My Favorite Christmas Stories
David C. Myers
December 24, 2007
Christmas Eve
Luke 2:1 - 20
One of the very best things about Christmas is the stories. I think stories are very appropriate as we celebrate the birth of the One Who taught us through the telling of stories. Jesus told us stories because they invite us in, they provide imagery with which we can all relate, and they open up our world to new possibilities.
Tonight I'd like to share with you three of my most favorite Christmas stories. I hope they can open your world to the meaning of the Holiday that we celebrate!
1.) My Advent and Christmas observances aren't complete without either seeing or reading Barbara Robinson's Best Christmas Pageant Ever. It is an uproarious, irreverent, and above all, deeply moving account of an unforgettable Christmas Pageant at Second Presbyterian Church, in which the chief culprits were the "Horrible Herdmans," who were:
"absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cursed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker's old broken-down tool-house."
What the Herdmans - Claude, Leroy, Ralph, Imogene, Ollie and Gladys - do to the Nativity is a story - well, let's see. We enter the story at a scene in which the director of the pageant tells the Christmas story to the children who will be the actors in the pageant. On this particular year, the aforementioned Herdmans had started coming to church. The Herdmans had never heard the Christmas story before, and they listened with the wide-eyed wonder that comes from first hearing something so strange. (The narrator of the story is the daughter of the Pageant's Director.)
The director begins, ". . . Joseph and Mary, his espoused wife, being great with child . . ." "Pregnant!" yelled Ralph Herdman.
Well that stirred things up. All the big kids began to giggle and all the little kids wanted to know what was so funny, and the director had to hammer on the floor with a blackboard pointer. "That's enough, Ralph," she said, and went on with the story.
"I don't think it's very nice to say Mary was pregnant," Alice Wendleken whispered to me.
"But she was," I pointed out. In a way, though, I agreed with her. It sounded too ordinary. Anybody could be pregnant. "Great with child" sounded better for Mary.
"I'm not supposed to talk about people being pregnant." Alice folded her hands in her lap and pinched her lips together. "I'd better tell my mother."
"Tell her what?"
"That your mother is talking about things like that in church. My mother might not want me to be here."
I was pretty sure she would do it. She wanted to be Mary, and she was mad at Mother. . . . Mrs. Wendleken didn't even want cats to have kittens or birds to lay eggs, and she wouldn't let Alice play with anybody who had two rabbits.
Well, I think you can understand Alice Wendleken's point. What a way for Luke to open a Gospel! While the other Gospels focus on the religious miracle, Luke's Gospel begins with all the details of the facts of life. Matthew centers his opening action on Joseph, while Mark jumps right into Jesus' adult ministry. John begins with high-sounding poetic abstraction. But Luke, Had something different in mind. Luke wanted to portray the birth of the One expected to be the Messiah, the One expected to be the Prince of Peace, the one who was expected to have the "government on His shoulders," to be born in very humble beginnings. Jesus birth story slanders the conventional wisdom the same way the Herdmann's slandered the traditional Christmas Pageant. It is very clear in Luke's Gospel that our Lord took the form of a baby to reveal himself. . . . and for good reason.
2.) Which leads to my second story - it relates to what the power of the Word becoming flesh is all about. God did indeed come as a person at Christmas. This story begins to reveal to us why God came to earth.
In a book entitled Peace Child, Don Richardson tells how he and Carol, his wife, went as missionaries to the Sawi tribes deep in the interior of West Iran in 1963. The long-isolated tribes glorified war and hostility. The tribes believed that to come up with new forms of treachery was to insure that one's name would be passed down in honor.
Given those values, the telling of the story of Christ was a very frustrating experience. For example, when Don Richardson told the Sawi men the story of Jesus being betrayed by Judas, they loved it - Judas was a super hero to them!
Two Sawi villages relocated near the Richardsons, drawn by the novelty of the new family and the practicality of things like nylon fish-line, machetes and mirrors. The two villages had fourteen battles in the first two months - within sight of the Richardson home. Feeling that they had failed at spreading the peace of the Christian message, the Richardsons decided to leave. But when they told the elders of each village that they were preparing to leave, the villagers begged them to stay, saying "Tomorrow we are going to make peace."
The next day, the chief from each of the villages approached the other with a tiny baby in his arms. With appropriate words, they exchanged children, each giving a child as a "Peace Child." The child would henceforth live as a member of the other tribe so that anyone from one tribe making war on the other would be attacking one of their own. All the women and men filed past the two babies and laid their hands on them in a covenant of peace.
At first, Don Richardson was horrified and said to the elders, "Could you not make peace without the painful giving of a child?" But they assured him that there was no other way. Then it hit him . . . and he told the villagers, "My God, too, found that true peace could not come without giving of a 'Peace Child'." "Whom did he choose?" asked Mahaen, one of the chiefs. Don replied, "Mahaen, did you give another's child or your own?" "I gave my own," the chief replied, remembering the pain. "So did God," said Richardson.
Then he opened a Bible and read to them in Sawi from Isaiah: "Unto us a child is born; unto us a son is given: and the Government shall be upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace."
In a world which is infinitely more sophisticated in its weapons of destruction, this Holy Season calls us to the task of being peacemakers. As that community which names the name of the "Peace Child", we can do no less.
3.) My third story is not really a story, but a lesson that includes a story. It, too, reveals the meaning of the Incarnation - that the word became flesh. And it reminds us that we are placed in this world, but not placed in it alone - indeed, God is always with us.
"Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people." These are the familiar words of our Nativity text. These famous words of Christmas greeting, are none-the-less not always particularly easy words for us. They speak of a great joy, and that joy can sometimes be difficult for us. I have often noted that despite the seasonal and commercial joy that surrounds us this season, Christmas can be the hardest holiday of all. People face grief, the loss of jobs, divorce - spouses away in foreign countries, perhaps even engaged in conflict on behalf of our country.
Ironically, it may be even more difficult for some to be joyful in the Christmas season when such feelings are so intensified. It may seem trivial to talk about joy in the face of all the pain and heartbreak in the world.
But joy in the Biblical sense is not superficial encouragement to be "happy" in the presence of great sorrow. It is, rather, an inward assurance of the presence of God right in the midst of all the pain and heartbreak, and it is to know that that Presence is more important than anything else. He is called "Immanuel" - for God is with us.
Christmas is God's way of coming to us right where we are - in our fear, our loneliness, our separation, our feelings of being forgotten or abandoned - and telling us that we are loved with a love that is indestructible. That's all. Yet, somehow, that makes all the difference in the world.
A colleague of mine tells of receiving a Christmas letter from a good friend whose husband had died seven months earlier, leaving her alone with her three little girls. She wrote: "Some say to me, 'This first Christmas without your husband will be hard for you.' - and probably it will be, but without Christmas my life would be impossible."
For some of you, Christmas 2007, is a Merry Christmas. For others, I know that merriment is tempered by personal circumstances. But my Christmas prayer for each of you is that you may participate anew in the joy of the Christmas event. "For unto you is born this day a Savior, Who is Christ the Lord."