What Santa Taught Me

Luke 2:1-20

There’s a particular Christmas song that’s been stuck in my head a lot this month.  You might know it, too:

You better watch out, you better not cry

You better not pout, I'm telling you why

Santa Claus is comin' to town

sing along!

He's making a list and checking it twice

Gonna find out who's naughty and nice

Santa Claus is comin' to town

He sees you when you're sleeping

He knows when you're awake

He knows if you've been bad or good

So be good for goodness sake

Ohhh, You better watch out, you better not cry

You better not pout, I'm telling you why

Santa Claus is comin' to town

I think it got into my head because so many of my Facebook friends had something to say this month about an Elf on a Shelf in their house: watching the family, taking notes, and reporting in to Santa at the North Pole.

This North Pole spy phenomenon has gotten so big that The Atlantic magazine recently ran a story about it in which they had to point out that it is not, in fact, part of a NSA surveillance program, but rather a part of our Christmas culture that’s been familiar for generations.

There are a number of cultures in which Santa has a sidekick who keeps tabs on the naughty children and brings them “consequences” at Christmas time while the good children get rewards. And our own Santa has a reputation for dropping lumps of coal into the stockings of misbehaving kids.

I can clearly remember childhood Decembers in which I evaluated each day based on whether Santa would approve, and worried over the advice in that Christmas carol: 

no crying, no pouting, be good even when you're sleeping.  

(How could I be naughty in my sleep? Apparently Santa knows!)

Was yelling at a very provoking younger brother enough to cost me new bunny slippers?  Would volunteering for chores make Santa happy?  Was I praying enough? Keeping my room clean?

Christmas is more like Judgment Day than the advertisers want you to believe.

Which actually brings us right back to the Christian story.

After all, some two thousand years ago, while the Roman Caesar Augustus was taking his census, and Joseph and a heavily pregnant Mary migrated to Bethlehem, the people of Israel weren’t looking for a charming story of hope and love, but praying for God to send a Messiah who would bring Judgement Day — for the Romans, at least.

God’s people were longing for God to finally give the wicked their comeuppance and the good their reward.  

That’s the Messiah we were supposed to get.

And instead, we got a baby.

A poor and powerless baby, in no shape whatsoever to judge the Roman oppressors or reward the righteous.

And when he is born, tucked in a feed box in an obscure stable, angels roust out a pack of nearby shepherds to make the astonishing point that this child is good news for ALL people. 

Not some.  

Not good, righteous, well-behaved people, but ALL people: Poor, rich, good, bad, cop, criminal, illiterate, smart, smart-aleck, noisy, quiet, old, young, religious, agnostic… even, perhaps - no, almost certainly - the rotten Roman oppressors.  

All people.

Which brings the circle back around to Santa Claus.
Because every single year, Santa showed up at my house.

Santa brought fantastic stuff to my brother, who clearly was not perfect.

Santa came to my cousins, and friends, and kids on TV,

and Santa brought me wonderful things, even when I had been flat out rotten on Christmas Eve.

All people.

Even the naughty ones.

It kind of embarrasses the seminary-trained theology nerd in me to admit this, but I learned one of the most essential lessons about God not from the Bible, or Sunday School, or from seminary, but from Santa.

Santa sometimes shocked me with generosity and forgiveness, replacing the coal I thought I might deserve with thoughtful surprises and pure delights, rewards I’d never earn in a million years.

And it slowly dawned on me that that’s the story we tell in the church at Christmas, too.

That God — who sees us when we’re sleeping, and knows when we’re awake — shows up to judge the world as a lovable, gentle, heart-melting baby, and wakes up the good-for-nothing drifters on the outskirts of town to announce that good news, salvation, and love are here for EVERYone, today.

Everyone.

Even the naughty ones.

God’s decision to give us that baby, to come among us as a vulnerable, poor, messy but lovable little child, is shocking in its generosity and forgiveness.

