“The Man Who Invented Christmas”

A sermon based upon Isaiah 9:2-7; Matthew 1:23, 

Preached by Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, 

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

3^rd  Sunday of Advent, December 17th,   

In October 1843, the writer Charles Dickens was broke and distressed. Despite early successes, his last three books had failed.  Rejected by his publishers, he set out to write and self-publish a book he hoped would keep his family afloat. The story Dickens created is the well-beloved Christmas Story known as “A Christmas Carol.” 

This Christmas, a film called ‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ celebrates Dickens masterpiece of prose and his struggle to write and publish it.   While we can still enjoy and appreciate this wonderful classic, we all know that Christmas wasn’t invented by him.  How we celebrate Christmas today has been greatly influenced by him, perhaps even mostly shaped by him, just as our Christmas celebrations have also been shaped by Clement Clarke Moore and his poem, ‘A Visit From St. Nick’, but Christmas, as we know it, wasn’t invented by either Dickens or Moore. 

So how was Christmas invented?  Historically, Christmas Day was first established during the time of the Roman emperor Constantine, around 300 AD.  At that time birthdays were not celebrated as much as “death days” of loved ones, but as the Church became free from persecution and part of mainstream society, it began to celebrate Christmas nine months after it celebrated the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of Jesus on March 25th.  This worked out quite well, because Christians was a fitting alternative to the pagan celebrations of the Winter Solstice which were filled with reveling and too much drinking for Christians.  Christmas Day, provided the occasion for more humane and reverent celebrations of hope, faith and if course, love.

Today, there is a tendency to return to a more primitive approach and to celebrate Christmas on more secular terms.  In the Broadcasting media we have even seen the attempt to skip term ‘Christmas’ altogether, by using the term “Happy Holidays”.  Even Christians can forget the ‘true’ meaning of Christmas, who once focused on the birth of Jesus Christ.  Christians can sing, celebrate, exchange gifts, but still omit celebrating the core focus of their faith amidst their Christmas party schedules.  “What does it really matter, whether I think about Jesus, religion, church or faith?” we might reason.  What difference does Christmas really make?  Is there really a ‘true meaning’ to Christmas?  I’ll make my on meaning, thank you very much!

THE PEOPLE WHO WALK IN DARKNESS

So, the question for us today is this: Who needs Christmas?  Our text answers: “The people in darkness do.”  While on vacation I saw a news report about a teenager who started a non-profit business to remake clothes for the homeless.  He said: ‘These aren’t second rate people and they deserve much more than second rate clothes’.  He was bringing light into the darkness of this world.  He was bringing ‘light’, he was bringing ‘hope’, and he was bringing ‘Christmas’.   When you are in the darkness, you’ll always need a little light.

During the time when churches were being persecuted in the European Eastern Block, once dominated by atheistic communism,  one Pastor stood up to preach at Christmas and he used today’s text: ‘The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.  On those in deep darkness the light has shined.’  When he preached those words communism had taken over his community.  The church building had been blown up by war and the Christians were not allowed to rebuild.  They were worshipping in small ‘mobile units’ or ‘trailors’.  Their land had become a dark place where there was no public place to turn on the true ‘lights of Christmas’.  But the pastor knew that the faithful had been in a place like this before.   He also knew that somehow they would come into the light again.  “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light….On those…has the light shined’.

When you living in darkness, which Isaiah called ‘deep darkness’ you will need hope for the true light.  Go up to Linville Caverns and walk deep inside those cavern walls, were the light never shines, and experience what I experienced as a child for the first time.   I thought I had been in the dark before.   I had walked in the woods.  I had moved from the city lights to the country nights.  I had spent the night in the woods in a tent and had put out the campfire and turned off the flash light.   But when the tour guide at Linville Caverns turned off the light, the darkness was so strong, it made be light headed, dizzy, disoriented, and even afraid.   Then, he turned the light back on.   He pointed to the fish down in the cavern stream and said, these fish have never seen the light and their eyes do not respond to light.  They are completely blind.   This is what it means live in the darkness.   If you stay in the darkness too long, you will eventually go blind and you will never be able to see again.   That was the first time I encountered what pure darkness means.   It not only means you don’t see, it also means you can’t.   When you live in pure darkness you are unable to see, even when the light shines. This is why the church must continue to bear witness to the light.

