C202 12/20/59
© Project Winsome International, 2000

"I'M DREAMING OF A RIGHT CHRISTMAS"
Dr. John Allan Lavender
Isa. 7:14

There is a story going around about two women who were having a happy time at a very elaborate luncheon one day. When asked what the occasion was, one said, "We're celebrating the baby's birthday." "But where is the baby?" said the inquirer, for there was no child visible.
"Oh," said the mother, "you don't think I'd bring him, do you? Why, he doesn't know anything about it."

When I heard that story I couldn't help but ask, "How many of us will celebrate the birthday of Jesus this year and forget to invite him? In the rush of Christmas giving, Christmas eating, Christmas gaiety, I wonder how many of us will stop to meditate upon the Christ-child who is the
center of it all."

As Christians we have no objection to the Christmas spirit. To giving and receiving gifts. To family gatherings and the many little acts of kindness which this particular season of the year seems to generate. But we do cry out against the kind of observance which simply adds more burdens to the already overburdened. We do lift our voices against the growing tendency to celebrate, decorate, communicate, and dissipate without pausing to elevate in our thinking and speaking and doing, the Lord Jesus Christ whose coming into the world is the basis of the whole affair.

Well, this year "I'm Dreaming of a Right Christmas." A Christmas that doesn't get lost in the "tinsel, bell and holly wreath." A Christmas which rises above the nightmare of frayed nerves, quick tempers, dishevel spirits, weary bones, and battered budgets to produce what Christ intended Christmas to produce: "Peace on earth, good will toward men."

The Necessity of Slowing Down
If we're going to succeed in achieving that kind of "Right Christmas" we've got to take ourselves by the nap of the neck and just plain slow down.
"Christmas can't be the time of joy and peace it ought to be if we're at the
end of our tether by the time we get to it. Nor should we allow for exhaustion
to mute great joy."

Harold Blake Walker suggests, there is some good advice for all of us in the old Negro spiritual:
"Slow me down, Lord.
I's goin' too fast."
He says, "If our tempers are short and we're easily annoyed, if getting up in the morning is a chore and we're worn out by noon, it's time to slow down, we're going too fast."

I think he's got something there. For far too often we hear folks say: "Thank goodness Christmas only comes once a year."

But Christmas ought to leave a glow, not a glower, on our faces. It ought to leave a benediction in its wake, not a sign of relief that it's over. It ought to produce a kind of nostalgic longing that we could go on keeping Christmas throughout the year. But it cannot produce this positive effect if even before it comes we are physically and emotionally tuckered out. We've got to slow down, we're going to fast.
Over at the Washington and Jane Smith home where I've been conducting a chapel service each Wednesday morning, there's a lovely little lady by the name of Mary Esler. She's from Texas. When she lived down there her friends called her "Sunshine Mary," and I can understand why. Even though she'll be eighty-years-young this week, she's still a radiant, effervescent, little spell binder.

She had an operation for cataracts a few weeks ago. I stopped at the hospital to see her on several occasions. During one of our visits I told her about my idea of "group homiletics." A few interested folks will have a list of the sermons I'm going to preach that year. In their reading, whether it be books, magazines or newspapers, if come to something they think will apply to one of the sermons, they'll send it to me and if I use it, I'll give them credit.

Well, "Sunshine Mary" has been sending me things ever since. Last week, following chapel service, she gave me a little paper that comes from California. In it there was a lovely poem by Grace Noll Crowell which describes, quite beautifully, the kind of mental preparation we all ought to make if we would enjoy that "Right Christmas" of which I'm dreaming.

"I shall attend to my little errands of love early this year,
So the brief days before Christmas may be unhampered and clear
Of the fever and hurry.
The breathless rushing I 've known in the past
shall not possess me.
I shall be calm in my soul and ready at last.
For Christmas: 'The mass of the Christ.'
I shall kneel and call out his name;
I shall take time to watch the beautiful light of a candle's flame;
I shall have leisure. I shall go out alone from my roof and my door;
I shall not miss the silver silence of stars as I have before;
And, oh, perhaps, if I stand there very still, and very long ,
I shall hear what the clamor of living has kept from me:
The angels' song!"