Shocking in that generous lack of discrimination between rich and poor, wisemen and day laborers, in the unambiguous announcement that God sends good news to ALL people.  

Shocking in the forgiveness implied in becoming a helpless infant, chased around the earth by imperial whim, vulnerable to all the nastiness and indifference that human beings can manage, accidentally or on purpose.

Shocking, because it's meant to stun us into great, overwhelming joy.

I learned from Santa that God loves nothing better than to give, 

and to give more than we can try to deserve. 

God so delights in giving that nothing we can do will stop God.

I learned that from Santa, too.

By high school, I’d found that it was a lot of trouble to wait for Santa.  

I could buy some of the stuff I wanted for myself; I found it harder to be thankful for surprises (instead of exact wish-fulfillment); and I didn't expect miracles in my stocking the way I once did.

So I kept mentioning to my parents - and anyone else who might have an "in" at the North Pole - that Santa didn’t come to fifteen-year-olds, to eighteen-year-olds, to college students… (Surely college students couldn’t be considered kids anymore right? right?)

But every single year, Santa came. I couldn't stop him.

All people.

Naughty and nice, hopeful and bored, young and old, even when we are way too cool for God.

God’s generosity and forgiveness, God’s loving giving, isn't confined to those who are hoping and praying for joy.

God keeps on giving, redeeming, and forgiving even - or maybe especially - after we’ve gotten a little bored with the story and don’t want much from God anymore.  Even - maybe especially - when we don’t have time to pray and dream, when we’ve gotten buried in disappointment or heartbreak and trouble, or given up on expecting the world to be worth saving.

That baby — stable-born but announced by angels — that baby is a miracle for all people,

and God is never going to give up on that.

Because you see, it’s true that God sees us when we’re sleeping, and knows us when we’re awake. 

God knows the bad and the good,  all the stuff in between,

and every exasperated “for goodness’ sake!” in our hearts.

And God’s response to all of that is shocking, extravagant generosity and forgiveness.

So make space in your heart tonight for your inner child,

creeping anxiously down the stairs,

and overwhelmed with astonished delight at unearned gifts in a stocking or under the tree.

Because that’s the gift of the child in the stable each Christmas,

shocking generosity and forgiveness,

and astonished delight,

and it’s for all people.

It's for you, tonight.

Merry Christmas!

Say Yes

Luke 1:26-38

When was the last time someone asked you to do something that scared you?
Did you say, “Yes”?

Mary said yes.

But did you notice that Mary argues about it, first?

She’s not at all pleased when Gabriel appears in her life with what can sound like a bad pickup line: “Hello, beautiful! You’re the luckiest of women! God’s got an eye on you!”

That’s a fairly free translation from the Greek, but that’s how it might have sounded to Mary.  Or possibly it sounded more ominous, since Luke reports that she’s very upset about this.

That, by the way, is a perfectly natural reaction to an angelic visitation. 
Despite the fact that they are charming and bright on Christmas cards and some TV shows, in the Bible angels are pretty universally scary. They always have to exclaim “Don’t be afraid!” before anyone listens to them. Gabriel eventually remembers to say that to Mary before going on to explain that she’s going to have a baby for God.

When Mary hears God’s plan for her life, her response is also right in line with centuries of Biblical tradition.  Hearing what God has in mind for her, she promptly protests that she’s not the right one, and maybe God should check the number before dialing again.

“How can this be?” sounds mild enough in translation, but Mary clearly knows enough about God and angels – and about the world she lives in - to know that this is definitely not going to be a nice idea for her.

Getting pregnant without a husband’s help is social and possibly real suicide.  They had stoning back then. 

And walking around telling people “this is God’s baby!” won’t sound a lot more convincing to her first-century family and neighbors than it would to you and me used to modern ultrasounds and DNA testing.

So Mary, in the strong tradition of Moses and the best of God’s prophets and leaders, is denying that she’s up to the job, and offering the best reasoning she can to get out of this.

