Sermon delivered Christmas Eve 2013 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Franklin, TN.
“Are you ready for Christmas?”
How many times have you asked or been asked that question, by friends or family or even strangers you greet this time of year? It’s one of the ways we make small talk with each another as the calendar moves closer to December 25th. “Hi, how are you, good to see you. So are you all ready for Christmas?”
When someone asks this, what they generally mean is, “Is your tree up and decorated? Have you finished your Christmas shopping? Have you bought all the groceries you’ll need for Christmas dinner? Are the sheets for your guest room washed and on the bed, ready to welcome family from out of town?” Are you ready for Christmas?
But there’s another layer of meaning to that question that we don’t often think about. It’s probably not what you intend to ask, or what the person is asking when they say it to you, but that question is actually a very appropriate question for the season of Advent, the season leading up to Christmas. It’s a question about preparation. But instead of asking whether we have our physical house in order, we could hear it as a question about whether we have our spiritual house in order. Are you ready for Christmas? Are you ready not just for a visit from family, but for a visit from God himself? Have you made room for Christ in your heart? Are you ready for Christmas?
The answer, of course, is probably “no.” No, we don’t have all the groceries bought, no, the sheets are not on the bed; in fact, they’re still in the washer and we’re hoping this service won’t go on too long so we can get home and finish taking care of that, and no, we didn’t manage to get everything on our Christmas shopping list, and we’re worried sick that little Johnny will hate us forever when he discovers there’s no X-Box under the tree. And on top of all that, we’re supposed to be ready for a visit from God himself? No, we’re not nearly ready for that, either.
And guess what? In the classic paradoxical way of the Gospel, this is actually a GOOD thing! Tonight, I’m inviting you to give thanks for all the ways you are NOT “ready for Christmas.” Because a lot of times, the more ready we think we are for something, the less ready we actually are.
The people of Jesus’s day thought they were ready for Christmas, for the coming of the Christ, the Messiah. They expected a great king who would overthrow the occupying Roman government and restore the kingdom of Israel. They were ready for power, for force, for military victory. But they didn’t get what they were so sure they were ready for. Instead, they got a helpless baby, born to a peasant family in a barn, who grew up to preach peace, to advocate loving enemies rather than defeating them, and who allowed himself to be put to death by the Romans rather overthrowing them.
By contrast, Mary knew she wasn’t ready for Christmas. She wasn’t ready to become a mother, much less the mother of God. “How can this be?” she asks, when the angel appears to announce an impossible future for her life. Joseph wasn’t ready to be a father, certainly not before he was even married, and certainly not to the very Son of God. And when the time came for Jesus to be born, they still weren’t ready – traveling away from home, with no place to stay and “no crib for his bed.” This young, unprepared couple was certainly not “ready for Christmas.” But because of their unreadiness, they were forced to acknowledge their total dependence on God. “I am the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word,” Mary says to the angel (Luke 1:38). It was precisely the fact that they were not prepared that allowed them to be open to the unexpected movement of God in their lives.
If we think we’re ready for Christmas because there is food in the fridge and there are presents under the tree, because we’ve checked off all the items on our to-do list, we may actually close ourselves off to a real encounter with God. If we think we’ve taken care of it all, we may forget that we need God to take care of some things for us. We may begin to think that we have “done Christmas,” patting ourselves on the backs, forgetting that Christmas is not something we have the power to manufacture, but a pure gift from God.
Our gift-giving this time of year is meant to be sacramental, an outward and visible sign of the free gift of God’s love incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ – which is an inner and spiritual grace that all of our physical gifts can only loosely approximate. But so often, we forget the intended sacramental nature of giving and receiving gifts this time of year, and fall instead into a kind of false thinking in which we take pride in our ability to give gifts, and accept the message of our culture that those with more have the better Christmases; those with the most expensive gifts, with the best family situations, and with the most lavishly-decorated homes – those who are “ready for Christmas” by all secular standards. But actually, those who are the most unprepared for Christmas – those without a tree, without gifts, without a rich feast awaiting them tomorrow – are really the most “ready for Christmas,” in the spiritual sense. Oscar Romero, the late Roman Catholic archbishop of El Salvador, put it this way:
No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truly poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God -- for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel. God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.
The more ready we think we are for Christmas, perhaps the less ready we actually are. Because the more we trust in our own abilities to create a picture-perfect Christmas, to make everything “just right” by secular standards, the more likely we are to forget our need for God.
So if you’ve arrived at this Christmas season feeling harried, worn out, and frustrated, rejoice! Give thanks! This unreadiness is an opportunity to acknowledge your total dependence on God, to admit that you need someone to come on your behalf. Remember that Christmas is not about your ability to give dozens of gifts, but about your ability to receive just one. In all your lack of preparedness, in all your failures and foibles, in those moments, you are truly ready for Christmas.
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