December 25, 2011

Rev. Justin Spurlock

“Why I Love Santa Clause”

Our Scripture comes from Chapter 2 – if you were here last night, you already heard this Scripture. Hear it again.

“There were sheep herders in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly God’s angels came and stood among them and God’s glory blazed around them. They were terrified. And the angels said ‘Don’t be afraid. I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody worldwide. A savior has just been born in David’s town. A savior who is the Messiah and master. This is what you are to look for. A baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger.’ At once, the angel was joined by a huge, angelic choir singing God’s praises saying ‘Glory to God in the highest heavens and peace on earth and good will to all of humanity.’ And as the angel choir withdrew in the heavens, the sheep herders talked it over and they said ‘Let’s get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us.’ They left, running, and they found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in the manger, and seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the sheep herders were impressed. And Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheep herders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way that they had been told.” Let’s consider this morning how we will apply this Scripture to our lives.

My sermon title this morning is “Why I like Santa Clause.” And you’re probably wondering ‘How can I just read that Scripture text and then give a sermon on why I just really love Santa Clause. And you’re probably thinking “Seriously? I came on Sunday morning, on Christmas day, the day of Jesus’ birth to hear a sermon about Santa? Seriously? This guy.”

And I can understand, maybe, some of the angst there. Santa Clause has certainly taken over American culture, right? Stole Christmas from Jesus. Who steals from Jesus? Santa Clause does. And our society is very consumeristic and is, we’ve got this whole thing about getting, getting, getting, wrapping and unwrapping presents and what can we get the most of and the best of and all these sorts of things. So yeah, I can understand that to some degree. And yet, even in my own mind, I have to face up to reality and say “Jesus lost the war to Santa Clause, right?” Realistically, Santa took over. And so I say “What do I do with that as a pastor?” Pastors for decades have been fighting this battle, trying to get people to know the reason for the season is Jesus. Right? That’s the whole point.

And yet we drone on and drone on every single year, and as soon as you leave, you’re going to go celebrate Santa Clause, right? Yeah. So I said I’m going to stop fighting this battle, I’m just going to say okay, I’m going to do a sermon on why I like Santa. And somehow in there, you’re going to learn about Jesus, too.

Now last Sunday I was downstairs with the kids in Sunday School and I gave them an opportunity – one of those moments – to have them ask me anything they wanted to about the Christmas story. And specifically, stuff that they have confusion about with the Christmas story – even things you don’t believe about the Christmas story. And they started asking me a whole bunch of questions – the Booroms were down there – they heard some of these questions – and someone looked at me and said – they raised their hand and I called on them – and said “Is Jesus Santa Clause?”

Alright? You all laugh, right? Is Jesus Santa Clause? In my head I went okay, I can understand where that question is coming from. And when I began to really reflect on it later, I thought that is a really profound, theological question. It truly is. It’s better than most of the questions you all ask – come on now. Kids ask some great questions. Is Jesus Santa?

And the thing I began to go into – I can understand where the question comes from because as kids especially – and even as some of us as adults – we think of God as this jolly old man, right? So you begin to think if God is a jolly old man, and Santa Clause is a jolly old man, well maybe they’re the same. And I began to think more about this. All these qualities that we give to Santa Clause are also the same qualities that we love about Jesus. Right? I mean Jesus is a lover – a lover of children. The disciples tried to shoo the children away and Jesus climbs all over them for it. Because Jesus wants to bring the children into him and that’s similar to Santa Clause.

Santa Clause loves children. And for two world-wide people, that’s unusual. I mean if you think about all the greatest people down through history, not too many of them do we assign the quality of major lovers of children. Right? They’re known for other things. But Jesus and Santa Clause are both known for their love for children.

And the second thing I began to realize is both of them bring joy to the world. The whole world. They are global people. They’re vision of what society and what humanity should be like is not confined to just one culture. One people group. One exclusive wonderful people – no – it’s for everybody. Joy and peace are something that goes to the entire world. All of humanity.

