Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Crescent Hill Baptist Church
Louisville, Kentucky
Advent 4 / Christmas Eve
December 24, 2006
W. Gregory Pope
Family Christmas
Luke 2:1-20
Tonight those gathered in my house will join in a Pope family tradition. Following the Christmas Eve service, of course, we will watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. When the Prime-timers and children performed their Christmas program, Eleanor Haswell told how as a child Christmas for her was gathering with her grandmother around the Christmas tree and the radio listening to Bing Crosby. Well, it’s not Christmas at our house without gathering around the television and watching the Griswold family.
I’m so glad Chad Johnson is here this morning because now I know at least person can spiritually relate to the sermon this morning. For those of you so completely out of touch you do not know what I am talking about, Chevy Chase is Clark Griswold, who with his wife Ellen, and their two kids, Audrey and Russ, have the whole extended family over to their house for Christmas. The house is full of both sets of parents and one set of grandparents, including a grandmother who wraps up her pet cat and other things laying around her house to give as Christmas presents. And there is, of course, Cousin Eddie in his baby blue polyester suit, three sizes too small, and his wife and kids, who surprise everybody by driving up in their mobile home to spend the holidays at the Griswold house. It’s a full Griswold family Christmas.
As Christmas rolls around each year, one of the questions you are most likely to be asked is, “Do you have family coming in?” And the response is usually, (with exasperated look) “Yeah,” or (with a smile) “No, it’s just going to be us this year.” Especially if your family is anything like the Griswolds.
There is something about family that we often consider central to Christmas. It’s an assumption we hardly ever question. Do you remember last year and all the hoopla over many of the churches canceling worship on Christmas Day because it fell on a Sunday? The reason given was the preference by most members to gather around the tree with family on Christmas morning.
This preference of being with family, as we understand it, I’m sure confused the baby Jesus. Because His understanding of “family” is radically different than our culture’s understanding of family. In an article regarding this very issue, Lauren Winner writes,
Christmas is the day on which we celebrate the birth of Jesus to his human family and also the holiday that ought to reorder our understanding of what family is. Though you might not know it from your local Christian radio station, a basic insight of the Gospels is that biological family, nuclear family, is not the most important institution. (Lauren Winner, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” www.slate.com. December 23, 2005)
Were you aware that no word in the Greek or Hebrew exactly corresponds to the modern word “family”? (Deidre Good, Jesus’ Family Values, Seabury, 2006, 13)
According to the Gospels, the community of Jesus’ followers is one in which members are family, siblings, children of the heavenly Father. Jesus says to his followers, “Call no one father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven.” (Matthew 23:9). We become members of God’s family not by flesh or blood, but we are born by God. A gospel family is nonbiological. He said his brothers and sisters were those who did the will of God. Jesus often refers to girls and women that he heals as “daughter.” If Jesus spoke to our modern debate about what defines a family he would tell us our thinking is way too small.
Jesus said those who leave family behind in order to follow him will receive a hundredfold brothers and sisters, mothers and children in this age and in the age to come (Mark 10:29-30). We receive such a family in the new community of followers. Jesus was not exactly a “traditional family values” kind a guy.
He was not anti-family either. He rebuked those who treated marriage casually. And he was devoted to children in a culture that placed little value on children.
Jesus supported the family only after redefining it. Jesus didn’t care whose child or parent you were; he cared that you were his follower and a brother or sister in Christ to other followers.
Ethicist Julie Hanlon Rubio says that in Jesus’ day a radical rejection of the traditional family was necessary to create a community of believers who put Jesus above all else.
So at the risk of sounding like a clerical curmudgeon and hopefully a little Jesus, may I say that Christmas is not about the excitement of children or the family gathered around the tree. That’s a form of Christmas shaped by our culture, not the gospel.
Family, according to the Gospels, begins its redefinition with the Christmas story.
1. We learn at the beginning of the story that Jesus was not born into a traditional family. He and his mother, Mary, lived with Joseph, to whom she was married. But Joseph was his adoptive father. So if you’re one of those special people chosen by others for adoption you have more in common with Jesus than those not adopted.
2. Jesus had an extended family that included a priest, Zechariah, and his mother’s cousin Elizabeth, and their son, a wilderness prophet named John who ate locusts and honey. (And you think the vegetarian niece in your family is an embarrassment!) Even the family of Jesus had its odd bird!
3. Jesus’ family had significant religious roots, as his adoptive father Joseph descends from the house of David. Jesus family, like ours, goes back centuries into the history of Israel. We all of us have more brothers and sisters than we can count. Family we’ve never met it, but who have been part of the family of God for centuries. No matter how old you are or how few biological relatives you have remaining, as Jesus understands family you’re not even close to being the last one left. Your family tree is bigger than you could ever imagine.
4. Jesus was born in less than ideal surroundings. He entered this world in the humility of a barn not the royalty of a palace. This foretold king of kings would most certainly be a different kind of king than the world had ever known. This king would at times have no place to lay his head. He would have to depend upon God and his family of followers to meet his needs.
