12.23.07 Finding Christmas Again for the First Time
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. David Thompson
December 23, 2007 “Finding Christmas Again for the First Time”
Text: At this time the disciple came to Jesus and said, “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” So he called a little child to him and set the child in front of them. Then he said, “I tell you solemnly, unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Matthew 18: 1-3
A lot of adults have trouble with the Christmas season. One person said to me, “I’m not looking forward to Christmas. It’s a family time. Since the breakup of my marriage, Christmas is very difficult.” Another person wrote to me, “We were married 40 years ago and now that Bill has passed away there will be this hole. Nobody can really fill his place. The chair in the kitchen where he used to sit is empty now. There are no warm friendly eyes twinkling there, no sudden witty comment injected into the conversation.”
Perhaps for you it is a little different. Christmas means a set of deadlines for you. You want to entertain friends, get them all presents, mail out cards. Things have to get done. There is the pressure at work to get it all finished. There just isn’t enough time. So now you have come to resent Christmas.
Or perhaps for you it is the expectations that always disappoint. You desperately want to live an ideal Christmas. You want to fix people who aren’t interested in being fixed. You want to celebrate family traditions—your way. You know exactly how you want things to be, but year after year you find yourself disappointed.
Dr. Wayne Dyer points out in his book No More Holiday Blues that these are all adult reactions to the Christmas season. There is a better way to approach Christmas he says. What is that? It is to approach Christmas as a little child does.
In my childhood I went to a wonderful Sunday School Christmas Party. Every child received a present from the Sunday school and they were good presents. Our name was called, and up to the front we went to get our present. It was so exciting waiting for our name to be called. After we went back to our seats we got to open our presents. If we didn’t like what we received we could trade with another child. I can remember going home on cloud nine with a gyro toy that when spun would hold its position on a wire. Now that was a toy indeed!
Can you remember how you felt as a child at Christmas? If you had a good time as a child, if you have any positive childhood memories at all, then the way back into the magic of Christmas for us as adults is to once again find the child that lives within us, to become as little children. The best psychologists tell us that our child still lives within us. We never lose that child within. Even as we grow up, that child within longs to come out to play. This child is the crazy side to our personalities, it lies at the base of our sense of humor, she comes out when we fool around.
As we get older we learn to suppress this child within. We get serious, responsible, sober, and humorless. We worry about the future. Work becomes a serious business. We don’t have time for fun. We squash the child within.
Here are six keys for Christmas that can happen when we become as little children:
· Spontaneity! Children are impulsive; they try things without a plan. They try new things. There is a whole new world out there to discover!
I was walking down the street one day whistling a Christmas carol. A little boy of about 6 years of age coming the other way said to me: “I like your whistling. It’s a nice song!” “Thank-you,” I said and stopped whistling immediately. The adult in me stopped the whistling for two reasons. First, I became self conscious - something children resist in the early years. Secondly, I thought that if I started whistling again that little boy might think that I was just doing it to impress him and my adult didn’t want that!
Silly thoughts weren’t they, adult thoughts; careful, not carefree, thoughts; stifling thoughts!
Then I remembered what Wayne Dyer had said: “Be yourself, be your child, it’s Christmas!” So I started whistling again and I saw the little boy smile. I was so grateful for that little boy and Wayne Dyer, and I went home in the Christmas spirit.
· Children are genuine. As we get older we develop masks to protect ourselves. We often have one face for the world and another for the ones we love. But little children only have one face. They are absolutely themselves- not a phony bone in their bodies.
I encounter as I know you do people who are patent phonies. They have worked at developing a kind of sales personality. These folks discovered early on that fudging the truth sold a lot more product. So they hyped and fudged a little more all the time. You know what I mean—the false warmth, the too quick phony smile, the exaggerated sudden concern.
Now this is a serious disease, because the truth has gone. And these folks suspect every act of goodness that comes their way. These persons think: What’s the bottom line? What’s their angle? Everybody else is like me, so this act of goodness must be calculated. And their view of life becomes cynical. This is a temptation for many people who are in sales, and it can affect our view of the world and human nature permanently.
Is there a cure? Manipulation is a calculated act of goodness. True goodness on the other hand has a spontaneous quality about it. For the person afflicted with this disease, every Christmas card is an opportunity to manipulate the customer. The cure?
Fight that calculation with your whole heart. Run from it. If that motivation is there, don’t do the act. If you do the act, do it for its intrinsic worth, for the sheer goodness of it. And Lo! The Spirit of Christmas will come back!
· Children get excited. They have a sense of wonder, of curiosity. Do you remember when our first astronaut stepped onto the moon for the first time, that magical orb so far away from us in the night sky that we thought we could never walk upon its surface? From space came the words from the Hebrew Scriptures: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The astronauts were filled with wonder to be actually walking around on the moon’s surface. Little children have that kind of awe. Have you watched them play in puddles when it rains? Or try to catch a tadpole in a pond? Have you ever taken a small child under a waterfall? Have you ever been below Niagara Falls and felt the earth shaking with the immense forces of nature? I have and it was an experience of awe.
