Christmas is Something We Do

Thoughts on Psalm 96

Prepared on Christmas Eve, 2009

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

As we prepare our hearts for tonight and for everything Christmas.  What is it really?

What is Christmas 2009 years later?

What is Christmas to those of us who weren’t there but are here?

What is Christmas to those of us who still face a world that is dark, deadly, difficult and often appears devoid of the very saving power declared by God to be in Jesus?

What is Christmas, really?  Tonight’s reading takes us to the heart of Christmas for us more than for them.  It is especially a word to those of us who might be wondering what comes next.

What I like about Psalm 96 at Christmas because it’s full of verbs; imperative verbs.   Do you see them? This is a psalm of action, placing the responsibility of Christmas square upon the shoulders of the worshippers not just the preacher.  Can you visualize it?  Look at all these verbs.  Sing.  Declare.  Give.  Bring. Worship. Say. Let.   Can you see the great truth Christmas unfolding in these very verbs?

Sing.   That we all can visualize.  You can’t have Christmas without music.   The first way we keep Christmas going is to sing. 

We sing because we in Jesus we have a “new song.”  You can’t sing Christmas by just having a good voice, but you sing Christmas because, in Christ, your life has become a song.    Your life has a song and becomes a song, says the Psalmist because your life “shows” evidence of God’s salvation “day to day.”

Here is something else interesting about the music of Christmas.  The music, the season, and everything about it really loses its meaning unless it is something you sing and live every day.   You don’t just show up at church and sing Christmas.  But you show up already singing and here at church you keep on singing because it is in Jesus all the singing begins.

Declare.  What we sing, the psalmist says is not just a song, but a declaration.   This is his next verb: “Declare” his glory among the heathen.   Christmas is revealed when we declare our faith and how different the song sounds in our lives as opposed to how it sounds among those who don’t really believe what they are singing. 

Many will sing Christmas tonight, but not everyone is declaring when they sing.   This brings me to ask you are you declaring?   When I used to travel from the US to Europe and then back again, every time I went through customs I had to “declare” the items and was either taking to Europe or bringing back from Europe.   The Government wanted to know what I had to declare.  

On this night, we come not just to sing, but to declare.  To declare what real difference there is in our lives that makes Christmas what it really is: the birth of our savior.   So let me ask you tonight: What do you have to declare?  What difference has Jesus made or does Jesus make?   It’s not an automatic answer is it?  

We know that tonight we can look into the lives of a lot of people who sing, but have nothing to declare.  We also know that tonight we can look into the world and see that “declaring” that God has made a difference in our world through the birth of Jesus, is also not always visible.   In other words, Jesus came to save his people “from their sins” Matthew’s gospel says, but many of his people still need saving.   The world needs saving too, and from many different sins, struggles, troubles and fears. 

While some might think that since the world still needs saving, Jesus’ coming didn’t make any real difference, I beg to differ.  In fact, what Jesus did was not finish the job, but start it.  One of the most important things we all have to declare tonight,  is the simple knowledge that might be the hardest to come by:  The knowledge to know that we still need God’s help.   The greatest human problem is not the problem itself.  We humans are great at solving problems.  Our greatest human problem is to realize that we even have a problem.          

What we can all declare tonight, on this very night is that Jesus message, “For God so loved the world, that he gave…. “ has not yet stopped all the hate, violence and war in the world, but it does put every single ounce of hate on notice.   Jesus has shown us what the problem really is and he has also shown us, beyond a shadow of doubt what the solution is: Love God, Love your neighbor.  Here hangs all the Law and all the Prophets!  He told us.  The saving solution has been made manifest and this solution must be declared new and personal by every person, each generation and in every time in history. 

All the hope of Christmas is not released into our world until it is declared in our own hearts.   Just as the commandment depends on law and the prophets, the salvation which comes out of everything God has done depends on what we declare, today and each and every day of our lives.   What will you declare this evening?  Our joy of our singing depends upon our declaration.

The next word is more demanding, but also more declaring:  Give.   When we “give” we declare not just with our lips, but with our lives that we mean what we sing.  

 Our text tonight says “give unto the Lord the glory due to his name.”  Think about the kind of giving the psalmist is suggesting.   By his admonition to “give glory to God” he suggests that God’s glory is not always acknowledged in our world.    The world seeks its own glory.  People want to be lifted up in their own glory.   You can go through school and become knowledgeable and very successful in our world and remaining neutral about God.   This is what is so amazing about our culture and freedom here in America.   You don’t have to believe God, Christ, salvation, or Christmas.   You can be a perfectly good citizen just by being patriotic, law-abiding, and by giving your time volunteering to some good cause.  This would pass as being a “good” person in most everyone’s book and you might even seem nicer if you don’t even mention “God” and especially if you don’t pray in Jesus’ name.   You can live life for the sake of life itself and that will be perfectly fine---except for one small detail. 

This one very small detail, and this very small detail laying in the manger is what Christmas is about.   Christmas is Jesus because Jesus is about God and God deserves glory only if he gives us true hope.  For you see, Christmas is not just about getting enough hope or light to get through this world, nor even about getting to the next one.  No, Christmas is about having any real, lasting, enduring, and hopeful “glory” in anything we do and anything we experience.  What glory, what wonder, what hope, or what beauty is there in anything that is like a flower that fades, grass that withers, or a vapor than dissolves, or dust that simply blows away.

