One December, over twenty years ago, when I lived in Nagasaki, Japan, one of the students at the Women's Junior College where I taught part-time, came up to me with a new English/Japanese New Testament. This student waited until everyone had left and then timidly asked where she could find the Christmas story in this book. The class knew I was a Christian and we had spent several lessons talking about the Christmas holiday.
I helped her find the story from the Gospel of Luke in the first and second chapter. The following week, she came up again after class and asked, with an air of disappointment in her voice, "I read the chapters but, where can I find out about Christmas trees?"
Ah, Christmas! We may grin to ourselves at the unawareness of the young woman or we may sadly shake our heads at the mixing of faith and culture that has now become Christmas around the world. Yet if those are our only two reactions, then perhaps we are not really as honest as we should be on this Christmas Day. Are we that far removed from that young woman? Do we ourselves really know how Christmas really works?
Perhaps we need to state the obvious, that the cultural and religious tradition like Christmas that we experience in the United States, takes years, even centuries, of formation until it becomes the event it is today, enshrined in the global consciousness in one way or another. I am here to tell you that Christmas works for us --- certainly by peeling those same layers of Christmas tradition --- but more importantly we need to let Christmas take us into unfamiliar territory!
How can we peel some of those layers around Christmas away? One way we can do this is to uncover the greed and passion, danger and death and remember that Christmas nearly did not happen.
Scratch the surface of the Bible and dig beneath the peaceful Christmas card image of Mary and Joseph and the baby, and you are going to find surprises. Take a close look at the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and you'll be stunned by the danger and death that permeate the original day. Christmas moment by moment hung by a thread.
For example, take a young, poor, pregnant woman — nearly ready to deliver — and pack her off on a 90 mile walk and 1300 foot climb. There is no mention of any transport for Mary in the Bible, we just make an assumption she rode on a donkey. She could have just as likely to have walked those 90 miles.
And of course, the child is born in an animal shelter. Think about it. Answer is, back then, as in many non wealthy areas of the world today, a lot of children do not survive those conditions. It was not a sterile environment for the child or mother. It was not your state-of-the-art hospital birthing center. Child mortality was quite high. Yet, Jesus survived as did Mary.
But as I said more importantly than peeling the layers away from around Christmas, we also need to let Christmas take us into unfamiliar territory. However, although we may know that the Christmas tree is a European, pagan import, and there are no Christmas trees at the stable in Bethlehem it is not easy to let Christmas take us into unfamiliar territory. Christmas not only comes with a story that nearly did not happen but it also comes with a great deal more; hope, faith, light all which calls on us to give muscle to our aspirations and dreams. That's not easy.
Where or what is this unfamiliar territory? Where is this unknown? Well, to find may mean to simply hold out our hand and let Christmas grab hold.
Tony Campolo, author, pastor and sociologist, tells a Christmas story about a deacon in a church who was not doing well. One day the pastor said to the deacon, "I have a small group of people who want to go to the senior home and put on a worship service once a month. Would you drive them?" The deacon agreed.
The first Sunday the deacon was at the senior home, he was in the back with his arms folded with an attitude, thinking about all that he should be doing. All of a sudden, someone was tugging at his arm. He looked down, and here was this old man in a wheelchair. He took hold of the old man's hand and the old man held his hand all during the service. The next month that was repeated. The man in the wheelchair came and held the hand of the deacon.
This continued for months until around Christmas and then the old man wasn't there. The deacon inquired and he was told, "Oh, he's down the hall, right hand side, third door. He's dying. He's unconscious, but if you want to go down that's all right."
The deacon went and the old man lay still as all life support had been removed. The deacon took the man's hand and prayed that God would receive the man, that God would bring this man from this life into the next and give him eternal life. As soon as he finished the prayer, the old man squeezed the deacon's hand and the deacon knew that he had been heard. He was so moved by this that tears began to run down his cheeks.
He came out of the room and as he did so he bumped into a woman. She said, "He's been waiting for you. He said that he didn't want to die until he had the chance to hold the hand of Jesus one more time." The deacon was amazed at this. He said, "What do you mean?" She said, "Well, my father would say that once a month Jesus came to this place. 'He would take my hand and he would hold my hand for a whole hour. I don't want to die until I have the chance to hold the hand of Jesus one more time.'"
I do not know if that young woman in Nagasaki ever was able to see the tree for the forest, to see Christmas through the holiday. Nevertheless I had the opportunity to share the Christmas story with her. Not only the harrowing story of Jesus born to a young woman in a stable, but that Christmas continues to this day.
Do we let Christmas take us into unfamiliar territory ---- because if we let Christmas grab our hand, our other hand becomes Jesus to others, and when that happens — Christmas happens. Merry Christmas. Amen.
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