sermon: worship fully
Nov 29, 2011
Sermon: Worship Fully
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Rev. Stephanie Vader
Mental health workers tell us that their busiest season is around Christmas. Our expectations of our families and ourselves are high and often unattainable. I think we sometimes try way to hard to make Christmas merry. Robert Fulghum, a Unitarian Minister and writer, told a story about how he tried to assemble a merry Christmas and how he succeeded in spite of himself.
Tell the story in own words…
I always wanted a cuckoo clock. A big baroque German job with a little bird that leaps out once an hour and hollers an existential comment about life. So I got one. For my best friend, who also happens to be my wife and lives in the same house with me. See, the way this deal works is that she usually doesn't really like what I give her for Christmas, anyway, and I usually end up with it in the end, so I figured I might as well start out by giving her something I want in the first place, so when I get it back I can be truly grateful. She gets the thought; I get the gift. I know it's wicked, but it's realistic and practical. (And don't get high-minded about this, as if you would never think of doing such a thing.)
Anyway, I wanted an authentic antique cuckoo clock. But they cost a bundle. And this store had new ones - overstocked - a special cheap price - hot deal. So I bought one. There were two messages written in small print on the carton, which I missed reading. “Made in South Korea“ was one. And “Some Assembly Is Required“ was the other.
The carton produced five plastic bags of miscellaneous parts. And an Bavarian alpine goatherd hut marked “genuine simulated wood.“ And to top it off, a plastic deer head that looked like Bambi's mother. I put it all together with no parts left over, thank you, and hung it on the wall. Pulled down the weights, pushed the pendulum, and stepped back. It ticked and tocked in a comforting kind of way. Never before had such an enterprise gone quite so well for me. The (darned) thing actually worked!
The hour struck. The little door opened. The little bird did not come out. But from deep in its little hole came a raspy, muffled, “cukaa, cukaa, cukaa.“ Three “cuckaas“? That's it? That's all? But the hands of the clock said noon.
I peered deep into the innards of the Bavarian alpine goatherd hut of simulated wood. There was the bird. Using an ice pick and a chopstick, I tried to pry the creature forth. It seemed loose. I reset the clock to three. The clock ticked and tocked then clanged. The door was flung open. No bird. Out of the darkness at the back of the hut came “cuck“ but no “oo“ - not even “aa.“
Applying the principle of “if it won't move, force it,“ I resorted to a rubber mallet and a coat hanger, followed by a vigorous shaking. Reset the clock. Hour struck. Door opened. Silence.
Close inspection revealed a small corpse with a spring around its neck, lying on its side. Not many people have murdered a cuckoo-clock bird, but I had done it. I could see Christmas morning: “Here, dear, a cuckoo clock for you. The bird is dead.“
And I did. I gave her the clock. And I told her the story. And she laughed. She kept the clock, too dead bird and all, for a while.
The clock and its bird are long gone from our house now. And Christmas has come and gone many times as well. But the story gets told every year when we gather with friends in December. They laugh. And my wife looks at me and grins her grin and I grin back. She reminds me that the real cuckoo bird in the deal was not the critter inside the clock. I remember. I still don’t have a cuckoo clock but I kept something. The memory of Christmas message written on the box “Some assembly is required.” To assemble the best that is within you and give it away and to assemble with those you love and rekindle joy.
I wonder if one of the problems is that we think “we have to make Christmas,“ that somehow we have to assemble joy. I wonder if the Christmas Blues are a consequence of our belief that if we don't decorate, get all the cards out, buy all the right gifts, have a party, sing in the cantata, love everybody, Christmas won't be Christmas, and we will have failed.
Christmas is now big business. While our Christian calendar calls for the season of Advent, a four week time to prepare ourselves spiritually to celebrate the incarnation of God in the birth of baby Jesus. The Christmas economy overshadows even Halloween, even Thanksgiving day in the US serving as little more than a prelude to the greatest shopping weekend of the year. In 1939, President Roosevelt actually moved the date of Thanksgiving back to the third Thursday of November to expand the Christmas shopping season. With half of the annual advertising dollar spent on Christmas related advertising, it is not surprising that we are told that spending lots of money on Christmas gifts is regarded as a patriotic duty.