Wouldn’t you?
If you were asked to do something you knew would be at the very least highly awkward, nerve-wracking, and probably completely disruptive, wouldn't you try to gracefully decline? Or suggest that there must be hundreds of people better qualified for something you don’t know how to do and never particularly wanted to learn?

I do.

I’ve probably done it recently, too. 

It’s easy enough to forget the challenges we say “No,” to.

It’s the challenges you say “Yes,” to that stick around, mess with your heart and mind and comfort, leave you different than you used to be, and sometimes - just sometimes - change the world.

Not every challenge we face is a gospel challenge.

Some are just life. And some are my own damn fault.

And the gospel ones are sometimes only clear in hindsight. 

I feel that way about the emergency room.

One of the training requirements for priests in the Episcopal Church is to spend a few months working as a student chaplain in a hospital or similar institution.  This was fine with me until the orientation tour of the hospital, when it became very clear to me that I had never wanted nothing to do with the emergency room.

I’d only watched a couple of seasons of ER, with its high drama of life-and-death hanging by a thread, but I’d somehow absorbed the conviction that if I so much as entered a trauma room, I’d trip over an essential wire or tool and kill somebody.

So every single hour on the on-call pager terrified me.

Turned out I had the fewest emergency calls of anyone in my group that summer, and never unplugged anything. (Thank God!)

That didn’t make me any more enthusiastic about uninvited challenges than I ever was, but I’m more comfortable in hospitals now, and I learned something else in spite of myself.

It’s something that Gabriel says to Mary, after she points out that there must be thousands of women better equipped to be having God’s baby.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you; God’s power will engulf you.” And that’s when Mary agrees.

Being overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit isn’t any easier than tackling many challenges on your own, but it’s the nature and promise of a gospel challenge.

The very last night I was on call, the pager never stopped beeping.  There was a child hit by a car, a deadly motorcycle accident, an infant being taken off life-support, and a few other odds and ends. 

I didn’t sit down for eight hours, and for eight hours it suddenly did not matter that I had no idea what to say most of the time or that critical wires and tubes were constantly in my way.

All I knew that night was that wherever I went in the hospital,

God was already there.

When you say “Yes,” to God, you’re never agreeing to do it alone.

The Holy Spirit finds you the words, or the skill, or the time, or the power that God needs to get the job done right.

That doesn’t mean God won’t stretch you and work you and pull you much further than you ever meant to go, but it does mean that miracles might happen, and that God most certainly will act.

So this Sunday, will you take a moment to open your heart to the challenges around you, and find one where you’ll take a chance on saying “Yes,” to God, and making room for the Holy Spirit to come over you?

The “Christmas season” can offer plenty of relationship and family challenges; disappointments and grief that feel too hard to face, or expectations you’d hate to try to meet.

And maybe there are not-so-seasonal challenges that God’s been offering you for a while; at work or at home;  to your creativity, for your health, to your confidence; to new tasks or relationships.

It’s very likely there’s a challenge, great or small, quiet or obvious, in your life right now. Accept it - say “yes!” - or just offer it, and let the Holy Spirit in.

And if you’re not quite ready to say “yes,” you can just offer the challenge itself as a gift to God.

Mary said yes. But she didn’t do it blindly.  She accepted God’s crazy challenge fully aware of how risky it would be.

Then she kept saying yes long after Jesus was born. 

And the whole rest of the story is full of the Holy Spirit, vivid in Mary, in Jesus, and in us.

God might not ask you to mother the Messiah, (once should have been enough for that task!) but soon or late, God is going to call you to something that scares you, something you know someone else could do better, but God is asking you.

It’s okay to argue, if you have to,

but listen carefully to God’s challenges,

listen for the Holy Spirit,

and make the effort to say, “Yes!” at least once.

Because the Holy Spirit is waiting for you to open that door,
and you never know when you’re going to be the one to change the world.