"I'm Dreaming of a Right Christmas!" What would that "Right Christmas" include? For one thing, I believe it would result in --

A Right Relationship With God Through Christ
After all, what is Christmas? Is it the lights, the holly wreaths, the Christmas trees or the gaily wrapped packages?

No! For while these are all very wonderful and important, they're not the essence of Christmas. It is something far richer and deeper than that and we must not get so involved in Norman Vincent Peale calls the "incidental appurtenances of Christmas, that we miss its real meaning, which shorn of all the extras is simply this: God is with us!"
"Thou shalt call his name Immanuel" said Isaiah, which means "God with us."

The glory of Christmas is that while God may not always answer your prayers when and how you want him to, "God is with us."
While he does not always lift the burden that weighs so heavily upon you for he knows that by letting you carry it a bit longer, you will learn spiritual graces which no lifting of the load could ever provide, "God is with us."

While he does not always do things in the way that seems best to you, he never abandons you. He never leaves you alone. For the message of Christmas is "God is with us." He is in the world and wants to be in your heart. If you will open the door and welcome him in, he will fill your entire frame with the glory of his presence.
This glorious miracle, this over-arching sense of God's nearness, is most likely to happen at Christmas-time because the babe of Bethlehem has a way of curling his fingers around our heart.
The Lord God omnipotent frightens us. The Lord God omnipresent overwhelms us. The Lord God omniscient staggers us. But the babe of Bethlehem woos us. We feel close to him. We can love him. We can make an emotional response to him.

But, if we get all wrapped up in the tinsel and glitter and glamour of a Madison Avenue Christmas, we may miss completely, or at best only share partially, the deeper, fuller, richer, more lasting joy which God intended for us when he gave the world his son. The purpose behind Christ's coming into the world was that through him we might come to know God. To know he is with us. To know he loves us and is anxious to help us. And, until we make that glorious discovery, we never really know what Christmas is all about.

I was greatly impressed by a paragraph written by a man named Lon Woodrun. In it he says that when it comes to pushing a button, he's as good as the next man. He can step into a dark room and snap a switch and the place is flooded with light. In fact, he says he's so familiar with this sort of thing that one day he got to thinking he knew something about electricity! But, just then, a fuse blew out and he discovered how little he knew.

He goes on to say that it's always possible for us to be so familiar with something we imagine we know it, when we don't.

Take President Eisenhower, for instance. How could anyone not know him? His face has been in magazines and newspapers and on television. Lon Woodrums says,
"I'd know his face among a hundred million faces. But, if I get to thinking I actually know him, all I'd have to do is to go to Washington and say, 'Ike, I know you!' And he'll say: 'Who are you?' I know his face. That's all."

Then Lon suggests the same thing can occur in religion. He says,
"We may be familiar with sermons, hymns, choirs, the Bible and other things of
the church world until we get to thinking we know God, when we many not know
him at all. We may just know the symbols, the 'things' associated with him.

A man named Saul was so sure he knew God before he really knew him, he
was out persecuting the people who didn't think about God as he did! Only after
a great soul experience could he say: 'I know whom I have believed.'

Nothing could be more tragic than for a man to live out his life thinking he is
acquainted with his creator when he isn't. It's like thinking you have a friend
in high office only to discover he never really knew you!"

On the other hand, it's wonderful to be sure you do know God. To have the blessed assurance that you are his and he is yours. That's precisely why the babe of Bethlehem was born. So you might know God, and be assured you are his and he is yours. For the message of Christmas is this:
"God is in the world and wants to be in you heart!"

Why not make this a "Right Christmas" by pausing right now to make room in your heart for Jesus, so through a right relationship with him, you may come into a right relationship with the living God.

There are two other things this "Right Christmas" of which I am dreaming will produce. I won't be able to say a great deal about them, because I promised the children I wouldn't preach long. But when you get into a right relationship with God through Christ, you immediately step into the possibility of getting into a right relationship with yourself and others.

A Right Relationship With Yourself
I don't suppose there's any more urgent need today than we get right with God in order that we may get right with our self.