Most of us, thank God, have yet to live in a world that is void of physical or moral light.  We are still capable, for the most part, in understanding some difference between what it means to be in a time of moral darkness, and what it means to live in the light.  Our faith has been through dark times, our country has been in dark times too, but it seems that we have always been able to come back into the light.   Not long ago, I watched a movie about the Civil War; one of the darkest times in our American history.  It told the incredible story of how the Southern Army in Virginia needed fresh recruits, so they enlisted young military students from VMI.   These young recruits were to provide backup, but instead, when they saw the battle was being lost, they bravely walked through the mud, out of their shoes, and marched straight into battle.   Many of them courageously lost their lives, and still today, they are remembered at ceremonial roll calls at VMI.  The movie was named, “The Field of Lost Shoes” after the shoes that were found of those brave, young boys, who never came back to wear them again.

Those were ‘dark times’ in our history, which we never want to repeat, so when I heard young people in a new cast, sitting around in a room, expressing their fears that the extremes in social discourse, or in American politics makes them fear another ‘Civil War’ in America, I see that increasing fear that great darkness might return.   There is so much darkness still growing around us, that it can cause any of us to turn to thoughts of ‘doom and gloom’.   Whether it be the fears of an atomic war with North Korea, fears of increasing Islamic radicalism, fears of the European Union falling apart, or even fears of new cold war with Russia, or of new Chinese economic conquest, these fears bring renewed anxiety that the American, or even Christian future, may not be a bright as we once believed it to be.

Perhaps your own experience of ‘great darkness’ has nothing to do with the movements taking place on the world stage, but maybe the ‘darkness’ is closer to your own heart.  Maybe your own struggle with darkness is more personal, like the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job,  the loss of physical ability, or moral failure, which has meant the loss of your own dream.  Grief, however it comes, can seem very dark, especially at Christmas time, when we are talking about the shining of a great light.  Sometimes, because a ‘great light’ or ‘great hope’ has comes, we are caught in the shadow of our own difficult situation, and we are wandering through the dark.  Is that where you are this Christmas?   Are you one of those ‘people’ who finds themselves living, as the people in Isaiah’s time, who ‘curse their kings and their gods’ (Is. 8:21) or who ‘see only distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and are thrown ‘into thick darkness…. (Isa. 8:22)?   It can be easy to feel this way.   At some time, this could be any of us.   We can all live through a time when the darkness is so ‘thick’ it weighs heavy on our souls or in our hearts.

FOR A CHILD HAS BEEN BORN

But it is exactly upon this kind of people, --- ‘people who walked in darkness’ who see ‘a great light’ (Isa. 9: 2).   It was upon these very people who ‘lived a land of great darkness—“ that the ‘light shined’ (9:2).  It was upon these people who were bearing the ‘yoke’ of darkness as a ‘burden’ upon their own shoulders---those who had experienced the terrors of war, with ‘the boots of trampling warriors’ or the ‘garments rolled in blood’, who suddenly found their own ‘joy’ increased. But how?  How did this hope and renewed sense of ‘joy’ come?   How did this terrible darkness come to end?

People who have lost hope have a hard time overcoming darkness.   Once the darkness comes upon you, or gets within you, it’s very hard to get it out.  During the Vietnam Series of films on PBS, I watched and listened as one Marine told how after the Vietnam War, after all that terrible combat experience, when he came home, and ever since, even as a man, he had to sleep with a night light.   When he told his kids they didn’t need to sleep with their night lite on anymore, they complained: “Dad, why are you still sleep with a nightlight on.”  He had to try to explain to his kids why he, as their father, still had to have his nightlight on.   It was that hard to get the darkness out.  

