Colors of Christmas

"Red: The Colors of Christmas" - Matthew 22:34-40

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

When Pastor Aaron came up with this idea for a Midweek sermon series that was going to focus on “The Colors of Christmas,” I was all for it, and I thought of two things right away. I thought about one of those personality tests I had recently taken, by way of Facebook, that pretended to describe and define and diagnose my personality as a color. Have you seen that one yet?  You answer a bunch of questions and choose a few pictures and animals and color schemes that appeal to you and you are given a color to describe your personality. I think I was BLUE, but I don’t remember or have any idea about what that meant or why. For some reason that stuff is interesting to me, but I give it as much credence and credibility as my astrological sign.

And the other thing I thought about right away was Taylor Swift. For a pop superstar, I think she’s kind of a genius and a musical phenom - if you believe all the hype about how young she was when she started writing all the music she's produced. Well, she has this song called “RED,” where she cleverly uses colors to describe feelings and emotions, all of which, for Tay-Tay, of course, have to do with her latest, or current, lost love or crush or boyfriend, or whatever.

Anyway, for example, she says that loving this particular guy is RED, like ‘driving a new Maserati down a dead-end street, faster than the wind, passionate as sin, ending so suddenly;’ And she says ‘losing him was BLUE, like she’s never known,’ and ‘missing him was DARK GRAY, all alone.’

But loving him, for Tay-Tay, was like RED, and sometimes, even, “burning” RED.

Well, I’d bet all of Taylor Swift’s money she wasn’t thinking about Advent sermons when she wrote that little ditty, but it made me think about the color RED, some, and about how a poet or a songwriter can give legs to the emotions and feelings and sensibility of something as simple as a primary color. And RED - as a color for Christmas – is as complex for old preachers like me as RED – as a color for young love – can be for a pop-princess like Taylor Swift.

Maybe it’s a sign of the times more than anything this time around, but the RED I think about first is the RED of anger and hatred and fear that seems to be burning its way through the world these days. Of course we see it in the streets of Paris and in San Bernardino. And this kind of RED is alive and well in the ways and places where people are fighting their wars and terrorizing their neighbors and fleeing from the war and terror that threatens their lives. And I see this kind of RED – and I feel this kind of RED, frankly – when I listen to too many people feeding it and using it and taking advantage of it and preying upon it to perpetuate even more of it – fear and hostility and hatred, I mean.

And it’s not all that big, this kind of RED. It’s not all newsworthy, of course. I caught a glimpse of RED, on a smaller scale, from a parent at a basketball game last Saturday. (You know that just-below-the-surface, keep-it-under-wraps, road-rage kind of RED?) And I see that kind of RED on my Facebook and Twitter feeds, too. The RED of anger and hostility that can be tapped out on a keyboard and posted for all to see with very little regard for consequences and no real danger of repercussions.

So if any of us were to take one of those online personality inventories that assigned us a “color for our faith,” based on the state of our souls, I think we all might come out RED, in some way, on some days, thanks to the sins – large and small – which we can’t escape or seem to change for ourselves, or forgive in each other, for that matter, either.

So all of that makes me think about the RED of the cross and the blood that was spilled there for the sake of the world and as a means to end and to forgive and to transform all of the above ugliness. I think God took on the RED of the world’s ugly, angry, hatred, violence and evil, and let it be drained by and covered over with and drowned in the blood of God’s very own self, in Jesus.

And, again, this feels like bad news and bah humbug, I know. But there’s hope in here, of course. To me, the RED of that blood seems like a cosmic mix of what else the RED of Christmas might represent: which is the undying, passionate love of God for the world, come down in Jesus Christ.

God’s love, so passionate, so complete, so devoted, that it could be spilled and poured out, blood-RED for the sake of the world. The blood-RED love of God, spilled by violence and hatred and sin on the cross, but transformed by love and compassion and grace and forgiveness, all at the same time.

And so we wait on and we pray for and we hope to God that the latter will be born anew, again, in these days before Christmas. The blood-RED transforming love and compassion, grace and forgiveness, I mean.

Which reminds me that it wasn’t first spilled at Calvary’s cross, this blood. The blood-RED love of God first showed up in that lonely, messy, stable’s manger in Bethlehem. The first RED of Christmas came from the spent womb of a mother’s love. Mixed with tears, no doubt, and sweat, I’m sure, and who knows what else. It likely wasn’t pretty and we don’t need to pretend that it was or is or will be, this Christmas good news.

But, let’s let the RED of this Christmas be one that serves as nothing less than our own life-blood, like that coming from the womb of a mother, full of grace and mercy and tenderness and hope. Let’s let the RED of this Christmas be one that has been poured out, like so much wine, for the forgiveness of sins – ours and the sins of our enemies. Let’s let the RED of Christmas be a life-giving, life-changing RED for us – one that’s about passion and sacrifice, one that bears the love of God and one that brings with it new life for each of us, and for the sake of the world.