There is so much inner unrest these days. So many people who are living lives of quiet desperation. They are just going through the motions of making a living without ever quite succeeding in making life.

Part of this is the result of the fact that we are entering into a time of greater and greater conformity. As a result, it's becoming harder and harder to have a feeling of significance or importance as an individual!

The English author, Walter Allen, puts it this way:
"Ours is the age of statistics, of the average, of the mean; the concept of the
statistical man has succeeded that of the economic man. In the eyes of our
administrators, we become more and more featureless and more and more
identical. The state, the political party, the advertising agent, subordinate
man to an abstraction; they take part of man's make up and call it the whole
of man."

What's the antidote for the titanic loneliness that results from being lost behind the faceless image of the mass man?

I think the answer lies in the message of Christmas. The coming of the Christ-child makes it clear that God isn't a casual spectator. He doesn't look down on our frantic antics with detached indifference from behind the mist of the Milky Way. God has come to dwell with us. To make our hearts his home. We are not numbers to him. We are his sons and daughters. He knows us, and calls us by name!

As many of you know, Lucille, my wife, was raised in a little town in North Dakota. The German people she grew up with have a salutation which goes like this: "Wie befinden sie sich?"
It means: "How do you find yourself?" As the German folk use it, it's a salutation, not a medical inquiry. It's a kind of greeting similar to "How do you do?" But I have a hunch that many of us would be content to use it as an outright inquiry: "How do you find yourself?"

Life involves finding the potential self within each one of us, of shucking off the ego (that false front we put up for the benefit of others) so the "I" (the real us) can shine forth.

That happens when we surrender our little "I" to the greater "I" of Christ. Jesus said, "He that loses his life in me shall find it." And then having found ourselves, having gotten into a right relationship with ourselves, we are prepared to begin.

A Right Relationship With Others
There are many wonderful things about this old world of ours. It really is a mighty beautiful and blessed place in which to live. But along with its goodness and greatness, there's also a lot of meanness and littleness. There are tensions between husbands and wives. Parents and children. Management and labor. The "haves" and the "have-nots." As the result, there isn't much "peace on earth" or "good will among men."

But I'm as sure as I'm standing here this morning that the answer to all of our problems in the field of human relations lies in the message of Christmas. For if a man will get right with God, if like the prodigal son he will come to himself and return to his father determined to live and act like a son can and should, if he will get right with God and himself, then he will automatically begin to get right with others.

Florence Knapp gave me this story several years ago and I haven't had a chance to use it till now. It's about a father who was being constantly interrupted by his young son while reading the newspaper. He wanted to give the boy something to keep him busy for a while so he could read in peace.

He took a page of the paper that had a map of the whole world on it, tore it up in pieces, then tossed it on the floor, and then said:
"All right son, let's see if you can put the map together again."

A few minutes later the boy said,
"There it is dad. All fixed." And it was too. His father was simply amazed. He could hardly believe it.
"How in the world did you do that so fast?" he demanded.
"It was easy," said the boy. "There was a picture of a man on the other side of the page. When I got the man fixed up, the world was fixed up, too."

I don't know how things are in your little world. They may be all fouled up, confused, even torn to shreds by resentment and hostility. The message of Christmas is that it doesn't have to stay that way! And if you'll let Christ fix you up, he will help you fix up your world, be it the world of your home, your school, or your job.

Yes, "I'm Dreaming of a Right Christmas." A Christmas that is right because it produces a right relationship with God in Christ, a right relationship with ourself, a right relationship with others.

The other day I came across a lovely poem by Ralph S. Cushman which pretty well sums up what I've been saying this morning.

Christmas Time
Dear Christ, how lonely thou must be at Christmas time.
Watching the shoppers on the crowded street;
So few there are who can one moment find
In which to lay some treasure at thy feet!
And yet, I think that, like some selfless mother,
Finding her pleasure in her children's glee,
Thou dost smile down upon our childish doings,
Still yearning that our hearts might turn to thee.

O patient Christ, thy love shall yet enthrone us,
Up from the lower things of sense and time;
Dear patient Christ, thy leading yet shall woo us
Unto thy self, and to the life sublime!