One thing for sure, great hope for a new world does not come by our own human doing.  It may indeed seem to be too late for some of us to have any new hope for a new world, a new life, or a new joy, especially when we too have been hardened, broken down, or defeated by the darkness around us.   It may feel as if it’s too late for us, but Isaiah says that even upon this kind of people---people who are still living in darkness, when their seems to be little hope for their own lives—it is upon them that hope came.  

Hope came upon them, just like hope comes upon people when a baby comes.  Have you ever been in a nursing home, and been with some of those folks for whom there is seems to be little hope left, and then someone brings in a baby into their room?   When the baby or the young child enters the room, even the hardest, most pain ridden soul lights up.   When the baby comes things change.  It’s like this for new parents, when the baby comes everything changes.   The reason you live changes.  The reason you work changes.  How you see the world changes.  The baby changes everything.

It was this kind of change toward hope---hope in a young child, that Isaiah spoke of when he said, “For unto us a child has been born, …a son has been given to us.”   When the baby comes, light and hope comes.  But what we also need to know is that this child Isaiah saw, was no ordinary child.    Isaiah says that this child is different because  ‘authority rests upon his shoulders….”   He is not just a child who will remain a child, but this is a child who will rule the nations in a way that he can be astoundingly named  “Wonderful Counselor,  Mighty God,  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace….”   These are not ordinary words about just any kind of ordinary child, nor just about any kind of worldly Prince, Counselor or King.   These are words about a child who grows in ‘grows in authority’ so that there will be no doubt about who he is.  When this child comes to rule, Isaiah says,  ‘there shall be endless peace for David’s throne’.   This child will grow to establish and uphold God’s rule with ‘justice and righteousness’ ‘forevermore’.   His rule establishes hope, peace, ‘justice and righteousness’ in a way that you don’t just have a new day, but in a way that there is a ‘whole new world’.   And this new world comes just as humbly and hopeful as it does for a family who experiences the birth of new life in their own little child.  Isn’t it amazing how such a simple, humble, even humiliating birth, could change the course of everything else that happens?  We all know what the birth of a Stalin or Hitler negatively meant for the world.  Imagine what it could mean when a good ruler was born.   This is the kind of positive, but humble and relentless hope that keeps coming to the world every time a child is born.  

This is a beautiful image of hope---hope not just for a family, not just for Israel, but this is a hope for the coming transformation of the whole world.   But you may ask how has, how does, or how can the birth of Jesus as the Jewish Messiah still be the hope of the whole world---a world that grows more complicated than ever before, where promises of hope, future, or transformation are quickly extinguished by the negativities of our own ‘gloom and doom’?   Has the birth of Jesus really changed anything?   Has it really even changed us—our world, or at least how we see the world?  What is it about the life, teachings, or deeds of Jesus that has caused the world to see or do anything differently?   Are we a people who have been left in the dark too long, or are we truly a people ‘who have seen a great light’?   Has the baby really changed anything in us, or in our world, which brings us the light of hope and the promise of peace for our own tomorrow?    Did Jesus ‘invent’ or ‘bring’ anything of substance into our world that brings a difference to the darkness that still comes in life and in death?

WITH JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS

This child Isaiah saw is not only called a Wonderful Counselor, or Prince of Peace, he is also unexpectedly called “Everlasting Father” or “Almighty God”.  The point here is not to point to who this child was, but to point to who this child is, and what he did, and still does, to bring to us a hope that is no ordinary hope, that shines no ordinary light. This means that you can’t expect to measure hope or see light in the birth of this child in the same way you measure hope in the birth of our own children.

Isaiah expressed exactly this when he said that this ‘child’ would ‘establish’ David’s kingdom with ‘justice and righteousness’ from ‘this time onward and forevermore’ (v.7).  Here, we come to some of the strongest promises in all of Scripture; “The Zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”   What this means is that the light of ‘justice and righteousness’ which comes through this child, will not be established in any way that had ever been known before, or will ever be known again.   This light will also never fail, like other lights shining through other human kingdoms.   The light of hope in of this child’s rule and in this child’s kingdom is different, because he is a very different kind of child, and a very different kind of king.  

