December 24, 2011

Christmas Eve Service – “The Worse Christmas Ever”

Rev. Steve Poos-Benson

Do you guys remember your worse Christmas ever? Any of you have a worse Christmas ever? My worse Christmas ever came when I was in the fourth grade. I was ten years old and I was told – our dad came and told us that we were leaving San Diego for the year, that we had to move to Eugene, Oregon so he could finish his Ph.D. Eugene, Oregon felt like the far side of the moon to me when I was in the fourth grade in San Diego. I kept on asking people “do they even speak English up there in Eugene?” We were told that we had to pack and we could only take one box of toys for an entire year. One box of toys for an entire year? We’d blow through that in a couple of days.

The sad thing was, was when we were told that we had to leave all of the Christmas decorations behind. Now that is a crisis. Because I don’t know about you, but the family that I grew up in was full of traditions around Christmas and Christmas decorations. Now some of you are younger than baby boomers so you’re going to have to bear with me, because I’m going to take all the baby boomers in the church on just a little bit of Christmas trivia – a little bit of Christmas imagination – Christmas remembrance.

Don’t you remember, baby boomers, that Christmas started in about July when the Sears Roebuck catalogue came out? Don’t you remember that catalogue came out and you started leafing through that thing? You would dog ear a page and then you would double dog ear a page and you were making a list and between my siblings – the five of them – we fought back and forth who had the Sears and Roebuck catalogue. And we kept making the list and handing it to our folks. “Tell Santa that this is what we want.” It started back in July.

And then when the actual month of Christmas came, there were so many decorations – this is a little bit of my family album – this is my dad. First of all, we put up lights on the outside and we went to the Christmas tree farm and cut a tree and brought it in, put the tree up and we strung together cranberries and popcorn. How many of you remember stringing cranberries and popcorn? Some of you – how many of you still do it? I didn’t think so. I didn’t think so.

And we had a train under the tree. Each of us had special ornaments that we put up on the tree. We were given the ornament from our grandparents – this is from grandma and grandpa – you could put it up – this is from Meema and Poppa – you put it up – this is an ornament from when you were born – each of us had these special ornaments that we got to put up. Each of us, on Christmas Eve, we had to go to church – sorry kids, we had to do it too. But when we got home after dinner we knew that we got to open up one present. One present. And it was always from the dog – Dali the Dalmatian. It was always PJs. Don’t you remember that? It was always PJs.

And don’t you remember that it was so hard to go to bed? You go to sleep, you wake up and it was only 30 minutes later. And you get up in the morning, so excited. And my parents had to barricade the hallway with chairs and what not to keep the six of us back because we’d be clamoring there, getting ready to go because we knew that something special had happened out there in the living room – that Santa had come. And when they gave the word, we busted into that living room. And there was the magic – that transformation. Isn’t that great? I love that peddle tractor. I rode that peddle tractor until I was 15! And had my permit!

But Christmas was full of magic and tradition. So when we were told that we were moving to Eugene, Oregon from San Diego – this was my first experience with snow. But that we had to leave the Christmas decorations behind – what were we going to do? Were we going to hang lights? No. No lights? Were we going to have a tree? We were going to have a tree. “You brought the ornaments, didn’t you?” No ornaments. “Well what are we going to do for ornaments? We’re going to make ornaments?”

So my mom handed us egg cartons. We cut out the egg cartons. We glued them together, which was kind of fun. We glittered them all up. That was a mess. That was kind of fun. And then she got out paper machete and we made paper machete balls and that was fun. And then we painted them and that was fun. But when we hung them all up on the tree, it was ugly.

Then we came to the stockings. What about the stockings? Did you bring the stockings? No. No. There’s no room for the stockings. “No room for the stockings. What are we supposed to do for stockings?” Go up to your drawer. So my older brother and I – we shared a room – we went up and we tried to find the biggest hiking socks we could and put them up on the mantle. We had this feeling that this was going to be the worse Christmas ever. And I went upstairs on Christmas Eve night thinking poor old Santa is going to be lucky if he can get a stale pretzel and some water.

It was the worse Christmas ever. Do you remember your worse Christmas ever? One of the hard things about Christmas – oh boy – I forgot a really important part – back up – back up. Before I went upstairs, my mom brought out the Nativity set. I remember thinking “What? There’s room for the Nativity set but there’s not room for our stockings?” And she took out the Nativity set and she told – every year she told us the Christmas story when she brought out the Nativity set. And she said “remember, kids, Jesus didn’t have any presents. The meaning of Christmas is family and friends, and the God who never forgets us. And that’s what Christmas is all about remembering the God who never forgets us.” And as a fourth grader – 10 years old – I thought – “yeah, that’s the real meaning of Christmas, but even still, this feels like the worse Christmas ever.” And that’s when I went upstairs. And I thought poor Santa will be lucky if he gets a stale pretzel and water.

