Missing Christmas

Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

John Grisham wrote a book in 2001 entitled Skipping Christmas. It was later made into a movie in 2004 entitled Christmas with the Kranks starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. It is about a suburban couple whose only child is on a one year assignment with the Peace Corps in Peru. Therefore she was not going to make it home for Christmas. So the couple, Luther and Nora Krank, decide to skip Christmas. No shopping, no parties, no tree, no outdoor decorations, nothing. They decided they were not going to miss it at all. The story is all about the resistance that they got from friends and the community to their radical idea. The twist in the plot is that everything changes when the daughter changes her mind at the last minute and announces she is coming home with her new Peruvian fiancé and expects her parents to show him their over-the-top Christmas with all the trimmings. So they have to quickly do in 24 hours what normally took them a month.

Some people today would not mind skipping Christmas like the Kranks. Some people dread Christmas because it means having to spend Christmas without family or a particular family member who has passed away. Christmas is promoted in our society as family time, represented b y Norman Rockwell paintings. But if the family situation is difficult, the holidays are difficult. Our Blue Christmas service this afternoon is designed exactly for people who have a hard time with the holiday season; part of them wishes they could skip over the whole month of December. Some people wouldn’t mind missing Christmas. But most people look forward to Christmas. They plan for it months in advance. The Christmas Tree Shop is their favorite store. In researching this message I read a blog written by a young woman who was traveling to India for a couple of weeks and would be back in the US after Christmas. She wrote:

“When I told my friends and colleagues in Atlanta that I would be visiting India until December 28th, the reaction I received was almost unanimous:  “You’re going to miss Christmas?!” they would say in a tone that sounded as shocked as it did sympathetic.  “I’m so sorry,” they would continue, or, “That’s too bad.”  I heard this over and over again from everyone from people at church to the lady at the airport ticket counter when I checked in for my flight. I’m sure these people meant well, and I tried to appreciate the concern they expressed.  But after a point it got old and annoying.  “I’m not missing Christmas,” I would attempt to explain; “I’m just celebrating it in another country.”

We can easily confuse celebrating Christmas with particular American cultural observances. Personally as time goes on I care less and less about cultural trappings surrounding Christmas and more and more about the spiritual celebration of Christmas, especially the spirit of anticipation in the Advent season. I could not imagine doing what so many people do – going through December without honoring Christ in worship. I think that a lot of people miss Christmas without even knowing what they are missing.

1. This morning I am going to talk about missing Christmas. First let’s talk about missing the date of Christmas. When is Christmas? You have to know when it is in order to observe it. When is the real Christmas? The real Christmas is of course the birthday of Jesus Christ. When was Jesus born?

Well I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but you missed it. You missed Christmas. We celebrate Christmas on December 25, but that is certainly not the date of Jesus’ birthday. The 25^th of December was chosen by the church in the 4^th century, over three hundred years after Jesus’ birth. That particular dare was not chosen because it was handed down as the historical date of Jesus’ birth. It was chosen because it was already a holiday in the Roman Empire. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, church leaders were trying to get the populace involved. So they adopted Roman holidays and turned them into Christian holidays. In the calendar used at the time, December 25 was the date of the winter solstice. It was a celebration of the victory of light over darkness, so it fit the Christian themes perfectly. On our calendar the solstice is December 21, but on the calendar they used at the time the solstice fell on December 25. When the calendar later changed, that date stuck for Christmas.

When was Jesus’ really born? Biblical scholars admit they don’t know. But they are pretty certain it was not in the winter. They say that because the shepherds were out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. They did not do that in the cold of winter. They did it al the rest of the year, but not in the winter. Furthermore the Christmas story connects Jesus’ birth to a Roman census, which was likewise not done in the winter, because it made travel so much harder. Many biblical scholars suggest spring as the time of year since that was when the census began. So it is more likely Jesus was born on March 25 or April 25 rather than December 25. But the truth is we don’t know exactly when Jesus was born. But in any case you missed it. You missed Christmas.

II. Now let talk about the future date. You might wonder what I am talking about now. Christmas remembers a past historical event not a future event. True, Christmas is when we celebrate the coming of Christ to earth. But the scriptures talk about two comings of Christ. The first coming at Christmas and what is called the second coming. In fact the season of Advent, which starts today and leads up to Christmas, is just as much about preparing for Christ’s second advent as celebrating his first advent. That is why we have the scripture passage from Isaiah about the day when “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.” That obviously has not happened yet.

In the gospel lesson for today Jesus talks about a future day that he calls “the coming of the Son of Man.” That is Jesus’ favorite term for himself. Many times he said that after his death and resurrection there would be a day when he would return to earth. Every communion service ends with the words “For as often as we eat this bread and drink of this cup we remember the Lord’s death until he comes.” Every communion service is not only a looking back to Jesus’ death but a looking ahead to his return.

 The question then becomes when? When will Christ come? Jesus says in our gospel lesson that no one knows. He says, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only…. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming…. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Jesus is saying that we do not know when it will be. He says that he does not even know when it will be. If no one knows the date it would be easy to miss it.  So Jesus says that the only way not to miss it is to be ready at all times.

