An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means, “God is with us.”

Find something to write with and begin thinking about and writing down words or phrases that describe your thoughts about the holiday season. Don’t over-think it, just go with your gut. Also, please only write down the words or phrases that are authentic representations of how you really feel this time of year; don’t write down how you think you should feel.

I did this activity earlier. Here’s what I came up with:
busy
Christmas music
logistical nightmares
lots of coffee
excited kids
shopping

Apparently that’s what Christmas means to me. Can we all agree that is less than inspiring?

Fortunately, I didn’t have to look far to find the answer to what ails me at Christmastime:
For what to my wondering eyes should surface, but my “2014 Holiday Playbook” from the United States Postal Service. Dropped off by my mailman, on the coldest of days, it would tell me everything I need to win the holidays!

Yes, winning the holidays; that’s what Christmas has come to. Hosting the best meal; putting up the best decorations; working the hardest to get the biggest bonus; giving the best gift; and, of course, getting the best deal. “Winning” wasn’t one of my words from the earlier activity, but I can see it lurking in the shadows; fueling my caffeinated busyness, my shopping, and my logistical nightmares.

Out of curiosity I opened up the “2014 Holiday Playbook,” finding a list of seven things the postal service can do for me without me ever having to leave my house. How convenient! Thanks to the USPS now I can win the holidays and never have to make any contact with another human being. Ok, I’m an introvert and even I think that’s messed up!

I don’t mean to pick on the USPS; of all the forces plotting against an authentic and profound experience of a religious holiday season commemorating the Son of God being born into poverty to an unwed mother, they’re among the least venomous assailants. But this phrase “Everything you need to win the holidays” really hit me hard; it’s just another symptom of a larger disease – namely, our “dis-ease” – or more accurately, our rush to treat our “dis-ease” with the medicine of money.

We are not content. That’s a fact of life. Not a single one of us is content; which is understandable. Not being content prevents us from becoming complacent. Not being content is what leads people to innovate, invent, and improvise. And, frankly, how could we possibly be content given the state of our world today?

Millions go to bed hungry and have no access to clean water.
Wars rage, fueled by money, territory, cultures, religious beliefs, and politics.
Pundits on “news” channels are paid absurd sums to stoke irrational fires and to draw lines of who is right and wrong, who is in and out.
Children are shot in our schools, most often at the hands of individuals with severe mental disorders which our country has no funding nor political willpower to adequately address.
We work ourselves ragged, thinking that sacrificing time with loved ones in order to earn more money will ultimately result in a better life for them.

Each one of us is aware of something missing from our lives; an emptiness that yearns to be filled, a hunger that craves to be satisfied. Yes, how will we fill the emptiness and feed the hunger? How will we win the holidays?

The answer is not in a USPS guide to winning the holidays; it's not in the the sale flyers that stuff our newspapers; it's not in our credit cards or bank accounts.

I’m sorry. I wish money could buy happiness; just like I wish an expensive gift could fill people with love; just like I kind of wish we could win the holidays by staying inside all month in our PJs typing on a computer and waiting for the mail carrier to come. It would all be so much easier.

But it’s all a lie. We can’t buy love. We can’t make the world a better place by shopping for the perfect gift.

This Advent, we are asking you to conspire against the hyper-consumerist mindset that threatens to obliterate the gift of the Christ-child with its lie that expensive and extravagant gift-giving is the best way to express love.

One of the pastors who created the Advent Conspiracy concept, wrote this, “We are constantly searching for the one thing that will satisfy us. Yet each time we trust the promises of our possessions, more barriers are raised between our true selves and God’s plain command to love [Him] above all things. It’s not that we necessarily want more – it’s that what we want is something we can’t buy.” (From Advent Conspiracy, page 24)

As we recognize our dis-ease, we are challenged to embrace a way of living which seeks to provide relationships over retail and presence over presents.

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”which means, “God is with us.”

We are gathered together as people of God who believe that God is real, God loves us, and God has given us the ultimate gift of his presence in our lives. God is not “up there” watching our lives unfold on a two-dimensional flat-screen like a soap opera. Instead, god is Emmanuel – “with us.” God’s presence in our lives is so great that not even death could separate it from us.

Let’s not cheapen the gift of God’s presence by rushing out and buying expensive crap. Instead, let’s be more thoughtful, intentional, personal and relational. Let’s give something of ourselves to the people who are in need. That’s the only way to truly honor God’s presence in our lives.

To be clear, I don’t want you to leave tonight and say, “Sorry dear, Pastor Aaron told me not to give you any presents this year.” What I’m saying is that I want you to give a better present, something that’s value isn’t measurable with a dollar sign.

Here is a link to the Advent Conspiracy page on Pinterest. It has some wonderful and thoughtful gift ideas, so please check it out. Here are a few ideas to spark your imagination:

you could buy two blank journals, one for you and one for someone else, with the understanding that you would write down thoughts throughout the year and next Christmas you exchange them, allowing the other person a unique glimpse into who you really are;
you could write down your favorite stories of someone else and give them as a gift;
you could give a gift of a mug along with the stipulation that it only be used when you get together once a month for coffee and catching up;
make a meal for someone who you know is struggling.

Those are just a few examples of meaningful gifts they convey the real reason for the season.

To conclude, I want to invite you into silent reflection. At that time I would like you to look at the worship bulletin and circle the words that you want Christmas to be about this year. Then print the bulletin and take it with you. Use it as your new Christmas gift-buying guide, thinking of ways to give gifts that spread the true meaning of Christmas: Emmanuel–God with us.

Mark 13:24-37

“But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will no longer give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

“From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you will know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my word will not pass away.

“But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake – for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: keep awake.”

