Christmas Eve, 7:30 PM, December 24, 2011
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
All the people on your gift list have been checked off. The shopping is done. I hope none of you will be out shopping tonight. In the wake of all the checking the list and checking it twice and the many checks that have been written, two things are clear: Jesus is coming and his birthday breaks the bank! Christmas is costly.
According to one of the nation’s largest banks, the true cost of Christmas in the current market to celebrate the twelve days of Christmas according to the popular carol, things like turtle doves and golden rings as well as the going hourly rate for milk maids and leaping lords would cost around $100,000. A hundred grand! How about that for an after-Christmas credit card bill!
Almost any way you wrap it, Christmas is a costly holiday. Yet so often when we consider what’s required to rightly celebrate Christmas, we think only in terms of what’s left our wallets. But the true cost of Christmas is not measured in what’s required of us financially. The true cost of Christmas is measured in what it required of Christ—and what it should demand of us—relationally.
Relating
Many of us take vacation days during this time of the year because the Christmas season demands a great deal of time. Most workplaces close down too knowing that we are preoccupied with Christmas. It takes a lot of emotional energies to gather at Grandmas, visit with cousins we haven’t seen since last year, attending in-laws holiday events, play a white elephant gift exchange hoping that the gift you get is half as bad as the one you brought, agonizing over addressing all the Christmas photo cards—it seems like no one sends a regular Christmas card anymore. Christmas demands a high relational cost. But is it worth it? Is all this relating having any lasting impact that we intended?
Here’s the question for us on this holiest of nights: What if we, what’s left of the holidays, did whatever we could to maximize our relational cost? What if we went out of our way to connect with others in truly meaningful and memorable ways? What if we invested in relationships in ways that imitate the movement of Christ toward us in the Incarnation, and that have the potential to leave a lasting impression on those around us?
Incarnation
In the Gospel of John, it reads, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). When Jesus came into the world, this was not an illusion or some kind of a figment of one’s imagination but for real. John tells us that God sent his Son into the real world to save real people, the Word became flesh and he died on the cross for you. That’s how real God’s love is.
After you have opened up all the gifts and had all the parties, your place will be a mess. Maybe you might have a messy relationship with your mother or father or you want a deeper relationship with your teenage son or daughter or you have a cold relationship with your next-door neighbor. And you find yourself saying things like, “You know what, to enter their world, to get personally involved at this point, it would get really messy.” The truth is, you’re probably right. The truth is that this did not stop Jesus at the first Christmas to get messy and it shouldn’t stop us at this one.
Relational Cost
Since Jesus paid a cost to embrace us, he invites us to embrace others. There are three simple things that you can do during this holiday. It’s sharing of space, sharing experience, and sharing your heart.
Sharing Space. For Jesus, finding some kind of common place for connecting so that healing, forgiveness and growth could happen was essential. It meant doing the messy work of entering our world so that he could live the perfect life we couldn’t live and die the death that we deserve. Real relating begins with sharing space.
If you need to better relate with your children, you may need to face some real sacrifices like shuffling your schedule in order to be home well before the kids head off to bed. If there’s been a rift between you and a friend or family member, it may mean inviting this person out for lunch so that a difficult but necessary conversation can take place. You can’t have an impact on someone you refuse to share space with.
Sharing Experience. John tells us that the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. The word, “dwelling” literally means, “to set up camp.” And if you have ever gone tent camping before, no one looks very good after sleeping on the hard ground in the morning. The Word became flesh and God himself “set up camp” among us. Jesus not only shared space with us, he shared an experience with us—camping on this hard earth.
Jesus changed the lives of 12 disciples and probably many more by letting them take part in miraculous healings, walking on water, and raising people from the dead. In this, trust was gained, memories made and bonds forged. Who in your life might you need to rebuild trust, create some new memories and to forge a bond? And when the holidays are over, are you ready to continue the messy work of getting involved in messy everyday experiences with the people around you? Sharing space and sharing experiences will ultimately lead to sharing your heart.
Sharing Your Heart. For Jesus, everything he did, from entering our world to breaking bread with strangers, was so that he could share his heart on the cross. On the cross, he sent a message: “This is how much I love the world I’ve entered. I’m willing to die for it.” And having shared his heart with us, he asks the same of us to share our hearts with others. If God so loved us, we also ought to love others.
For us tonight, we are to relate with others as Christ has related to us. Speak the truth, talk about your faith, express your love, confide your fears, let them in on your hopes. What kind of relational costs have you laid out this Christmas? Have you been sharing your space, sharing experience and sharing your heart? Or, have you been just settling for a mere illusion of connecting with people where there’s very little cost to you?
Maybe you need to reconcile with someone you’ve hurt? Maybe you want to have a greater presence and influence in your child’s life? Perhaps you’ve got a friend who has no idea that there’s a life of forgiveness through Jesus, ready and waiting for them? Maybe you’ve been on the fringes of this church family for a while and it’s time to cultivate some significant Christian relationships?
What if you dedicated one year, starting this Christmas Eve, to seriously and purposely invest in just one relationship? What if you said, “For the next 365 days I’m going to look for every opportunity to share space, an experience and ultimately my heart with this one person?
Real Relationship Requires More
Real and meaningful mending of relationships require death. Christ came into this world knowing full well that he “came to his own, and his own people” would not receive him (John 1:11). That rejection would lead to the highest cost Christ would pay. In his death on the cross we see true love on display. As John would later write, “In this love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).
Christmas marks the moment when, in order for our relationship with him to be restored, God sent his Son into the world so that we could have forgiveness, a fresh start, and membership in the family of God. Connecting with God required a costly death.
Truly relating, really connecting with those around us, will require a death as well. It might be the death of your pride, of your comfort zone, of your expectations or demands, of your perfect schedule, of your desire for somebody else to go first rather yourself, or of your need for someone to see your side and say, “you’re right.” What will have to die in order for you to do some costly connecting?
Christmas is costly. Not just financially; but relationally. You are unlikely to afford to buy five golden rings or hire a bunch of dancing ladies. But you can afford to connect. The impact of what we buy with our money fades fast. Jesus’ birth shows us that the cost, the impact of connecting relationally resonates forever. Share space, share experience and share your heart this Christmas.
Let us pray.
Dear Lord, on this Christmas Eve, may we rededicate our lives to you by reconnecting with people we love and care. Inasmuch as you have done this for us on this holiest of nights, Christmas, teach us to share our space, share an experience and most of all, share our heart with others just like the way you did for us. In your precious name, we pray. Amen.