12/27/53

Scripture: John 11: 45-57

Text: John 11: 56; "What think ye? That he will not come to the feast?"

The babe who was born in Bethlehem had grown to manhood in Nazareth. Then he had left Nazareth and had moved about Palestine for two or three years preaching, teaching, healing people as no one else had, -- and in a spirit that was new and often misunderstood, because none had known such complete goodness.

Officialdom became convinced that he was dangerous to the established order and that he must be destroyed. Caiaphas reasoned that it was much better to get rid of one such man by putting him to death than to risk upheaval and perhaps disaster for a whole nation. So the officials were well agreed that Jesus was to be arrested when he came to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. Their trap was pretty well prepared. One serious question lurked in their minds: "Would he come to the feast?" They didn’t know it, but Jesus had already dealt with that question much earlier when, in spite of alarm among his followers, he had set his face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem. He would go, all right! But who else was to be there? His enemies? Yes! His friends? Perhaps the friends had better answer!

We may lift this question out of its context for a while this morning, and inquire, first, not as an enemy of Jesus, but as friends; and second, not concerning an ancient festival of the Jewish folk, but concerning the Christian festival of Jesus’ birth; will he come? Has he come to the feast?

In a way, it is an impertinent question; perhaps a little foolish. Is it not, however, also relevant? Is Christ present in the gaiety of our Christmas celebrations? Have we felt his approval, his glow, his companionship as we opened Christmas gifts; and as we gathered at the Christmas dinners? Or did we meet him briefly at the Church service and then go off to enjoy our own gaiety without him?

A very small child went to her first church school Christmas party. Her mother had carefully explained that the occasion was actually Jesus’ birthday, but she did not think to explain one of the ways in which the party might appear different, to the little tyke, from other birthday parties she had attended. When the little girl returned, her mother asked her, with the usual polite interest, "Was it a nice party? Did you have a good time?" The child, with the profound naiveté of children, replied, "Yes, it was a nice party, but Jesus didn’t come." She couldn’t understand a birthday party without seeing the honored guest.

There is a well told story, by Nan F. Weeks, about a little boy who hung up his stocking on Christmas Eve, then went off to bed and to sleep. His usual reluctance to go to bed was overcome by his eagerness to get the sleeping over with, so that he might be up early on Christmas morning to see his gifts.

His home was one in which they usually had a daily Bible lesson read. And on that day before Christmas, his Father had read from the 15th chapter of John. In the 22nd verse were five words that stuck in Jacky’s mind, though he didn’t "get" the rest of the context at all. The words he remembered Jesus as saying were these: "If I had not come."

With all these matters on his mind, he dreamed as he slept. It seemed that he had been asleep no time at all when a sharp voice said: "Get up, Jacky, get up, I tell you. It’s time to get up."

Thinking about the skates he wanted, and the flashlight, and the toy electric motor, and the books for which he wished, Jacky hurried into his clothing and went downstairs. But all was still. No one greeted him. No stocking hung by the fire place. No wreath hung in the window. No lovely tree was in the room.

Hurrying to the door, Jacky looked down the street. The factory was open and he could hear the rumble of its machinery. He grabbed his sweater and cap and raced down to the factory door where he met a grim faced foreman. "What’s the factory running for on Christmas?" asked Jacky. "Christmas?" asked the man. "What do you mean? I never heard that word. Now this is one of our busy days, so you get along with you."

Filled with puzzled wonder, Jacky went on down the street to the stores, and to his amazement, he found them all open. The grocer, the dry goods man, the baker, each one was busy, and cross. And each said, in reply to his question, "Christmas? What’s Christmas?"

When Jacky tried to explain, "It’s Jesus’ birthday," and that the first part of the word Christmas means Jesus, he was gruffly ordered to move along, as this was a very busy day.