I have on my desk a recent magazine from National Geographic.   There is a lot of interesting and wonderful material in that magazine about life, the world, about culture and about the universe.  The most recent issue tells of the current astronomical search for other worlds.  Astronomers have wonderful new tools at their disposal and hope that somehow they will find, somewhere out there another planet similar to ours, where there is life or at least the capability of it.

Who knows what they might find, but there is one thing for sure: It’s a mighty big universe out there.  What Science knows is this.  If they don’t find  “out there”, at some time or other humanity will run out of hope.  Of course, what they don’t tell you, is that this hope of finding another world “out there” is only a hope for future generations.   If all there is “out there” is another world that perishes like this one, I don’t know what that will mean for everyone who lived and died before they are able to discover that world.  Does it mean everyone else dies without hope?  

Whatever the glory of God means, it means that every hope we have---every real hope, is not “out there” somewhere, but is right here, in this manager.   It is the message that what is “out there” has come “right here” to bring glory to everything that is, which in turn brings true glory to everything God must be, if we are to have any real hope.    

 The manger is not about finding a nice place to live on this earth, but it is about the eternal hope of God breaking into our world in the smallest, most unexpected, and unlikely place.    The manger displays the glory of God because at this place God blesses every place.  In this small detail, we get to see the big picture.  God has come near.   God has shown us his face.  God’s face and his glory can be found anywhere and everywhere in this world because the eternal God has given us, and every person before and after, the promise that life is glorious.  And because the most humble life is the most glorious life, God is due all glory.

How do we respond to such glory? Bring.  Christmas today is an offering.  Offering ourselves and offering our best gifts to God.  We know Christmas is about giving, but too often the giving is only to and for ourselves.   That is why the world stays dark.  The light comes only when we give God glory and we start glorifying God with the best and with all we have.   If you want to increase your Christmas, increase your giving and bring yourselves to God.

Of course all this singing, declaring, and offering is what makes up the next verb:  Worship.  When we give our best selves we worship “in beauty and holiness”.  Our worship is what God wants.  It’s not money he wants, but it’s holiness.   It’s living our best, highest, purest, most precious response to the wonderful, glorious life he gives.  

“Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness”, says the Psalmist.  Then the says, “fear before him.”  What does fear mean in worship?  

Fear can mean all kinds of things.  But at Christmas we know fear as what the Shepherd felt when the angels first appeared with good news.   What where the Shepherds afraid of?  Surely the Shepherds weren’t so afraid of dying, because they were tough men always living on the edge of life.   Also, the Shepherd weren’t afraid of God in the way Herod was afraid of God because they were best friends living closer to God than most.   What I think the Shepherds were most afraid of is that God’s angels, his messengers would appear with nothing to tell them.    

This is the still the greatest fear and it is the fear we should bring to God---the fear that we work all our lives, have this mind to understand the greatest mysteries and finally, one day, have nothing to tell…nothing to show..nothing that we’ve lived for and nothing to die toward.   Bring your fear to God.  He created us to have this kind of fear.  He gave us this fear so we be drawn to him.   It is this glorious fear that nothing matters which we bring to him in worship and discover that everything matters----it all matters in him.

Because in him we discover that everything matters, we have something to “Say”   This is the final verb, and the final result of “doing” Christmas.  What do we say?   “Say that the Lord reigns: He established this world.  He brings righteousness through his judgment. “

When we are holy people and we worship with our lives made holy in God, we still have something to say in this world.    On the news I was reminded just how “lost” our culture can become, when a reality show depicts the stereotyped lives of Italian youth living at the beach, partying their lives away living for nothing but self indulgence.   One Italian America said it is the worse kind of TV possible: TV that depicts human beings at their lowest.

 Yes, dear people, even in this world where 22% of America say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas” let’s not be fooled.   It should not be shocking to us that people want to leave Christ out of Christmas.   If this is where they are, let’s not hinder them.  Do you know why?  Because if God is God and if he did establish this world and only his justice works, then it won’t be long until people will start looking for someone who has something better, something else to say.   Christmas will soon cease to be Christmas without the message of Christ.  When they realize this, we will indeed have a lot say.

 Finally, when we sing, declare, give, bring and worship, and say what needs to be said, the rest will take care of itself.  The final verb is: “let”.  Let heaven do the rest.  Christmas will come.  It’s here.  He is here.   He is righteousness and truth and all we have to do now is stay with him.   The joy only comes in him.  We don’t save the world.  We don’t make the world.  We don’t manufacture the joy and the hope we need.   We “let.”   Let the heavens rejoice…let the earth be glad…let the sea roar…let the field be joyful, let the woods rejoice.   We can “let” because Christmas is not just true, but it is the greatest truth, or nothing is true.   Because he is true, we “let” God do his work, just like we now go home and after all our preparations, we get up and rejoice, because Christmas still does its work in our world and in our hearts.  SING… DECLARE…. GIVE….WORSHIP… SAY… LET    Christmas is something you do, we still do, we will always do, and then we leave the rest to God.   Amen.