Getting into the Christmas Spirit
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
John 1:6-8, 19-28
“There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.”
The gospel of John is different from the other three gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke. It was written later and for a different community. It has a different perspective and a different message. Its focus is on Jesus’ divinity rather than on Jesus’ humanity. This is apparent from its opening passages, proclaiming Jesus as Word and Jesus as Light. It also uses John the Baptist in a different way. As a matter of fact, it doesn’t even call him “the Baptist”, nor is he announced as a forerunner to Jesus. John has one purpose in this gospel: to witness to Jesus the Christ.
You see, in the early days of Christianity, there were all sorts of questions as to who Jesus was, who John was, and what their relationship was. The writer of the gospel of John wants to make this very clear and so he has John being very specific. He opens verse 19 of chapter 1 with: “This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’”
The implication is that the high priests, the ones in power in Jerusalem want clarity. Therefore, they send emissaries to John to question him. John tells them very clearly, very succinctly, “I am not the Messiah.” So they go on with their questioning: “Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet?” John answers “no” and again “no”. Now this is in direct opposition to the gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells the crowd that if they are willing to accept it, John is the Elijah who was to come. So what’s the author of the gospel of John’s deal? What is trying to tell us? He goes on to have the Jewish authorities ask John who he is then. If he is not the Messiah, he is not Elijah, he is not the prophet, then who is he?
John answers with the scripture from Isaiah that we lifted up last week: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’” This is really not an answer at all, but a plea. A cry for people to pay attention, to wake up, to straighten up and fly right in preparation for the Lord’s coming.
At this point, perhaps frustrated and annoyed, the authorities give up on getting a straight answer out of John. So they stop trying to get at the question of who he is directly and they take a different tack. They ask him another question, a different question. They ask him what he’s up to, thinking this will lead them to who he is. More specifically, they say to him: “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?”
But once again, John does not respond to their question, but instead answers another. He tells them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” This is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
John basically does not tell them anything new about himself; instead his whole purpose and presence is to witness to Jesus. Jesus as God, the Word, the Light, but John’s witness to him transforms that Godly presence, that other-worldly presence to something temporal, something time-bound, something historical, Jesus as God’s self-expression on earth in space and time.
There are a couple of points I’d like to lift up to us today. First of all, John identifies what he does, what his part is, then he goes on to witness to Jesus. The same is true for us. We need to know who we are, what we do, what our strengths are, before we can do anything for or about anyone else. Now some of that may be easy. We know our names, our ages, our genders. We can locate ourselves through where we live and the friendships we share with those who are like us, who have common histories. We can name our gifts and talents: we’re creative or artistic, we’re generous or loving, we’re good with money or have a talent for math, we think analytically or we’ve got a strong emotional, spiritual connection. We can identify ourselves through the things we enjoy: we love to sing or dance or build things or hang out with friends or read or cook or hike or play lacrosse or take things apart and put them back together again.
But ultimately, our identity, like John’s, is through our connection to God. Remember John tells them that he is a ‘voice crying out in the wilderness’ and what he does is ‘baptize with water’. Well, we, too, have that same undeniable bond with God in Jesus Christ. We, as Presbyterians, believe that God is always reaching out to us, that even in our most hesitant or even repellant moments, God is still stretching toward us, attempting to establish contact, connection. And in our baptisms, which many of us experience as babies, too young to even know what’s going on, we, in that case, through our parents’ commitment, reach back to God. We ask, at that moment, or our parents ask for us if we were baptized as infants, for God’s spirit to enter us, to be with us, to connect and communicate with us for all time. Now you could argue that God’s spirit is in us at birth and that may be true, but the point is not the fact of our connection with God, but the act of commitment to that connection.
So we are not only tall, short, young, old, mechanically-inclined, all-thumbs, artistic, not-crafty, green-thumb, black-thumb, analytical, emotional, sporty, two-left-feet, whatever, we are also God-spirited people. We are a people who have been God-en-spirited. Who have invited God’s spirit to reside within us and who thus have God’s spirit to draw on at any and all times.
At this time of year, people often talk about “getting into the Christmas spirit”. What they mean by that, I think, is that they want to feel like singing Christmas carols and have happy/jolly/joyous spirits. They want to enjoy the hustle and bustle of the crowds and the decorations and the hype. They want to feel “a part of” the season. Sometimes you’ll even hear people say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just not in the Christmas spirit this year. I just can’t get into it.”
Well, I think that’s going about it the wrong way. We’re not supposed to “get into the Christmas spirit”. The Christmas spirit, God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ is supposed to get into us!
How is that going to happen? Well, let’s go back to our first scripture reading of the day. You may not have realized it, but the reading from Isaiah is a poem. Listen, can’t you hear it?:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
This poem is read by Jesus when he is in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth – it is a poem about a prophet whose mission is assigned by God, a prophet who has come to announce good tidings to all the world, a prophet whose job is to seek and to save, to find and to free, to liberate and love. The poem also recognizes the present circumstances – the fact that the world is not freed, it is not liberated, it is not saved, but that it is God’s will that it be so. When Jesus reads the poem in his home synagogue, he tells the congregation, “Today this reading is fulfilled in your hearing.”