Going around a corner, he thought, "I’ll go to church, our own church, for there may be a Christmas service there." All at once he stopped short before a vacant space that looked to him a big as a field. He mumbled to himself, "I guess I’m lost. I was sure our church was here; I know it was!" Then he noticed a sign in the center of the vacant lot. Walking nearer, he read the words: "If I had not come."

Then the meaning of all this dawned on the puzzled boy and he said, "Oh, I know, ‘If I had not come,’ that’s why there’s no Christmas day, nor any church!" He was wandering along in a gloomy way, when he thought of a box of toys and games that his class had packed and sent over to the Orphan’s Home for the children there. So he said, half aloud, "I guess I’ll go over to the Home and see the children get their presents." But when Jacky got to the address, instead of seeing the name of the Home over the gateway, he read five words; "If I had not come." And beyond the archway there was no building.

Seeing an old man, feeble and ill, fallen by the roadside, Jacky said, "I guess you’re sick, mister. I’ll run over to the hospital and tell them to send an ambulance for you." But when he reached the place, no splendid hospital building was to be seen. Nothing appeared but signs and posters, reading "If I had not come."

Jacky thought of a Rescue Mission in their city, and decided that the sick old man would be welcome there for a while, so he went to see about it. But at the place he went to, there were only men with angry faces who swore as they gambled. And over the door, instead of the name of the Mission, Jacky read the words, "If I had not come."

Still thinking about the poor old man who seemed ill, Jacky hurried back home to ask his father and mother to come and help him. On his way across the living room, he waited to look up in a Bible these words, "If I had not come." Turning past the pages of the Old Testament, he found that there was no new part. After Malachi the pages were all blank! As he held them up to the light, Jacky could see on each one faint outline of the words, "If I had not come."

He sighed and said, "O what a terrible world this is -- no Christmas, no holiday, no churches, no hospitals, no missions, not even the best part of the Bible -- only gambling houses, and jails, and calls for the police patrol, and sickness and wrong, and ----".

Just then there was the sound of bells. Chimes were playing as he awoke from his dream, and sure enough, Jacky recognized the tune. It was, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." He heard his mother’s cheerful voice calling up the stairway, "Merry Christmas, Jacky." And he awoke from his bad dream.

Christmas without Christ is a bleak thought, is it not? But it may be an unfortunate reality in far too many lives. Suppose a visitor came from another planet to our earth, late in December, landing for a while somewhere in our own country. What would he observe, and what inferences would he likely make about our activities? Would he report back home run something like this? "Christmas is a holiday promoted by stores and endorsed by Chambers of Commerce, and approved by factories. It is a time when everybody shops for everyone else, buying things that are not really needed or wanted. Children get all excited about a Santa Claus and over what they think they are going to get. (Some say Santa is imaginary, but the bills are genuine!) There on earth, people buy messages of good will by the gross, and let the postal service carry their good will. At Christmas time, all the office workers call the boss by his first name. Much spirit is displayed; more spirits are consumed. Conclusion: Christmas is good for business, and the business is good for the people who make the money."

Or could it be that the interplanetary visitor might see what would cause him to report somewhat in this wise? "Christmas on earth is a time when people flock to their churches -- if anything, more than they do before or right after that season. They have a good deal to say about the birth of somebody they call Jesus, who evidently became quite important to them. In their home, they sing Christmas songs which they call ‘Christmas carols;’ they pray at the table, or before the fireplace, or wherever they gather around. They look in a book called ‘the Bible’ for stories about this one named Jesus. They get all excited and cheerful about giving things to other folk, and hurry out to the stores to buy what they think will make someone happy. Or they make things with their own hands just to give away. A lot of them get interested in people who have some special need -- who are hungry or cold, or lonely or are otherwise in want. And they really put themselves forth to bring comfort and cheer to folk who need it.

Whatever it is about Christmas that is unusual, it is worth noting that it makes such a difference in peoples’ lives that the effect of the observance seems to stay with them a long time. Most of them have less of hate and greed and meanness, and a lot more good will. Conclusion: Christmas seems so good for the lives of earth people that our planet might well look into it, to see how it might be good for us."

