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Pastor Tom Colburn

Getting ready to Deck the halls

November 25, 2007

Good morning! I read somewhere recently that having the proper attitude during the Christmas season meant decking the halls and not your relatives. You know I think that’s a good start J 

By the end of this week December will have arrived and with it the approach to Christmas. In fact this past Friday is said to be the busiest shopping day of the year. I’m not sure why that is. But it’s not too early to consider how we as Christians will handle this time of year.

So let me pose the question. When you contemplate the upcoming Christmas season (the shopping, the planning, the cooking, the traveling, the relatives, the mess, the whatever), what sentiments rise from deep within you? Are they mostly good? Are some challenging or intimidating?

For instance, is “worry” an appropriately descriptive word? Do you worry about how you’re going to pay for it all? Or of how you’ll have time to cook enough food to feed all the relatives set to descend on your house? Or are you just filled with peace and positive emotions singing kum bi ya? 

The Christmas season in America is a major test of Christ’s admonition to live in the world yet not be of it. We live in this world where Christmas in America is a major holiday event. It’s an annual reality and there is no sin in participating in it - even (to an extent) in the secular aspect of it.

But as Christians - not unlike the diversity that legal immigrants contribute to this country - we bring a unique cultural tradition to the Christmas in America table. We bring it’s foundation, it’s essence, it’s power. We return Christ to Christmas. 

It’s our job to promote that aspect; to re-inject it into society’s celebration. It used to be an integral part of the season. Churches and things Christian were a prevalent and expected part of Christmas, standing as it did prominently and in many cases preeminently beside Santa Claus. In many places this is no longer the case.

Christians can promote the “reason for the season” to the public through our services, sermons, skits, caroling, and through other events and advertisements. But more important than what we do is how we do it and what our attitudes are during the season.

Attitudes and example-setting. One of the things Christians decry about contemporary Christmas is the degree to which greed and commercialism has infiltrated it. So while there is no sin in celebrating Christmas with presents and such, we want to stand out by deemphasizing the glitz and the greed.

Along those lines, we as Christians do well not to attempt to keep up with the proverbial Joneses. We should keep in mind that in all we do the neighbors are watching, our kids are watching and God is watching.

If the neighbor across the street or even all the neighbors on our street are corporate execs pulling in 3 or $400,000 a year income, they can afford to drop a grand or two or four on Christmas. More power to them. Let them do it. It’s not our issue.

But if we’re a pizza delivery guy for Papa John’s making $300 a week, maybe we need to scale it down a great big bunch and perhaps spend a couple hundred bucks and call it merry. And there is no reason to feel bad about that. 

I have always tried to give my daughters a fun and memorable Christmas. But I’ve never been rich. Christian children should learn to not be envious or jealous about not having the $3,000 Christmas. We should teach that.

What’s the alternative for a person of modest means? We borrow the money and spend the grand or two. Then what happens? The spouse and kids are happy for 48 hours, but we’re miserable and broke for the next 8 months trying to pay it all back. That takes the “merry” out of Christmas.

Enjoy Christmas. Buy the presents. Eat the roast beef. Trim the tree. But put your main efforts where your heart should be. Christmas is such an awesome opportunity for Christians. People actually come to church during this season. They come for the kids Christmas pageant. They’ll open their doors to carolers singing Christian songs.

Believe it or not, they won’t even think you’re a right-wing, religious zealot if you have a nativity scene in front of your house! Numerous visitors will attend a regular church service on the Sunday closest to December 25th. When else during the year can we have that much sway and freedom to evangelize? But with opportunity comes responsibility.

If the next day, when a car cuts in front of us, we’re seen hanging our heads out the window screaming great obscenities and making creative hand gestures, or if we’re overheard asking the too slow cashier at Wal-Mart if they were deprived of oxygen at birth, it’s probably going to negate anything of spiritual value visitors may have gleaned from us at church. Our Christmas attitude and behavior is important.

Many people don’t know the uniqueness of God’s love, but they can spot phoniness and hypocrisy in a New York minute, cuz that’s what this world is full of. One display of lousy attitude and we’ve just blended our unique message into the duplicity that drives this world and renders us so cynical.