He is telling them that he is the one who has come to make these things come to pass. The good news coming to the oppressed, the binding up of the broken-hearted, the liberation of captives, release of prisoners, the proclamation of the year of the Lord’s favor, the year that all debts were renounced, this is the good news of Jesus Christ. And if we, as Jesus namesakes, as Christians, are his body on earth today, this is our job. This is our duty. This is our call. We, today, just as John did 2000 years ago, are to witness to Jesus Christ. And this is an awfully tall order. But we don’t have to do it all at once, nor do we have to do it all alone. We have our individual skills and gifts and talents and we have each other to lean on and to share the journey with. Mother Teresa once said, “We cannot do great things, but we can do small things with great love.” And this is how we do it:
We bring mittens and hats and scarves and baby items for the Mittens and More tree. We volunteer to serve in soup kitchens. We donate more money than we think we can to the church and other organizations like the Suffolk Country Coalition Against Domestic Violence or the Girl Scouts or the Boy Scouts or Presbyterian Disaster Relief or Heifer International or Save the Children or Presbyterian Welcome, organizations that work for peace and justice and sustainability around the globe. We go on Mission Trips with one another and on our own to places that need our help. We tutor children at Huntington Station Enrichment Center on a regular weekly basis. We support the Presbyterian Church of Sweet Hollow Mission Team and its efforts. We develop our spiritual sense of self through participating in Bible Study or Book Discussion or independent reading and listening and prayer. We teach Sunday School here at Sweet Hollow sharing our own Christian faith with those who are just beginning their faith journeys. We volunteer to mentor a youth in Confirmation class. We get involved at the Presbytery level, joining other people of faith in evangelism and outreach.
Now it probably sounds like I’m adding more to your plate at a time of year when we are all totally full up, but that is not the thing at all. Joyce Rupp tells a story about traveling to celebrate one New Year’s Day with friends. It had been a particularly cold winter so far, and the roads were terribly icy – the iciest roads, in fact, that she had ever driven on. She calls it a “white-knuckle” drive. A drive that she knew if she even had to hit the breaks once, she would end up in a deep ditch. She vacillated about what to do. Should she continue driving? Should she turn back and head home? Then she thought of what she was heading toward. A gathering of one of her favorite families, friends who she knew would fill her day with laughter and joy. So she decided to keep going, to take the risk of the country road with all its hills and icy endless curves.
Once she made the decision, her stress level dropped. She began to look more closely at the beauty the ice storm had left in its wake. The whole countryside sparkled. Every tree branch glistened. The deep blue sky and the brilliant sun hanging up in it created a miraculous, crystalline world. What had started out as a fearful journey turned into a magical wonderful ride.
Now here’s the cool thing. If we do this, if we take on the mantle of our Christian heritage and we truly attempt to live out our faith to the fullest of our abilities, stretching up to and beyond our limitations, even at this time of year when we feel like there is already too much going on, we’re the ones who grow! We’re the ones who ultimately benefit beyond all imagining. Because it is not about taking on more obligations, it is about investing what we’re already doing with the Holy Spirit’s intention.
The passage in Isaiah acknowledges this for it ends in a hymn of thanksgiving – the writer is overwhelmed by God’s goodness to the point of ecstasy. He finishes, saying: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being shall exult in my God; for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation, he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. For as the earth brings forth its shoots, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to spring up, so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring up before all the nations.”
The author acknowledges the springtime of new life in the Lord. He proclaims the spring resurrection with joy and gladness. Here we are today looking toward the birth of Jesus and we forget that Jesus’ birth signals our re-birth. Our re-birth into a new life, a life of hope and peace and justice, a life of love and faith and meaning, a life without fear, without pain, without boundaries.
I ask you, what would it mean for you this year, if instead of looking to getting into the Christmas spirit, you asked the Christmas spirit to get into you? What would it mean if you didn’t sit back and wait to “feel” some thing that is external, outside yourself and produced all the commercial fol-di-rol, and instead you invited God’s spirit, the spirit that touched you in baptism, to re-enter you today, right now this very minute and be with you throughout this season? How would it change the next two weeks in your life to say, “Okay, God, this season isn’t really about buying computer games for my kids or whether or not my niece pays enough attention to me or the party I didn’t get invited to or the wackiness in my family. This season is about you. It is about the gift of Jesus Christ in the world, come to forgive me and everybody else. And instead of trying to get into some artificial Christmas spirit that I don’t even really understand, this year I ask you to send your Christmas spirit that it might get into me and that I might do your will and your work and be your witness during this Christmas season.” What do you say, folks? This year, let’s get rid of getting into the Christmas spirit and let the Christmas spirit get into us. Amen.