I don’t know what else there really is still to say about Ferguson, Missouri, or young Michael Brown, or Officer Darren Wilson, or that grand jury that decided there would be no trial, or those riots that followed the grand jury’s big announcement, or the protests that followed the riots – all around the country last week. I mean, I don’t know what else to say because so much has already been said, or blogged, or tweeted, or editorialized from every side and every angle and every position on the issues and circumstances that surround all the things that have taken place there in these days. A lot of me feels ill-equipped or under-qualified or complicit, even, somehow in too much of it, that I’ve just been listening and watching and waiting and stewing about when some sense will be made of it all.

But, I think it’s too significant a thing, such an important moment – another in a long line of significant, important moments in our national, cultural history – that we can’t not say something about it… on Sunday morning… as people who follow Jesus. But again, I just don’t know what or what else there is left to say.

And I’m tired of this conversation, to be honest. I feel like we’ve been down this road before and through this mess already and we just keep slogging through the same old sinfulness – no matter who’s side we think we’re on. White people who just don’t get it. Black people who just don’t get it. White people who are blind to – or dead-set on denying – our privileged place in this country. Black and brown people who are left feeling like the only way to be heard is through riots and retaliation.

There is clearly so much more to be learned from each other. There is clearly so much progress to be made. There is obviously so much yet to be done – and undone – when it comes to making things right in this country where race relations and racial equality and racial justice are concerned, for each other and for our kids. But the conversation – and everything that goes along with it – makes me tired, because I feel like we’ve been having it – to no avail – for so damn long already.

Because you know as well as I do that Ferguson, Missouri, is just another in a long line of the same old, same old. Ferguson is just this generation’s Rodney King verdict. And the list is as long as our willingness and ability to pay attention to it, really.

Trayvon Martin was killed just two years ago.

Jordan Davis, the boy who got shot in an SUV full of his friends by a middle-aged computer programmer because their music was too loud, was just two years ago, too.

James Byrd (you may not remember the name, but you'll remember the story) was dragged for miles behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas, until he was decapitated and died. That was in 1998.

The Central Park 5 – that group of teenagers who were wrongfully accused and convicted and sentenced to prison for a crime they didn’t commit – that all started in 1989.

Medgar Evers, the 37 year-old civil rights leader was assassinated in 1963.

And Emmett Till was the 14 year-old boy who was murdered and mutilated for supposedly flirting with a white woman, back in 1955.

And these are just the names who come to mind because they make the news and who get written about in the history books. There are so many more – too many more. And God knows it.

So, I’m tired – and I don’t have much to complain about, as a white man in New Palestine, Indiana, after all. And I’m at a loss for words that are equal to the challenge of addressing it all. But they say a picture is worth a thousand of words, right?

So, I suspect you saw pictures like these, as part of the television coverage of all that’s been happening in Ferguson, Missouri, this week. And I hope it made you wonder. “Season’s Greetings,” indeed.

I heard someone call it ironic. Some might think it crude or irreverent or just another example of how ignorant or naive we can be about all of this – that such injustice or anger or arrogance or ugliness or whatever can take place, literally, under the banner that proclaims “Season’s Greetings” of Christmas.

But it makes me think about how we need, so much, for this Jesus to come. We need, so desperately, still…still…still, for this Jesus to show up among us. We need, in so many ways to let this Jesus into our midst so that we can stop talking and tweeting and taking sides; so that we can stop pointing fingers and running for cover; so that we can stop throwing stones and starting fires. So that we can turn swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks… (Isaiah 2:4) So that the wolf will live with the lamb, so the leopard will lie down with the kid, so that the cow and the bear will graze together, and so all of that other crazy, peaceful stuff the prophet, Isaiah, promised just might come to pass. (Isaiah 11:6ff)

We need this Jesus to be revealed, again, because – no matter on which side of this we find ourselves – this Jesus has a word of judgment, a word of challenge, a word of forgiveness, and a word of hope to speak into our heart of hearts about it all. And I wonder if most of us – red or yellow, black or white, right or wrong – aren’t really caught up somewhere in the middle. And I think Jesus has a word – I think Jesus is a Word – for us there, just the same.

So, this Gospel from Mark – with all of its cryptic language about the coming of the Son of Man and about how we’ll see the signs but that we shouldn’t pretend we’ll know the day or the hour of his appearance – just makes me want him to get here.

I want Jesus to get here and stand in the middle of all of this. I want Jesus to get here and make us see him in the other.

I want Jesus to get here – and the Good News that comes with him – to help those of us on one side recognize that Jesus, himself, probably looked a lot more like Michael Brown than like Darren Wilson, in more ways than just the color of his skin. I want Jesus to get here – and the Good News that comes with him – to help those of us on the other side see the poverty of wisdom, the sad lack of compassion, and the ignorance of fear that leads to this perceived injustice.

We need God among us so we can see – really see – the other. We need Jesus in our midst so we can listen – really listen – to the cries of the other side. We need God with us so that we can see humility lived; love practiced; forgiveness offered; justice realized. We need the Good News of Jesus to born anew so that grace and hope might be born again for us all.

And this is why we wait – still. This is why we light our candles and why we pray our prayers. It’s why we embrace the darkness of these days. It’s why we confess and repent and listen. And it’s why – I hope – we make room for something different in our lives and in this world, as we know it, going forward.

Because the only Word that’s up to the challenge of our sinfulness and struggle is the Word that comes to us in Jesus. God’s Word, not mine. God’s Word, not yours. God’s Word, that was in the beginning; God’s Word that brings life and light for all people; God’s Word that shines in the darkness and that will not be overcome; God’s Word, made flesh… alive among us… full of grace and truth.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

"Winning the Holidays" – Matthew 1:20-23

"Season's Greetings" - Mark 13:24-37