There are a lot of things that the average person has to do to get ready for Christmas. We have to put up the tree. I am probably going to be doing that tomorrow on my day off. Then decorate the house. Jude does that mostly, with a little help from me. Of course there is the Christmas shopping. I will do most if not all of my Christmas shopping online this year. Then there is holiday travel. Perhaps you will be traveling at Christmas or someone is going to travel to see you. Either of these takes preparation. We already did our holiday traveling at Thanksgiving. We just got back Friday from a week in Florida and Pennsylvania seeing family. So we are not going anywhere on Christmas. The kids will have to come to us if they want to see us. Then there is the Christmas cooking. My favorite part – not the cooking but the eating. So there are lots of preparations to prepare of Christmas.

There are also spiritual preparations if we are to celebrate Christmas. That is what Advent is designed for, so that we do not come to Christmas spiritually unprepared. That is why it is good that this first Sunday of Advent also is communion Sunday. At the Lord’s Table is the normal setting where we do a little soul searching, some spiritual preparation. This is spiritual preparation not only for Christmas but for that day when we will come face to face with God, whether it is when Christ returns or we go to him. Either way it takes preparation. This should take at least as much time and thought as shopping and baking. People spend more time preparing for a trip to Florida than a trip to heaven. That does not make sense. They do more to prepare for guests coming to their home than Christ returning to earth. That does not make sense either. I suggest that you take some time for spiritual preparations this Advent. I have put a couple of links for online daily Advent devotions on the church website. At least that way each day you have a bit of a reflection on the spiritual meaning of the season. That way we will not miss either the celebration of this first coming or his second.

III. This leads me into my third point. We have talked about Christ’s first coming in the past, and the future coming of Christ in the future. Now I want to talk about what I might call the present coming of Christ. Theologians refer to this as realized eschatology. The date of that coming is now. For this I will refer to our Epistle Lesson from Romans. “11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.”

Here the apostle talks about awakening from sleep. I imagine most of you have seen the 1990 film Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin. It is about an eight year old boy who oversleeps and is accidentally left behind while his family flies to France for Christmas. He wakes up and his whole family is gone. Most of the film has to do with the antics of this little boy defending his home against some would-be robbers. But the sentimental theme of the film is about family and holidays. The little kid overslept and almost missed Christmas.

Jesus tells a number of stories in the gospels about people who overslept and missed the big day. He tells the story of a wedding where half of the bridesmaids overslept and missed the wedding. The Gospels relate the account of the eve before the most important event in the history of the world according to Christians, the death of Christ. Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake with him for a few hours, but they all fell asleep. They missed that great opportunity to be with their Lord during the longest, darkest and most difficult night of his life. The gospel account says Jesus scolded them. “Then He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour?”

I think that most people are sleep-walking through life. You know when you are sleepy you are hardly aware of things around you. Most people are hardly aware of God around them. Some people are completely unaware of God. In fact some people are so unconscious that they believe that God does not even exist. They think he is an imaginary construction of the human psyche. They are completely asleep spiritually. Others of us are only half-asleep. We are aware of God at some times – like when we are in a beautiful setting in nature or perhaps in worship or in prayer. At such times they can sense the presence of God. But at other times, which may be most times, they are unaware of God. Just as unconscious of God as they are unconscious of this world with they are physically asleep. When we are physically asleep each night we are unconscious of this physical world. People can also be physically awake but spiritually unconscious of the spiritual world.

In our passage Paul tells the Roman Christians to wake up out of spiritual sleep. He is ringing an alarm, but the people just hit the snooze button and fall back asleep. How do we wake up spiritually? The same way as we wake up physically. That is why the analogy of spiritual sleep and physical sleep is so good. In the morning we just naturally wake up. That is the grace of God working in our bodies. Some people go through life obvious to God, but then something happens in their lives which serves as a spiritual wakeup call. It is usually some transition in life. Sometimes it is a crisis. Something changes in our outward circumstances, and our hearts are suddenly open to new possibilities. A part of that openness is being open to God. People notice God is working in their lives and in the world. They wake up and notice that God is present. God did not just appear. God was always present, but their eyes were not open. And when we notice that God is real and present then we have to respond in some way. It can’t be business as usual. The appropriate response is worship and service and most of all love.

Sometimes we can do something to wake up. Most important I think is just the intent to wake up spiritually. If we don’t try, it probably won’t happen. We can also set an alarm to wake ourselves up. I will sometimes set an alarm on my watch or my phone or kindle to wake me up after a certain amount of time. I understand worship on Sundays as a wakeup call. My job as a preacher on Sunday mornings is to wake people up. I have known some people in the congregation to do just the opposite; they fall asleep, but that is not my intent. My intent is to get people to be aware of God sometime during this one hour, so that they can be more aware of God during the week. 

Paul told the congregation in Rome, “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Wake up! Or you will miss Christmas – the meaning of Christmas. The meaning of Christmas according to the Gospel of Matthew is Immanuel, which means “God is with us.” Let us wake up to the presence of God with us in Jesus Christ and in God’s Holy Spirit. Let us not miss the coming of Christ - the celebration of his first coming. Neither let us be unprepared for his second coming. And most of all let us not miss God coming to be with us right here right now.