Return to Sermon Index	Great Expectations

Luke 2:1-20

Merry Christmas! Indeed, as we come together this evening we have definitions of what a merry Christmas requires. And not all of our definitions are the same. Some people, for instance, believe that a merry Christmas requires a whole lot of shopping to be done before. They believe that they can't be happy at Christmas time unless they buy their relatives and friends a bunch of Christmas presents.

Then, there are those who believe that they can't have a merry Christmas unless they go out and do a lot of partying and drinking on Christmas Eve. And so they go from place to place, from home to home, from bar to bar, on Christmas Eve and have a high old time and then end up having to sleep it off on Christmas morning.

Then, there's my wife. She comes out of the old Scandinavian tradition that says that on Christmas Eve you eat a dinner of codfish. Then, before you go to bed, you take some rice pudding and put it out in the barn for the nissin. Now, before some of you go and think that when I say "nissin" I'm talking about some kind of a Japanese car, let me explain that a nissin, as far as any good Norwegian is concerned, is a little fairy that falls somewhere in the category between gnomes and elves. Nissins live in barns and garages and basements and other places where people go once in a while, but not too often. And, if you happen to have a nissin living around your place who likes you, you are very likely to have good luck.

So, if you just happen to be a good Norski, you take some rice pudding out to the nissin on Christmas Eve. Then, on Christmas morning you go out and look to see if the nissin ate it. If he did, then you know that the nissin liked the pudding, and appreciates you. And that makes you feel good because if the nissin likes you, you'll have good luck for the coming year.

So, that's what we do around our house on Christmas Eve. We take some rice pudding out to the garage. And I must say that somehow, mysteriously, that rice pudding has always seemed to disappear by morning.

Now, our kids are a little bit skeptical about all of this talk about nissins. They've even accused me or my wife of sneaking out there into the garage after they have gone to bed to eat the pudding, ourselves, which, as you all know would be a sneaky, lowdown, nasty thing to do. If fact, it would even be a dangerous thing to do, an unlucky thing to do! Because I don't know of a nissin who would understand or even be sympathetic towards someone who would do such a thing.

Then there are those who believe that in order to have a Merry Christmas they need to decorate like crazy. I used to live in a neighborhood like that. Every house in that neighborhood had Christmas lights, not to mention the lawn decorations! One guy even had Santa and his sleigh on the roof of his house. And it wasn't easy living in a neighborhood like that! The first pre-Christmas season we spent in that house, the neighbors came to our house, one by one, and told us that we just had to join them in putting luminaries down the street, or else it just wouldn't seem like Christmas to them. And, so my wife and I spent the next few days trying to locate milk jugs that we could put light bulbs into. And I must have spent several hours, one day, trying to wire those light bulbs together. But, in the end, we had our pretty luminaries going down the entire length of the street.

But, sometimes I wonder about all of this decorating, and the other things that we do. I wonder if in the midst of all the things we may do to have a merry Christmas we may actually forget what Christmas is all about. Sometimes I wonder if all the Christmas lights get in the way.

I am reminded of something that happened to my brother and me back when I was 18 years old. Our mom and dad had decided, one Christmas, to go visit a friend of theirs down in Guadalajara, Mexico. They wanted to drive down in their Oldsmobile Delta 88, pulling a trailer. My brother and I would follow them in an old Volkswagen Squareback.

I still remember the trip. Most everything went quite well until we got to the city of Guadalajara, itself. It was Christmas Eve, and as we entered the city my brother and I were supposed to follow my parent's car closely, because only they knew how to get to their friend's home. In fact, he lived in the penthouse of a tall building with a Nes Cafe sign on the top. We knew that much. But, we knew that if we were going to find the building we would have to stick close to the car, ahead.

But, we had a problem. My father, who was driving the Delta 88 could make that car accelerate at about three times the rate our little VW could. So, as you can already guess, we lost him in the evening rush hour traffic of Mexico's second largest city. And we knew that when that happened we would be in trouble. We didn't have the man's telephone number. We didn't know what street he lived on. All we knew was that he lived in a building with a Nes Cafe sign on the top. So, there we were, my brother and I, lost in a foreign city, in rush hour, and it was getting dark.

Now, the point of this story is this: The people of Guadalajara are wonderful at doing their Christmas decorations. And they love to string rows upon rows of lights across all their streets. So, as my brother and I were driving the streets of the city, looking up to find a sign that said, "Nes Cafe," we had to look through all these Christmas lights. And, needless to say, it was almost impossible. In fact, my brother and I were almost panic stricken as the hours ticked by. We were beginning to think that we might not have a very merry Christmas, at all. And all those lights didn't help at all.

It wasn't until my brother and I got above the lights that we were finally able to see that Nes Cafe sign on top of the building where my parents' friend lived. We decided to find a tall apartment building and go to the top. So, we found such a building, got out of our VW, went inside and went up to the roof. And, low and behold, as we looked out across the city of Guadalajara that Christmas Eve we were able to find that building with the Nes Cafe sign on it, lit up like Christmas. And, making our way back to our car, we were thus able to find our parents, once again, in spite of all the decorations of Christmas that were in the way.

The cradle of Bethlehem was such a simple thing. Yet, our commercialization of Christmas has made it very complicated for some. "Peace on earth, good will toward humanity" is such a simple concept, but we humans can't seem to have it, even with the Marines landing in Somalia and U.N. troops in Bosnia.

So, how can we have a merry Christmas? Let's get above the lights that sometimes get in the way; let's put aside those things which hinder the Christ child's presence in our lives. For in spite of all those things that we think we need to have a merry Christmas, the Christ child is still here, waiting for us to come and bow down to offer ourselves and our gifts to him. Amen.