something like this, and she said, “Do you go there?” pointing to the bag.
I said, “In fact, my dear, I can tell you I am probably there more than anybody else.”
She said, “Really? Is that right? So you are kind of keen on the place.”
I said, “I really like the Senior Minister. I find him winsome, charming, funny and humble!”
Then, she stopped and she smiled and said, “Oh no, you are not!”
I said, “I am.”
She said, “I really do need spiritual help.”
And I am thinking, “This is going to be a long morning.”
Anyway, I didn’t help her one iota. Actually, I had nothing to offer her except “Gee, I hope things get better.” I thought to myself for a moment: she can’t have a turkey, the kids are causing trouble, there is a travel problem, the car doesn’t work, and she thinks that Christianity is going to help her! But, she understands something: she understands that she has a need, and in her need she is desperately reaching out to something. Good for her.
The problem really is though that when you peel that all away, faith becomes nothing more than a commodity. I love what Henri Nouwen said. He wanted us to go deeper. He said this:
Songs, good feelings, beautiful liturgies nice presents, big dinners and sweet words do not make Christmas. Christmas is saying ‘Yes” to something beyond all emotions and feelings. Christmas is saying ‘Yes’ to a hope based on God’s initiative, which has nothing to do with what I think or feel. Christmas is believing that salvation of the world is God’s work and not mine.
How true! God bless Henri Nouwen!
Then we realize when we look at Christmas through the lens of Ephesians, that we need to look at Christmas spiritually. It is one thing to say, “Nothing leaves town faster than the Christmas spirit” but does it? No! What might appear to be a contrived form of some sort of religious or emotional balm and comfort, that might have gone, but the spirit of Christmas has gone nowhere. In fact, the spirit of Christmas has been there from the beginning and always will be. This is the truth of the matter.
I have thought about this a great deal because when you look at what the writer of Ephesians says, and remember he is writing to a congregation that needed a change, a congregation that needed to come under the Lordship of Jesus, that needed courage, that needed unity, that needed a solid core. He is writing to them and he uses language that is most different. He says, “Because of Christ’s coming and being in Him, we have ‘every spiritual blessing,’” in other words, the gift of the Spirit. Later on, he goes on to call it “the sealing of the Spirit” as a result of being “in Christ.”
This Spirit is not something that wavers with our emotions or seasons. It cannot be fabricated or made or recreated no matter how much the emotion might be. It is something that is there from the beginning of time, and it heals and it restores and it cares. The power of the Holy Spirit points to the word of the coming of the Son, and the coming of the Son brings to us the power of God’s Holy Spirit.
So if you have been looking elusively for the spirit of Christmas or you are wanting to have what you had at Christmas and to relive it, look no further than in the one who has come in the form of the Christ Child, who gives us every spiritual blessing, for that spiritual blessing is in fact what makes Christmas such a marvellous and such a beautiful and such an all encompassing gift that no time or place or season can remove us from it.
When we had the Sunshine devotions just before Christmas, I quoted a poem by Mary Fairchild. In 2005, she wrote a poem about Christmas, and it is for every person. It is for the ordinary person. It is just a beautiful poem. This is how she ends it, and I know you don’t end sermons with poems anymore – that is déclassé – but this is worth it. This is what she said:
So while this world rejoices
And celebrates Your birth,
I treasure You, the greatest gift
Unequaled in Your worth.
I long to hear the same words
That welcomed home Your Son,
“Come, good and faithful servant,”
Your Master says, “Well done.”
And may heaven welcome others
Who will join with me in praise
Because I lived for Jesus Christ
Not only Christmas Day.
Amen.