Amen

A White Chrismas With Grey Jell-O – Colossians 3:12-17

Colossians 3:12-17

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.


My parents picked the four of us up from the Tampa airport last Monday. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny Florida day. We drove south on the highway, surrounded by green-ness that the Indiana Fall had stolen from us weeks ago. Palm trees on the right; citrus trees on the left. The music was turned on in the car and Christmas music was playing. Christmas music on the Monday before Thanksgiving in Florida. It was an odd feeling.

I have a rule about Christmas music. I don’t turn it on until the day after Thanksgiving. I did not approve of Christmas music playing loudly in the car so as to be heard over the roar of the air conditioner. But it wasn’t my car. It was not my place to say anything. So I sat quietly, refusing to sing along to the catchy songs either aloud or in the quiet space in my mind.

But now my self-imposed deadline has passed and I can’t get enough Christmas music. Hundreds of holiday songs are loaded on my phone. I stream Christmas radio stations nearly every minute I’m at work. I’ve listened to the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack a dozen times already.

There’s one song in particular that many people agree is the perfect Christmas song – a song that is, according to Guinness World Records, the best-selling single of all time. Not the best-selling Christmas song, but the best-selling song, ever, regardless of genre. To many people, this song is simply perfect:

You may be familiar with the great irony of “White Christmas” – the song was written by Irving Berlin, a devout Jew. So what is it about this sixty-five year-old song that still resonates today? Lyrically-speaking, it’s a masterful juxtaposition of nostalgia and hope, melancholy and comfort. It’s a poetic plea for the gifts of precious memories to positively-impact our lives today.

The song wishes us a White Christmas – an image that goes beyond the tree-tops glistened with snow and pulls in imagery of childhood innocence and hand-written Christmas cards.

You hear this song and walk away wishing for a White Christmas, for yourself and for others.

So why, then, does our quest for a White Christmas today seem so often to be filled with stress and over-spending? Is it possible for us to seek a perfect Christmas and still save our souls?

Is the answer to aim lower? Should we attempt to pull off an adequate Christmas as opposed to the perfect Christmas? Instead of a perfect White Christmas, should we anticipate an imperfect Grey Christmas?

I know something about Grey Christmases, and like any good Lutheran story, it involves Jell-O.

Every year for Christmas, my Aunt Lucene would make Jell-O salads for our family get-togethers. Typically it would be green Jell-O with shredded carrots, canned diced pears, and marshmallows – the kind of textures that just feel like they don’t belong in your mouth at the same time.

Aunt Lucene’s Jell-O salads were an inside joke in our family, but we never let her know that no one particularly enjoyed them. It helped that she could hardly hear anything we said. In the words of the classic line from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, she “couldn’t hear a dump truck drive through a nitroglycerin plant!”

As Aunt Lucene got older her Jell-O salads became more and more...adventurous. One of the last ones I remember her bringing looked like she had used dark grey Jell-O – the color of snow that has sat on the side of a busy road for a week or two. This particular year in addition to the coconut, canned fruit, and peanuts and raisins (yes, peanuts and raisins…like I said, adventurous), she had added M&Ms. The color of each M&M had bled into whatever color Jell-O she started with, resulting in the disgusting grey-ness.

It was only edible so long as we you picked out the raisins and peanuts and ate with our eyes closed. She had no idea what we thought of it. I have vivid memories of her putting spoonful after spoonful of that grey gelatinous matter in her mouth and smiling.

These memories surfaced every year at our family gatherings. These memories also surfaced at Aunt Lucene’s funeral a few years ago. These memories made us smile. Telling this story makes me smile still today.

All that to say, the love we share exists in an imperfect space. Our lives simply cannot be centered on a quest for perfection because the love of God in Christ is the only perfect thing would could ever hope to experience. And yet, it is love that makes the imperfect perfect.

The imperfection of the grey Jell-O salad inspired loving memories in my family last will last for years to come.

The imperfection of our daily life in Christ – our constant faults and failures – are no obstacle for God’s love. Some days it feels like no matter how much time, energy, and focus we pour into our faith, it still looks as appealing and nourishing as grey Jell-O salad.

Our task, as I’m still learning day by day, is to see our imperfection as an opportunity to praise God’s perfection. In our inability to adequately love and care for others, God works through us to accomplish more than we could on our own.

Each of us are certainly headed for an imperfect Christmas in a few weeks; but I know love can and will be experienced in the midst of the imperfection.

So, in this season of Advent, prepare for a Grey Christmas. Don’t bother searching for the perfect gift, making the perfect dinner, or hosting the perfect party. Instead, be bold and adventurous. Take risks, not just with the ingredients in your Jell-O salad, but with your actions and attitudes towards others. Free yourself to share extravagant love withe the world that is looking for love in all the wrong places. And trust that God will take your imperfect Grey Christmas and turn it into something beautiful and life-giving.

Amen.