But you know the hard thing about Christmas – in the midst of all the joy and the celebration – it’s all the high expectations that we have for Christmas. We want Christmas to be this positive, hopeful, uplifting thing. We wait – some of you start your Christmas shopping in July, and you have it done in October and all the presents are wrapped. We want our families to be together, we want our finances solid so that we can buy presents, not only for ourselves and our family, but for other people. We want our health, we want life.

The problem is, is that that’s often not the way it is at Christmas. This past year, in our own congregation, there have been many people who have lost their jobs. The economy is still trying to get itself back on it’s feet. People have lost their homes. There are families that are full of conflict. Maybe you are here tonight against your own will and you’ve just come to kind of keep the Christmas truce going. Death waits for no person at Christmas. Just two weeks ago, Mitch and I did three memorial services. Two of them for people in their 50s.

Christmas. Sometimes it’s a painful time of year. It can feel like the worse Christmas ever. The first Christmas was the worse Christmas ever. Mary and Joseph, traveling from Nazareth to Bethlehem. The Scripture passage says that they went there to be enrolled – that King Augustus was taking a census. Well, the emperor didn’t want to know just what the population of the Empire was. The emperor wanted to know who the people were and how many there were so he could tax them. The emperor had to have a huge army quartered down in Palestine because many of the uprisings that the Jewish people were having to try to throw off the Roman Empire. So the Empire came down with an iron fist and sent the army –who is going to pay for the army for the people who caused the uprising? And so Augustus said “alright, everybody has to be counted. Everybody go to your home town.” And so Mary and Joseph travel, during the springtime – 10 to 12 day’s journey by foot – maybe months – so they could be counted and taxed. It was a hard time. A broken time. You could ask the people who were living during the Roman Empire, they would tell you it was the worse Christmas ever. There was no light shining in the darkness. The Empire was darkness. It was the worse Christmas ever and Christmas hadn’t even been invented.

But yet, it is in the darkness that God does some of God’s best work. Because it was in the middle of that darkness that God’s little light of hope – the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it. For unto us is born this day in the City of David a savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you. You shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger. And so they went with haste. And they found a child and they came and bowed before him and they worshiped. And he shall be called “Wonderful Counsel, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace”.

And this light, this little baby grew to become a man. And the man taught us about the immediate presence of God. And you didn’t have to search any further than your own heart and your own life and that all you needed to do was to look around you. You didn’t have to have a religion. You didn’t even have to have a church or synagogue. All you needed to do was to wake up. Wake up from your mundane lives. Wake up to the spirit of God that is dwelling inside of you. Wake up to the hope and joy that God brings into your life. That was his message. Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!!

That’s what my older brother and I had decided to do at 4:30 on the morning of the worse Christmas Eve ever. We both woke up and we decided it was time for everybody to wake up. And so he got out his bassoon and I got out my trumpet. And together we started playing Christmas Carols. The only person we were able to wake up, though, was Papa Bear who came storming down the hallway, threw open the doors and said “If you boys don’t go back to bed, this is going to be the worse Christmas ever!” We said “Yeah, what’s new.” So we went to bed for a little while, but there came a knock on the wall from my sister’s side. “Are you up?” “Yeah, we’re up.” So we started knocking on our little brother’s door and our little sister – before you knew it, all six of us were out in the hallway. And we said “It’s time to begin the celebration of the worse Christmas ever!”

So my parents got up and made us stay up on the landing and they went downstairs. They were down there for quite some time. And when the said it was ready – you know how kids are – we piled down the stairs, tripping all over each other, screaming and yelling. And we turned the corner and I stopped because it was the Christmas miracle. The Christmas tree had been transformed. All of the ornaments that we had left behind were there. The train under the tree was there. The Christmas decorations filled the living room – were there. The chemistry set from the Sears and Roebuck catalogue that I so wanted – with the white apron – was there. Our stockings – our stockings with our names embroidered on them and candy canes and little trucks and chocolates – it was a Christmas miracle.

And I went to my mom – I ran up to her and grabbed her and said “You remembered!” She said “God remembers. Stephen. Christmas is about God remembering.” And that’s why this Christmas has always stayed with me. Because it taught me to look beyond the decorations, the presents, the lights and to really be mindful that it is really all about the fact that God remembers us. The God who is always with us.

And every Christmas I remember this worse Christmas ever and the most profound lesson it taught me because what it ultimately taught me was that it’s not so much that God remembers us, but how important it is for us to remember God. Because invariably, you will have a worse Christmas ever and it’ll come in April or June or August and you will feel as though God has abandoned you and has left you. It’s in that moment that you need to remember God. Because when you remember God, it is as if God strikes a match in your soul and a light – a light begins to shine. And that light is the light of hope. A light of hope that burns within you. And when you know that God has not forgotten you and that God is with you, it gives you the courage and strength to continue on. For the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. For unto you, a child is born. Unto you, a son is given. Merry Christmas.