I sat in the congregation listening to the Christmas sermon.  Something was missing and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

The minister selected one aspect of the Christmas story and read the text, then brought his sermon from it.  His points were properly related to the text and no doubt most people in the worship center felt satisfied that they had been spiritually fed.  It was only later that something occurred to me, what was the missing ingredient in that morning’s service.

The worship leader and musicians and the pastor all drew our attention back to that night in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago, and they did a fair job of opening the text, explaining its message, and praising the Lord. But they omitted one major element as far as I could tell.

They forgot to give us the “so what” of the Christmas message.

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“That is one of the reasons I believe in Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed.” –C. S. Lewis in “Mere Christianity”

Nothing about the Christian faith is as we might have expected. Get into the business of a virgin birth, a sinless life, a vicarious death, and a resurrection, and have it happen to a Jew in First Century Roman-dominated Judea and all bets are off.

Consider just the unexpectedness of the Christmas event itself, the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1) Matthew 1

–The lineage of Jesus contains an interesting lineup of characters, including several women of questionable character: Tamar who seduced her father-in-law, Rahab the prostitute of Jericho, Ruth who was the subject of gossip in Bethlehem, Bathsheba who was the “other woman” of David’s fall from grace, and of course, Mary herself, the target of malicious gossips throughout Nazareth.

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One.

There were three people in front of me at the Walmart checkout. I was on my way to a drawing assignment and stopped to pick up a large sketchbook.  Walmart has them cheaper than the art store, although David Art of Metairie is a great place with wonderful people and I keep them in business.

In front of me was a Hispanic lady with a toddler in her shopping basket. I opened the sketchbook and did a hasty drawing of the child.  I signed it and handed it to her.  She was thrilled and said, “Merry Christmas.”  That was around November first, and she was the first one to greet me in this way this season.  A Spanish pastor friend heard this and laughed, “We Latinos love to celebrate our Lord’s birth for months!”

Two.

Driving the interstate that day was no fun. We were returning from visiting our son and his family (I’m working hard not to say the truth here, that we were visiting our grandchildren!) and all day long the highway had been beset with rain, fog, mist, at times so heavy we turned on the blinkers and leaned forward to see the lines on the pavement.  But finally, we arrived and checked into the hotel and drove down the street to the Cracker Barrel restaurant.

“You have a 15 minute wait,” the hostess said.  That was fine.  Margaret began browsing and I hung around close to the line.

Behind me stood a young mother with her daughter about 5 years old.  Now, I’m the grandfather of six little girls (little, ha!  They range in age now from 16 to 24.) and love children. So, I struck up a conversation with the child.

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Let’s pretend.

Pretend you’ve never done a Christmas sermon before. Pretend you don’t know where to start or how to proceed.

What to do first. Read Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2 over and over until their message is as familiar to you as your name. Listen for the Holy Spirit to draw your attention to something.  You will know by how you are intrigued by a verse or blessed by some insight or puzzled by another.When the Spirit wants you to focus on a text, He often pulls it out and plasters it across your eyes.  Your mind keeps coming back to it.

Stay with Him now.  This could be good.

Do not be in a rush. If you give the Holy Spirit a quarter hour to get through to you–before kickoff or worse, during commercials–He will refuse to play that little game and will leave you to your own devices.

Wait on the Lord.  Seek His will.

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“Behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be to all the people! For unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign unto you: you will find the Babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” (Luke 2:10-12)

In telling and retelling the story of the shepherds and the angels in the fields outside Bethlehem, as we focus on a hundred things we sometimes lose sight of the most important.

We picture those humble, working class shepherds…given the most boring assignment in the world, to spend the night watching sheep who are not going to be doing anything or going anywhere anyway….when suddenly the angel of the Lord materializes, hanging in the sky out in front of them, and tells them–what else?–to “Fear not!” We join the shepherds in awe of the skyful of angels singing the excelsis deo, and then we run with them into Bethlehem as they flit from stable to stable in search of the one containing a young family with a newborn baby.  They worship, then depart to spread the news.

Does anyone ever stop to reflect seriously on what the angel said to the shepherds in that opening statement?

“I bring you good news of a great joy which shall be to all the people.”

GOOD NEWS–that is “the gospel.” The first gospel preacher, if you will, was an angel.

I’ve told here how that I have built an entire sermon around two questions: 1) Why was the message of Christ good news? and 2) If it was so good, why aren’t people beating our doors down to get in on it.  (On my blog, type in Romans 1:16 and you’ll find it.)

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“But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

We have become a generation of non-thinkers. We enter the house and flip on computers and television. We slide into our cars and hit the switch for radios and CD-players. We go for walks with earbuds streaming nonstop chatter and music.  In our bedrooms, we set dials to certain music or talk programs to lull us to sleep and others to wake us up.

In doing so, we deprive ourselves of a vital aspect of life, a major component of the Christian faith in particular.

We fail to meditate on the things of God.

From the beginning, God has intended that His people would be reflective, would read His word and give thought to what they found there, would wake up in the middle of the night and lie there in thought on divine matters.

“I remember your Name in the night, O Lord….” (Psalm 119:55).  “At midnight, I will rise to give thanks to You, because of your righteous judgments” (Psalm 119:62). “Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day” (Psalm 119:97).

Now, the Lord has left certain treasures lying on the surface, perhaps to entice the children to come over and search deeper. But the best treasures–the mother lode of His riches–are rarely left exposed in full view, but await the diligent workman underneath the surface, yielding their wealth only to those willing to dig and study, to wait and think, to obey and pray and dig a little deeper.

Mary got it so right. Little wonder all generations since have held her in such high esteem, even if some may have overdone the matter.

Mary demonstrates a life of faith and obedience. She vividly illustrates the reflective life and what it means to go forth in faithfulness when one’s heart is breaking and has no idea what lies ahead.

—Like Mary, we would do well to treasure up all these things. We sometimes treasure old hurts and slights and take them out and study them, looking for new reasons to resent someone. We are known to treasure seductive memories and from time to time pull them out in secret and savor their forbidden pleasures all over again. Some will unearth the memory of ancient sins which did great damage at the time and which the Lord has forgiven. We pull them out in secret and mull over them, to our detriment.

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I was 7 years old the first Christmas present I ever received. That morning, as I opened the package, I already knew: it was broken.

Here’s what happened.

That year, our family had moved from the farming and mining regions of north Alabama into the mountainous coal fields of West Virginia. My dad accompanied a number of our uncles and their friends looking for work, and they all landed jobs in a coal camp just outside Beckley. With a steady paycheck, this year for the first time in my brief life, the six children in our family would receive Christmas presents.

One Saturday early in December, Mom and Dad made the difficult trip into town and returned laden with boxes and bags. They hid everything in a closet and warned us away. “Not until Christmas.”

A few days later, when our parents were out of the house, my older brothers found the stash. “This must be for you,” they said, handing me a box containing a lovely golden tractor. This would be my first brand-new toy ever. It was a magical moment. I examined it lovingly. With a windup key, the track could be made to pull the tractor. I twisted it, and it worked–a few times.

Then it broke. No doubt it was simply shoddy workmanship. But to a 7-year-old, this was major stuff.

I had the sad and difficult task of returning the tractor to the box to be re-hidden in the closet, then awaiting Christmas morning knowing that my present would be a disappointment.

When the morning came, I faked excitement. We never let on to our parents that we had broken into the gifts early or that my tractor would not work.

No doubt I was not the first to be disappointed on Christmas morning.

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