So how do we avoid being human? That’s what you’re thinking, right? All this emotional stuff we’re called to avoid is just natural, human expression. To err is human, to not get caught erring is divine intervention! Right?

Well, we won’t perfect this overnight, and perhaps not even in a lifetime, but with focus and practice and fellowship we have three vital components to get us closer.

Focus:

Practice:

Fellowship:

Let’s talk about seizing opportunities. The ancient Greeks revered and paid homage to a dozen primary gods as well as an untold number of lesser deities.specifically dedicated to Agnostos Theos. It was not uncommon for these people to swear "in the name of the Unknown god.” 

It is said that Agnostos Theos was not so much a specific deity, but a placeholder for whatever god or gods actually existed, but whose name and nature were not revealed to the Athenians or The Hellenized world at large, at that time. 

The apostle Paul was well aware of this god, and the belief behind it. And as it happened he was in Athens and was brought to Areopagus, a place referred to as Mars Hill, and began to speak. It was an appropriate place, and an appropriate time, and given the status of the Unknown god, an appropriate topic from which to segue. 

Paul took advantage of a great opportunity to present God’s message of salvation. He was thus able to spread the message to the ears of many pagans. And perhaps also some Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who wandered near by.

What similar words can we speak to the people of our world? “I observe that you are very religious in all respects,” Paul said to these pagan men. Pagans can be religious. Sincere people can be sincerely wrong. We can be sincerely wrong if we’re not careful. 

To the people of this world, who yearn for God at some level perhaps we can say, “I observe that you are believers in God and confess that the Bible is where one would learn about God. But in observing your words and ways I noticed that you were unsure just how this God is manifest and just what He will do for you. Let me explain.” 

We could then expound the message of the Gospel as we understand it and then speak as Paul did in verse 30, “Therefore, since God overlooks the times we did not have the light, hoping we operate according to the light we do have, God is declaring to all men everywhere to repent. (verse 31), because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead." 

Notice that Paul emphasized that this Jesus was a man, not one of their various gods or demi-gods, but a human being just as they were. A man who lived and breathed and walked the earth just as they did, and not too far away and not too far past from that time. He brought Jesus to a personal level with which they could relate.

Of course, in not every opportunity will we be able to be that direct in our teaching. Paul was given the pulpit, so to speak. In our casual interaction out and about we won’t have that direct an opportunity. But we do have their ear to some extent throughout this time of year. And Christmastime affords many pulpit-like opportunities. We should take advantage of that.

The Christmas season is such a wonderful, open opportunity to bring this message to the under-churched, the un-churched, the agnostic, and the otherwise non-church attending people. During this time of year we are each of us at some point on Mars Hill with the microphone in our hands and a willing audience laid out before us. All we need to do is act.

We won’t seize every chance, but we should try. Have you ever missed an opportunity? I have on occasion. Hindsight has perfect vision. Sometimes I simply hadn’t perceived the opportunity in time and other times I saw it but didn’t act decisively. 

Thomas Edison once said: “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” We get easily scared away from opportunities because they seem intimidating. Or sometimes they seem like a waste of time. 

Let me tell you a short story about such misperception. Sometimes we need to expand our mind when considering possibilities.

There was a man who like so many before him wanted to be an actor. He was given the once over but was told by a Universal Pictures executive that his future wasn't very promising. The executive summed him up and said, "You have a chip on your tooth, your Adam's apple sticks out too far, and you talk too slow." So the executive passed him up.

The assessment turned out to be short-sighted. But those critical words must have stuck in his head, because years later that same actor uttered this now famous line in one of his many movies. He said with his protruding Adams’s apple and now trademark too-slow talk, “A mans got to know his limitations.” That man is Clint Eastwood.

The Bible says the fields are ripe for harvest. During the Christmas season the crops are almost harvesting themselves, bringing themselves to our barn in some instances, just waiting to be embraced, made shiny and invited onto the delivery truck to join us out in the world for the benefit of many. 

We have to approach the season with the right attitude and focus. So now if I were to ask you what you think of as you contemplate the upcoming Christmas season, hopefully you will see joy and love and family and most of all a wonderful opportunity to shine the living example of the light of Jesus, who is indeed the reason for the season.

Thank you, take care and God bless.

~Pastor Tom