The third thing I began to think about. Well, Santa kind of has this nice and naughty list. Right? But at the end of the day, Santa kind of ignores that naughty list and you get gifts anyway, right? Jesus is so much that way. Jesus can look at people and be very truthful and say “Hey – you’re full of sin today.” We see that in the New Testament. Jesus is saying you’re not so good, but you’re forgiven and God loves you in spite of all of that. And so even though there’s the naughty list, Jesus and Santa both love people in spite of what we do and who we are. And that’s what we love about them. We love Jesus because Jesus was the first tangible expression in all of culture and society that God can be good and loving and wonderful and in the flesh and something that you can touch. Because so many of the ideas of God previous to that, and it even still exists in the world, are ideas of a tyrannical God, of a trivial God who punishes people for all kinds of random little things – that they didn’t sacrifice just the right way – God would pour out his Judgment. God would pour out God’s judgment on them. And in Jesus Christ, for the first time, people were able to touch a person and this person was talking about God and talking about God in such a different way. That God loves humanity. First and foremost. No matter what. That was different. And so in Jesus Christ, and in the story that we just read, the angels show up and say “Glory to God in the highest heavens and here on earth, peace and good will to all of humanity.” And it became this tangible thing. And if you think about it, for kids, especially, Santa Clause becomes that tangible person that you can touch and wrap your arms around – of all of those good qualities that we assign to God and to Jesus, it’s tangible. And Santa kind of comes this reincarnated Jesus for kids today. And for us, because in our society, we, in many ways, are losing touch with Jesus – with the message of God. It kind of gets lost in the shuffle with all the things going on and we today need to be reminded again of that tangible love, care, joy, peace – that love of children. And we look around the world and we don’t always see that. In fact, we can look in a lot of places in our own culture and around the world where children are not celebrated. Where children are, once again, being relegated to places in society where they don’t belong. Child slavery around the world is at the highest statistics ever in the history of the planet.

And we begin to think about those things and we think “How can that be? In a world where we have such access to how people treat one another and all these religions and all these things we preach about and talk about all the time – with all of that going on – how can hate and discrimination and violence take place?”

And so in that world, I celebrate the fact that there is this idea, the story of Santa Clause. But here’s the thing. Here’s the thing I definitely want to get across. There would be no Santa Clause without Jesus Christ. Because this in the flesh person of Jesus spawns and entire movement. And a couple of centuries later, there was clearly this guy named Nicholas who begins to embody the characteristics of Jesus and he is a lover of children and he notices all kinds of children and families that are in need. That are impoverished. That don’t have a lot. And he begins to give gifts. And in the Catholic church, on December 6^th of every year, it is St. Nicholas Day. It is in honor of that guy, who is embodying the very person and ways of Jesus Christ, several centuries later – and that guy’s tradition got transported all across Europe and then eventually crossed the world with the Catholic church. People began to celebrate St. Nicholas Day. And they began to give gifts to one another. Especially to people who were in need. And ultimately, that gives rise to this super Santa Clause that we have in our society today. And sure, Santa gets twisted. And there’s that whole consumeristic element that’s really warped. But there’s that great part about Santa Clause that comes down to us – all those qualities that I just named that are similar to who Jesus is because Jesus Christ was born. Because the angles showed up to some shepherds and said “Hey you need to go check out this new born baby who is over here in this little tiny town, this little poor town of Bethlehem, you need go to check this out because it’s going to flip your world upside down. It’s going to revolutionize everything.”

And so, here we are today. On Christmas, sitting in worship, on a Sunday, both reasons – both for Sunday and for Christmas Day, because Jesus was born. Because people like St. Nicholas entered the world and began to follow Jesus and then here we are, doing the same sort of thing. Today, of all days, we celebrate children in the world. As wonderful, wonderful, wonderful gifts from God. That children aren’t second rate things that all of a sudden become human when they turn 18, but our – right? – okay, some of you are thinking that right now – well, they’re not quite human yet – they’re a little odd – right? But really, in our world, and in the history of our world – you can look back and see where children were not gifts. And today, of all days, we celebrate that. Because Jesus valued children. And St. Nicholas valued children. And Santa Clause loves children. We look around our world and we go “God loves everybody because Jesus Christ was born and it was good news for all of humanity.” And because a guy like St. Nicholas cared for all kinds of people, not just the rich, but also cared for the poor. And because Santa Clause literally – you can track him on Norad now – the Norad radar – around the world, going to all of the countries and all the cultures and all the places.

And no matter what you’ve done – naughty or nice, God cares for you. God loves you. God’s grace is there. And so that’s why I like Santa Clause. Because Santa Clause represents to us in a tangible way some of these great qualities about Jesus. It goes back to that story that we read.

And so I ask you today to think back and when you see Santa to think about Jesus. When you see red, think about Jesus. Because that’s really what St. Nicholas was all about. St. Nicholas was a follower of Jesus Christ and all of these things, all of the gifts and all of the craziness, even in the midst of all that – there is some remnants and some tangible qualities of God there. And that’s why we come.