12/17/61

Scripture: John 3: 1-21.

Just a few weeks we were celebrating the American Thanksgiving day in its season. Someone has observed that that season marks the end of deer hunting and the beginning of an “open season on Santa Claus.” For some years, it has been somewhat the fashion, in sophisticated circles, to make cynical forays and sarcastic assaults on the delightful, jolly old elf and to claim that he has no rightful place in a Christmas festival. There is a sense in which they are right. But there is also a sense in which they are not right. So long as there is need of personalizing the spirit of giving and receiving, there is a place for Saint Nicholas.

Santa Claus seems as vital to Christmas celebration as are holly and tinsel and evergreens and Christmas trees and stockings hung by fire places (where they have fire places). So long as Santa Claus is kept in the realm of fun over gifts and celebration and even some sharing, there is an authentic place for Santa Claus in the whimsical life of people like us. But it should never happen that he becomes confused with the central figure for whom Christmas is named, whose birth and life are vital to the experience of people of good will.

There has been a kind of popular appeal in a Tin-Pan Alley song entitled “Jesus is my Santa Claus.” But it is a sorrowful observation that such a nearly-blasphemous ditty could find acceptance among people of our nation and time. Santa has a place in the imagination of people. But that place is not the place that belongs to the Savior whose birth we celebrate in awe and wonder and joyful gratitude.

This season (Advent and Christmas) is not just one of jingling bells and merry greetings -- joyful though these may be. It is a season that is more deeply hallowed, because, in the fullness of time, God sent his special Son into the earth so that people, knowing His great love, should not perish in ignorance and meaninglessness, but might live lastingly in the joyful, saving knowledge that their Creator - Father cares for each and every one.

Christmas time is hallowed because Christ came to earth in the person of a babe, born as Jesus of Nazareth in the city of Bethlehem. God sent, not a Santa Claus, but His son. That is why Christmas time is a time of wonder, a time of such inexpressible joy. And it is in a frame of mind that recognizes the great gift of God that we properly pursue our way through advent toward Christmas.

We have referred to Christmas as a season for telling and hearing stories. On the two preceding Sundays I have repeated a couple of stories. Today I want to tell another. How much of it is history and how much of it is fancy, I can not say. But at least it is about a man who did live in history. His name was Francis, and he is often called St. Francis of Assisi. He is called Saint Francis because of his exceptionally good life. And the word “Assisi” refers to the Italian town where he was born. He was the kind of good man whom all Christians are glad to claim in the spiritual ancestry of the church.

Francis was beloved of all living things. It is said that the birds and the animals of the woods learned that he loved them. They learned it by his gentleness and understanding. And of course people loved him, because he loved people. He had a host of friends. This is not strange, because Francis was a real follower of Jesus; and he was always finding ways of helping people to live happier and more useful lives. It must be said, however, that Francis himself was not always happy. It made him sad when people whom he knew, or saw, were unkind and selfish. One day he was especially sorrowful. He was walking alone through the woods. He had been hearing that many of his friends in the nearby village were unhappy. They were being thoughtless of each other, and unkind and just plain selfish.

It was Christmas time; and as he walked along, Francis was thinking of Jesus, whose birth is celebrated at Christmas. And he thought: “If only these people, my friends, would remember Jesus, they couldn’t keep on being selfish and unloving. Here it is, almost Jesus’ birthday! If only I could somehow do something to remind people of Jesus, and cause them to think of him!”

As Francis walked along through the woods, his head bent thoughtfully, an idea came to him. At length he looked up and smiled. “I have it,” he said aloud. “That will be the very thing!” He walked faster. Hurrying through the woods with quickened steps he came to the house of his friend, Giovanni. He was to stay at Giovanni’s house. Giovanni was wealthy, whereas Francis really had practically nothing. Giovanni lived in a spacious house. He had servants to help him; he could be very helpful with his wealth -- and Francis knew this. When Francis arrived at Giovanni’s house he told him quickly and eagerly what his plan was. And Giovanni agreed to help.

Not far from Giovanni’s house was a large hollowed-out cave in the rocks. Some call it a grotto. Francis went to work there. If you had been there the next day you would have seen him working happily and eagerly. Servants of Giovanni brought in many branches of evergreen from the forest. Then they built a little stable, under Francis’ direction, in the grotto/cave. All the while, the air was sweet with the fragrance of evergreen boughs. When the stable was finished, they covered the floor with straw. Next, the servants brought a manger, filled with hay, from which the animals used to eat. Francis took it and stood it in the stable, as though it were already to be used by something or somebody -- just as the manger at the stable in Bethlehem had been used for a crib for the newborn Jesus.

Still Francis was not finished. He had men bring in a real live donkey and two white cows. They led these animals into the cave and inside the stable; and they tied them near the manger. Of course the animals looked about them -- at the walls, at the manger, at the shadowy cave. They seemed so nearly at home that it was like a picture that some artist might have been painting. At last Francis was satisfied. “Go bring in the people from the village,” he cried.

So the servants went through the village, telling everyone: “Francis, our good friend, has come. He wants us all to come to him at once.” The people passed the world along to one another. More and more of them hurried off to the grotto in the hills. They came up to the cave in eager haste. But, as they entered, their voices hushed. What they saw was so beautiful that they just looked and looked.

Mary and Joseph, coming to the stable on that first Christmas Eve in Bethlehem may have seen something very much like this scene which Francis fixed up in the grotto. They had no place to go for the night, for all of the hotel rooms were taken. And perhaps they were glad to rest in this humble place, with gentle animals nearby. As the people from the village stood looking, happy Christmas thoughts came into their minds. They remembered that Jesus was born in such a place. They remembered Jesus and his goodness. They lingered a long time at the grotto, and Francis talked to them of Jesus and his love. Then they went back quietly to their homes. They were going to try to be better men and women.