Of course a fair reporter would probably see much of both viewpoints to report. But if you were writing the report, in what proportions would you note the attitudes and atmosphere of Christmas in people as close to you as your own neighborhood, your own household, and your own self?

In many lives, Christmas seems as secularized as a Roman holiday. This is no new phenomenon. The observance of Christmas had become so ribald that the Puritan Fathers, for a time, abolished its observance and forbade keeping Christmas either in their homes or their churches. Rather than imitate their drastic solution of the difficulty, we might better focus our attention more intently on the true meaning of Christmas.

Christian experience is a steady battle with the elements in the social order, and in our own lives; elements that turn away from Christ, or shut him out, or neglect his all important presence. The struggle has dated from his very advent upon earth. It is a somber phrase in the story of Jesus’ birth when we read, "There was no room for them at the inn." No room!

Indeed, the ministry of the grown Jesus was no idyllic romance. He did not always win friends and influence people to his way. There were many who responded joyfully to his preaching and who sought his presence on every possible occasion. ---- There were also very many who shouted, "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

"He came to his own, and his own received him not." [John 1: 11]. His life became a fulfillment of the ancient prophecy, "He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." [Isaiah 53: 3].

Any barriers against Christ’s coming to his own birthday party are of our own raising! For there is a good deal of selfishness in our nature. How much of our Christmas giving is "dutiful obligation," and how much is concern for the happiness and well being of others? How deeply does that phrase "exchange of gifts" imply a mutual exclusion of most others; or to what extent may it include as many as possible?

Are our Christmases like the tea party described in the juvenile poem?

I gave a little tea party, this afternoon at three.

Twas very small, three guests in all, I, myself, and me.

Myself ate all the sandwiches, and I drank all the tea.

Twas also I that ate the pie, and passed the cake to me.

Or are our Christmases filled with the spirit that moved Tiny Tim to say, "God bless us every one," and the spirit that remade old Scrooge so that he leaped with happiness over the good pleasure he suddenly learned how to how to shed so genuinely?

True generosity does not always imply the bestowal of a gift in substance. More transforming than the material bought or sent, is the love, the understanding, --- sometimes the compassion ---- that accompanies the gift, or that may be the very gift itself.

The very significance of Christmas, as the birth of Jesus, is that, with his coming, God gave himself, through the Savior, to the whole world in new and boundless measure, and with a freedom that man had never before experienced!

When our selfishness, our complacency, and our disillusionments melt away, we can and do sense what real Christmas can mean to everyone. The hard bitten priests of Jerusalem, setting their traps carefully for man from Nazareth, speculated with scheming concern: "What think ye, that he will not come to the feast?" They need not have been concerned on that score! He would come all right! But what about all the others, and themselves included? Would they be there in spirit and in truth?

[added in 1959 --- You and I are soon to enter a new year. Perhaps we can carry into it the joy of those who returned to the care of their flocks after seeing the babe in a manger. Perhaps we can go into it with the earnest satisfaction of wise men made wiser by their trip to Bethlehem. Perhaps we can go with the healing and assurance found in the temple where a Savior of mankind made individual persons. If we can go into 1960 with these discoveries, it will be a happy year, all right. And we may even be given the grace to help make its events!]

Did you find Christ at Christmas? He was present all right! More important still, it is for each one of use to be asked: Did Christ find you there at Christmas?

Let us pray: O Christ of Bethlehem, of Nazareth and Galilee, of Jerusalem and Calvary, Christ of the heaven and the earth, be Thou with us. Send us a star that, leaving behind our selfishness, we may turn, oft and again, to thy manger throne and find Thee. And O may we be found of Thee. Amen.

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Dates and place delivered:

Wisconsin Rapids, December 27, 1953

Wisconsin Rapids, December 27, 1959