The commercialization of Christmas did not occur in a social vacuum. It is part of our society in which consumption for its own sake-regardless of need-is legitimated and encouraged. Without reluctance, consumerism exploits religious beliefs and deep emotions to persuade people to buy. Advertising’s behavior modification specialists demonstrate that the strains of Joy to the World trumpeting throughout the shopping malls in December produce greater profits, and that Silent Night, Holy Night is even better.
While all this consumption maybe good for the economy in the short run, commercialized Christmas also has its costs. Instead of preparing ourselves to celebrate the birth of Jesus who came to bring Good News to poor we spend our time preparing to observe the coming of Santa Claus. Our extravagant Christmas spending means fewer dollars for those ministries and organizations that care for the poor. In our society, the poor experience Christmas as a cruel hoax. Instead of giving gifts to Jesus for his birthday gifts that help to build the kingdom of God on earth, a kingdom where the hungry are fed, the homeless are homeful, the oppressed are set free, those in prison are visited, the blind see and the lame walk we act like Christmas is our birthday.
I have a thought. What if God assembles Christmas and we only have to open the gift and let it be in our lives? I know the cynics will scoff, but what if this year we trust / we actually believe that God offers an already assembled Christmas?
What if God makes Mary pregnant by the Spirit of love? What if God, by that same Spirit, makes the baby full of love and grace; a baby not of kingly a family but of an unwed mother and her carpenter husband; a baby not of power as the world can see but helpless and small in a manger full of straw; a baby who in unlikely beginnings transforms the world with a few words, acts of compassion and a dying that gives life? What if this baby comes not because of the well assembled parents or family but because God decides the world needs such a one as this, needs love like this one gives?
What if this year we decide there is no great duty for shopping, baking, wrapping, writing? What if our only Christmas duty is to watch for the birth of love in our lives and open the door at its coming? What if, ready or not, Christmas comes to us, fills our ears with the sweet tunes of peace, fills our eyes with the joy of play and warms our hearts with new and old love? What if God decides, not we, that there will be Christmas for every precious child, for every animal, and for all the cosmos?
What if what Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians is true, that we have this treasure is earthen vessels. The gift of God in an earthen vessel when God came to dwell with us on that first Christmas. “ Perhaps we can trust Jesus when he says, “The reign of God is at hand“ and we can open the door to love before the cards are written, the gifts bought, or the pie baked. What if Christmas doesn’t depend our assembling it?
I suggest that for the next four weeks, through this season of Advent, we resist the belief that we have to assemble Christmas and that we let God assemble Christmas in us. If we are led to write Christmas cards, so be it. If not, then perhaps God might move us to write Valentine cards, or maybe Easter cards. And maybe in God's making of Christmas there are gifts to be bought, but maybe not. Or maybe the gifts we give this year go in the names of the ones we love to the Laurel Advocacy and Referral Service, The United Methodist Committee on Relief and Transitional Housing for Families here at Emmanuel, gifts that are part of our alternative giving program the advent conspiracy. Maybe love doesn't come this year in a new sweater, but is some deeper gift of time, the gift of presence rather than presents. And maybe Christmas doesn't come this year in a hurried schedule to get it all in. Perhaps God has in mind for us a gentler calendar marked with mystery and surprise.
I hope you will join the Advent Conspiracy this year. The Advent conspiracy was started over 10 years ago by two congregations who wanted to do something together as congregations that would be a birthday gift for Jesus. They decided they would focus on four things during the four weeks of Advent: worship fully, spend less, give more, love all. They would all purchase less gifts and give that money as a gift to Jesus. They gave the $10,000 they raised that first year to an organization that digs wells for impoverished villages and refugee camps in Sudan where people did not have access to clean water. Their gift provides clean drinking water to thousands of people. From those two congregations the advent conspiracy has grown to thousands of congregations in many different nations who focus on four things: worship fully, spend less, give more, love all. From two congregations the advent conspiracy has grown to thousands of churches in many countries who have raised millions of dollars that they give away to help bring Good News to the poor as a birthday gift for Jesus.
I know that I speak against all that is sacred with these suggestions that this year we should worship fully, spend less, give more and love all and let God assemble the gift of Christmas for us. I know that the advertisers and the voices of Christmas past will plague all who try to let God make Christmas. I know that when the door is opened to love, unwanted spirits come to haunt the room. But maybe, just maybe, if a few of us are able to stay awake for the birth of love, then we can proclaim with the shepherds and the angels “Look, Emmanuel has been born among us,“ and the deep joy of Christmas will be born among us.