When the last of them had gone, Francis knelt beside the manger to pray. He himself was now joyful and thankful. He felt that God had shown him a way to help his friends to remember Jesus, and to catch the true meaning of Christmas. And as he thought, and prayed, it may have seemed that he could almost imagine the baby Jesus, lying there and lifting up a tiny hand to bring him happiness and blessing.

Well, this is a story of the First Crèche as Florence Taylor tells it for children in the booklet: “The Family Celebrates Christmas.” Some of us have used that booklet in our homes at Christmas time. Others have just purchased it to read and use this Christmas. But, though Florence Taylor tells the story as for children, it is for those who are not children as well. The reminder of Christ’s coming does something significant and transforming for people wherever, and whoever, we are.

The annual campaign to “put Christ back into Christmas” has some appealing merit. But, in an important sense, it is nonsense. It is not a matter of our putting him into Christmas. Christ is in Christmas already, and has been from its beginning. Therefore our responsibility lies in getting Christ into ourselves. It is a matter of permitting Christmas to do something to us, rather than our covering over with our jolly carnival celebration what God has done for us in sending His son.

Christmas is God’s appeal to mankind. It is our opportunity to become Christian. Canon Peter Green was addressing a group of boys at Manchester when the question arose: “Why does God show Himself to some and not to others?” With more-than-average wisdom, a thirteen-year-old youngster said, “He shows Himself to those who want to see him.”

“Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in!”

“God so loved the world that He gave His only son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Earlier, in the book of John, at the 12th verse of the first chapter, we read: “To all who did receive him --- he gave the right to become children of God.”

We say, all too glibly, of someone that, “He has arrived,” or “He’s got it made.” Probably all that we can mean by these phrases is that the one of whom we speak is trying to make himself into the image of what the public considers to be successful. But Christianity is the art of making, or developing, people, and its aim, or end product, is a child of God. It is not primarily a matter of doing this or that, but of becoming and being a child of God. In Christ, God continues to reconcile the world to Himself.

God’s Christmas invites us to experience new being in the company of Christ where, by His grace, we belong. Christmas has this meaning for us as persons. And it has this meaning for the company of Christians called the Church. The Church is sometimes understood in terms of its creeds or historic statements of faith. Deane W. Ferm contends that the church of today is best understood in terms of its present and future purpose; that is to day, what it ought to be doing today and in days to come.

And Richard Niebuhr contends that the goal of the church is “the increase among men of the love of God and neighbor. When there is confusion and conflict in the churches, is it not due to the failure to keep this goal in mind? The simple language of Jesus furnishes to most Christians the key to the Christian’s own purpose and that of the community around him.”

The direction that the church -- our church -- any church -- needs to take is less quantitative than it is qualitative. The high calling of the church is to work for the increase of love of God and neighbor. What are some of the implications of this definition of the church?

1) For one thing, the church of the future does not need to have a visible, organizational continuity with the church of all ages, before and after the Reformation. The sense of continuity may be helpful, but the present purpose and the aim for the future are more important. There are some real doubts whether Jesus ever intended the clerical organization, the church administration, even the sacraments that we have considered essential. He offers in the New Testament no specific directions as to the ways or means of advancing his cause in institutional form. Jesus concentrates on the essence, the heart of the institution, leaving the organization to us.

2) And so our concern with the future church is not in a rigid statement of faith, but in the aim and spirit of living. The testimony of the Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ is that “We believe in God” -- that “in Jesus Christ - - He has come to us, reconciling the world unto Himself.” The aim of the church, then, is to increase our love of God and of man. What does this mean to our present situation?

a) It offers this meaning to the church’s struggle to end racial segregation in the churches and elsewhere. Churches have engaged in hymn singing, Bible reading, praying, emphasis on future life -- but with not enough concern for the great issues that trouble people. I guess many Negroes in the USA and natives of the countries on the African continent “wonder if the church has a heart --- if it really cares about individual rights and dignity.” If we lay hold upon the spiritual meaning of God’s unceasing effort to reconcile the world unto Himself, it will surely show up in our concern over the attitudes and events in this world.

b) Does not this increase in the love of God and man also mean that every human life, including our own, should be brought under the discipline of righteous love? If we have not love, we are nothing, says Paul. [I Corinthians 13].

c) And surely it means that there should be a renewed dedication in our time to the cause of human freedom and justice. One of our United Church of Christ leaders, Henry Smith Leiper, wrote an analogy about a year ago in Social Action Magazine, describing our situation. In it he says:

“If the present population of the world could be represented by a thousand persons living in a single town, 60 persons (of that 1000) would represent the population of the USA, and 940 all other nations. The 60 Americans of the USA would have half the income of the entire town; the 940 would share the other half. 303 persons in the town would be white; 697 would be non-white. The 60 Americans would have an average life expectancy of 70 years; that of the 940 would be under 40 years. The average Christian family would be spending $850 a year for military defense and less than $350 a year to share with other residents the knowledge of why they are Christians.”

Dare we be complacent that we are part of so favorable an environment while others continue to struggle so?

And surely an increase of our love of God and man means that we should bend every effort to seek for greater understanding among peoples of the world. In this effort, we may join hands with people of good will from all conditions of life, in an effort to make God’s will done upon earth as it is in heaven.

Let each of us close this meditation with a prayer of St. Francis of Assisi for Christlikeness. Will you join your hearts and minds with me in this prayer?

“O Lord our Christ, may we have thy mind and thy Spirit. Make us instruments of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

“O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; for it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.”

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 17, 1961.

Also in Waioli Hiu’ia Church, December 12, 1971.