Stephen Baldwin
NT: Mark 1.1-11
Somebody Stole Christmas
Girls and
boys, gather round. Women and men, won’t
you please come on down? I’ve got a
story for you, which you won’t think is true.
It seems impossible…improbable… implausible: But, somebody stole
Christmas!
You may
wonder why I’m keeping my voice as low as a whisper, and it’s because our thief
may be a visitor. But don’t fret or
worry, and please, whatever you do, don’t get in a hurry. I’ve solved the riddle, and if you’ll give me
the courtesy of a bit of your time, I’ll widdle it down for you…at first in
rhyme.
Perhaps you
think that the Grinch is our thief? We
all know the story of that grouchy Grinch’s grab for glory. In the words of Dr. Suess:
THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL, AWFUL
IDEA!
"I know just what to do!"
The Grinch laughed in his throat.
And he made a quick Santy Claus hat
and a coat.
And he chuckled, and clucked,
"What a great Grinchy trick!"
"With this coat and this hat,
I look just like Saint Nick!"
We know what happens next. He breaks into every Who house to steal their
presents and only leaves crumbs too small even for a mouse.
That’s what I’m here to tell you
today. Somebody stole Christmas! But it wasn’t the Grinch. That poor green outcast has been the butt of
too many jokes already. Somebody stole
Christmas, but it wasn’t him.
Perhaps you are thinking what I’m
thinking. Mother Nature stole Christmas!
For two weeks, we’ve been able to wear short sleeve shirts during the day! The Christmas forecast for southern WV seems
more like a Christmas forecast for southern Florida. Mid to upper 60s!
How are we supposed to sit by the fire with a cup of hot
cocoa snuggled in our flannel unwrapping gifts when it’s 67 degrees outside? It feels like somebody stole Christmas.
Maybe I’m
missing the obvious candidate for who stole Christmas. Our culture.
The one that starts advertising Christmas in October. The one that makes you think you have to
spend a fortune to express your love. You
can find plenty of people who believe the culture stole Christmas, but our
culture would have to understand Christmas in order to steal it. Most people don’t have any idea what
Christmas means, so they couldn’t have stolen it.
If you paid attention to this
morning’s reading, you know who did it.
Don’t you! It was Mark, the
author of our Gospel reading, who stole Christmas! Did you notice what was missing from his
story? Christmas! There was no mention of Bethlehem or the
census or Mary and Joseph or a star or angels or wise men or the manger or the
stable.
Somebody
call Judge Bob King! Somebody call Judge
Jim Rowe! Somebody call Judge Frank
Joliffe and bring him out of retirement!
We need to throw the book at Mark for stealing our Christmas story.
But if Mark
were here to defend himself, he might remind us that he wrote his Gospel
first. When they put the Bible together,
Matthew jumped the line and got ahead of him, Luke gets all the credit for the
details of the birth, but don’t get it twisted!
Mark wrote his story first. And
he mentions nothing about Jesus as a child.
Why is that?
Because for
Mark, Jesus became Christ. The way he
tells Jesus’ story, Jesus has to grow up.
God doesn’t hand him the keys to the kingdom; Jesus has to earn them. He has to go to school, learn a trade, treat
people with respect, follow his teacher John the Baptist, feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, figure out how to deal with crazy people who come up to him
on the street asking for crazy things, become a man, and eventually become the
Son of Man. So for Mark, Christmas is a
time not so much for celebration…as a time for anticipation. It is not the end of the year, but the
beginning. It is not the finish line,
but the starting line.
I think
that’s a message with great relevance in today’s world. Mark’s Christmas story may not have all those
details we’re used to hearing (though we will read those tonight…so don’t
fret), but it does have a weight that we need to hear. For Mark, the significance of Jesus lies in
what he does. His actions matter more
than anything else. That’s a message
with great relevance for our lives.
It we’re
going to claim the name of Jesus this Christmas, we have to do something with
it. If we’re going to celebrate
Christmas and send people Christmas cards and put up a Christmas tree and give
people Christmas gifts and share Christmas meals together, understand the name
that you are claiming.
Jesus wasn’t just given the title
of Christ. He earned it. If we want to claim his name, we have to work
alongside him. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Heal the sick. Listen to the person everyone else runs away
from! Claim his name--not in words but
in actions.
Did
somebody steal Christmas? Not
exactly. I probably exaggerated. OK, I definitely exaggerated. But it did get you interested, didn’t
it! For whatever reasons—culture,
weather, the Grinch in all of us—we’ve lost sense of the theological meaning of
Christmas. To the point that it feels
like somebody stole Christmas. Come back
tonight—yes, this was all a ruse to get you to come back again tonight—and
we’ll take about the real meaning of Christmas.
Amen.
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