5. Perhaps most significant about this birth story has to do with those to whom it was first told. It will be a window into the kind of people Jesus came to love. Hear the familiar story:
In that region there were shepherds abiding in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord appeared before them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid. But the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people; for unto you 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 will find a baby wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.
The first people to hear the good news were shepherds. You know about shepherds don’t you? They were the outcasts, the throwaways of society. They lived outside. Homeless (or least, house-less). They probably drank more than was good for them. Most likely used a vocabulary not written into Christmas liturgies. No respect was given them. They were the Rodney Dangerfields and the Cousin Eddies of the world. They didn’t fit anywhere. They had no family to go home to. No Christmas tree with presents underneath.
But wonder of wonders, when God wants to send the first birth announcement to the world, God sends word to people like these - shepherds. God sends them singing angels telling these shepherds that for the first time in their lives there is good news for them. A Savior has come for them. Christmas has come for them. And on that first Christmas night led by the first Christmas star they gather not around a Christmas tree, but around Christ himself, with Joseph, mother and child.
The first family Christmas right before our eyes.
How much does our family Christmas resemble that one? Any unrelated undesirables gathered around your table or tree this Christmas?
My guess is that not all shepherds are undesirables. They are, however, outside the biological family tree of Mary and Joseph and Jesus. Anyone outside your biological family tree joining you for a Christmas celebration? Someone whose lonely or grieving or poor? Someone with no one to share the season?
It may too late to invite some shepherds over to your house this Christmas. But steps in the right direction will be made if we are at least profoundly aware that our primary family is not the one gathered around the Christmas tree. Our primary family gathers around a manger foreshadowed by another tree, one with nails instead of lights, where the Baby will grow and give himself for us and for the world in a love that will allow no one to be excluded from the joyful celebration of salvation for all people.
Perhaps you are aware that many people within our church family lost parents this year. If you are among them, your Christmas will most certainly not look the same this year. Others lost children and siblings. In the midst of your loss I would invite you to look around at the family Christ has created. See mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters who according to Jesus are more closely related than biological relatives. They do not replace those relatives with whom you have spent your life, who have been sources of identity and strength, companionship and love. There is grief in their loss than can be overbearing. And I would not want to minimize that at all.
I would, however, point us all to the star that leads us to the Christ in the manger. The One who will grow to teach us that we are all children of one Father, one God, and that what makes us family is our walking together in the way of Jesus. A spiritual family, an abiding source of identity and strength, companionship and love. A whole communion of saints, including our loved ones who have passed, who continue to journey with us, cheering us on.
It can be a good and beautiful experience to gather with your family at Christmas - parents and grandparents, children and siblings, in-laws and outlaws to whom you are related. If such a gathering is possible, do so, rejoice and give thanks to God. But do not forget your primary family gathers around Jesus to walk in his way. And it is the simple and difficult way of love.
Just this week I was watching an episode of Full House with my daughter Jennifer. In this episode, Michelle, played by the Olsen twins, was a five year old. Her mother had died when she was a baby, and now she was trying to fix up her father with her teacher. When her father realized what was happening, Michelle told him that all of her friends had a mommy and a daddy and that she wanted a mommy. Her father wisely told her that not all children have mommies and daddies, and that families come in all shapes and sizes. He told her that what makes us a family is our caring for one another and our loving each other.
I think that understanding of family would make Jesus smile. Because according to Jesus, our brothers and sisters are those who do the will of God. And God’s will is the way of love toward one another. The Baby born to us this night is here to make a family of us all. And there are moments when you know it deep within your bones.
As Bill carried his grandson around this room a few moments ago, perhaps you felt a special connection to Jake, especially if you’ve been around here awhile. For not only do you know his grandparents, Bill and Judy, you know his mother Jennifer. You have watched her grow in this place. And to see her now holding her son, you realize that in a much deeper way Jake is your son too and Jennifer is your daughter, your sister. And Bill your brother. You’ve no doubt felt that with other babies and other children who’ve grown up in this place. But whether or not you feel it, there is a family relation in this community deeper than biology. We are reminded of that truth at every baby dedication and every baptism.
We are reminded of it when we sing “how good to be a family,” how God has made a church of you and me, to know that we’re not alone, that we’ve found a home in the family of God. Having traveled far, together and apart, we are guided by the risen morning star. We’re pressing on to reach beyond the family of God. Like the shepherds we tell others what we’ve seen and heard. And we celebrate that God is always adding to his family.
So, your family is larger than you think. In fact, I hope you’ll be here tonight. Because we’re having a family Christmas in this very room. There will be trees and lights, sacred songs and stories, prayers and people who are family, some desirable, some working on being desirable. They are your brothers and sisters. I hope you’ll be here. Our family Christmas won’t be complete without you.
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CRESCENT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH
2800 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
(502) 896-4425
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