This child is different, not because he actually ‘rules’ in this world, but he is different because he actually has never has yet ruled in this world.   Whatever we can say or don’t say about Christ and his kingdom, or whatever we might say about who really invented Christmas, or who or what Christmas really means,  the ‘light’ in Christ’s ‘kingdom’ is a light that was rejected by the world.  But as John’s gospel says John to our amazement, is that the world that rejects Jesus is unable to extinguish or overcome Christ’s light.  The world can’t overcome the light because, as Jesus himself said, “My kingdom is not of this world”, Jesus said this to Pilate, as Pilate prepared to crucify him. Jesus also said: “You will see me and the kingdom coming in glory…..”  Thus, Jesus light shines into the world, but is not from this world.  Like the sun, it shine and can’t be denied, though we are still free to try to hide from its light.  This light shines on earth but it is a light that remains in the heavens… is still in the future… and is is coming only in God’s way and on God’s time.  The light of God’s kingdom comes near, but still hasn’t fully come as we still are free to refuse its light.   God’s light shines brightly in the world, to reveal how things should be, could be, may be, but it remains beyond this world, so it can’t ever be fully extinguished.

God’s light in Jesus Christ can’t be extinguished because this is a light shining straight  from God’s heart into the human heart to reveal the truth of what it means to live as humans on the earth.  God’s light in Christ is an eternal, spiritual, light shining as a kingdom where God’s comes demanding to rightfully rule on the throne within our hearts.  It is only in here, in human hearts, that the kingdom can be believed and be established, and it is only here, within our hearts, that light will fully shine, as we will allow it to shine.  “This little Light of Mine” is where the Kingdom must begin.   It is God’s light that shines directly into our hearts to become our own light.  This is how this child comes and commands his rule.  The great, mysterious light of Christmas, is that the very ‘Everlasting Father’ and ‘Almighty’ God comes to us, again and again, revealed as the the same, helpless, needy, dependent baby who comes into our family and captures our hearts as the truth who commands his humble, righteous and just rule.  Until this eternal child captures all our hearts, the Christ can’t fully come.   But he can rule in and through and in us. But one day,  our hope is, that when the government of this child has grown and gained full authority in us,  this kingdom will come without end.  He will rule forever, because we allow the light to shine in us, one heart at a time.  The great mystery is that this child continues to be born, his kingdom will continue to come, shining on human hearts, as long as there one willing heart until God comes to finally make take his throne and make his home, eternally, with us.  

This final rule, however, does not merely wait on us, it waits in us.  This is what we see in the conclusion of Dickens ‘A Christmas Carol.’  You remember the moment when Ebenezer Scrooge finally sees the light.  He had been visited by three ghosts of Christmas; Christmas past, present, and Christmas future.   But it’s the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come that finally gets to him, or in him.  This Ghost points Scrooge’s to his own darkness, forcing him to face the reality he doesn’t want to face: his coming death and meaningless life.  It is then, as he sees his name on his own tombstone, right in front of him, that he can no longer deny the person he needs to be and the person others need him to be.  Listen again, to how Scrooge responds as he sees, in his dream his own body on his death bed: “Am I that man who lay upon the bed? No, Spirit! Oh no, no! Spirit! Hear me! I am not the man I was. … Why show me this, if I am past all hope? Good Spirit, your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me, by an altered life! I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year…. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.  Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!’

The rest of the story, you know.   Scrooge saw a light in the darkness, and he turned toward that light.   What about you?   Can you still see His light shining bright, even in the darkness that surrounds us?   Can you sing, with the spiritual, the best Christmas son of all: “I saw the light, I saw the light, no more darkness, no more night.  Now I’m so happy, no sorrow in sight.  Praise the Lord, I saw the light?”   Can you say with the prophet: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness-- on them light has shined?”  Will you allow ‘his authority’ to ‘grow’ and glow through you?  You can; you must!  “For” this “child has been born for us!   He is the one who is forever ‘Christmas’!  Amen.