In the Gospel lesson today we came across the delightful story of Jesus taking a little child and setting that little child in front of his disciples and saying: “Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”
There are three essential characteristics of little children that the Biblical commentators want us to notice as the heart of Christ’s teaching here.
· Children are dependent. As creatures we are perhaps the longest in dependency of all God’s creation. In a good home a little child relies totally on his or her parents for everything. A child’s trust is total, and where that total trust is violated we frequently find damaged children. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven Christ says we must become like little children and learn to trust our Divine Parent. Throughout his life Jesus had this deeply trusting relationship with God whom he referred to as Abba or Dear Father. It is the adult in us who becomes cynical. It is the adult who doubts. The answer? Trusting like a child is necessary if we are to enter the peaceable Kingdom of God.
This may be very difficult for us to get back to the qualities of the spirit of our inner child, because it may involve putting aside worldly standards of judgment and ways of acting. It will involve changing fixed habits of thought. Jesus is serious here: it is “Unless we change, and become like little children…” Its change back he means!!! Back to what we once knew.
· The second child-like characteristic is receptivity. A commentator says that a child looks to their parents for all they receive. At an early age everything is a gift. The qualities of superiority, hardness, lack of sympathy, failure to cut slack to people who are under stress, are qualities that all too frequently mark religious people and these qualities keep them from experiencing the peaceable Kingdom of God. Jesus would say to these dear folks, “Look at this child in my arms, to such belongs the Kingdom of God.” This child already has the spirit of the citizens of the kingdom. You once had this and without dependence and receptivity, no one can enter. But if you already have these things as an adult, you are already a citizen whether you know it or not!
It is quite possible isn’t it to fall out of the Christmas spirit? The same thing can happen to us with what Christ taught us about the Kingdom of God. We can lose the faith. We used to attend church but that is behind us now. Sunday is mall shopping day or a day to do sports and have fun! Worship God? NO, we say, “ I’m more into other things now. I work hard all week.”
You can remember the days when as a little child you felt close to God, but you are not any more. But something inside you is still searching for meaning and today you have shown up in church hoping that you might find that something you lost a long time ago…
Remember Scrooge after the ghosts visit him? He becomes childlike. He scares his housekeeper by jumping around the room he is so happy! When Scrooge becomes childlike his housekeeper thinks that he has lost it. But Scrooge hasn’t lost it at all. He has regained his true self!
Two small boys were walking home from school. One boy turned to the other and said: “You know Joey; I don’t think I want to grow up.” ‘Why ever not?”’ asks Joey. “Because when you grow up your heart dies.”
Alan Cohen writes in his Dare to be Yourself: “Most people allow their heart to close down with age. Not because we have to. Not because God set life up that way. Because we let it be so…our heart doesn’t have to die. We just have to remember to keep our light shining as brightly as possible. We are like lighthouse keepers. The light is quite present and powerful and will do its job just by being what it is. Our role is to keep the mirrors polished so it can radiate far and strong.”
A member of our congregation sent me a story: “We were the only family with children in the restaurant. I sat Erik in a high chair. Suddenly Erik squealed with glee and said “Hi!” He pounded his little hands on the high chair tray, his eyes crinkled with laughter as he wriggled and giggled. I looked around and saw a man, whose pants were baggy, whose shirt was dirty and whose hair was uncombed and unwashed. We were too far away from him to smell but I was sure that he smelled. His hands waved, “Hi there, baby. Hi there big boy. I see ya Buster!,” the man said to Erik. My husband and I exchanged looks: “What are we going to do?” Erik continued to laugh and answer “Hi!”
Everyone in the restaurant noticed and looked at us and then at the old man. This old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby. Our meal came and the man began shouting across the room, “Do ya patty cake? Do you know peek-a-boo? Hey look he knows peek-a-boo!” Nobody thought the old man was cute. He was obviously drunk. My husband and I were embarrassed. We ate in silence, all except for Erik who was running through his entire repertoire for a skid row bum, who in turn reciprocated with his cute comments.
We finally got through the meal and headed for the door. My husband went to pay the check. The old man sat poised between me and the door. As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back trying to sidestep him and avoid him. As I did Erik leaned over my arm reaching with both arms in a baby’s “pick me up” position. Before I could stop him, Erik propelled himself from my arms to the man’s. Suddenly an old smelly man and a little child were loving each other. Erik in an act of total trust, love and submission laid his tiny head on the man’s ragged shoulder. The man’s eyes closed and I saw tears beneath his lashes. His aged hands full of grime pain and hard labor cradled my baby and stroked his back.
No two beings ever loved so deeply for so short a time. I stood awestruck. The old man rocked and cradled Erik in his arms and his eyes opened and set squarely on mine. He said in a firm and commanding voice “Eh! You take care of this baby!” Somehow I managed, “I will.” He pried Erik from his chest lovingly and longingly. I received my baby and the man said. “God bless you Ma’am. You have given me my Christmas gift!”
With Erik in my arms I ran for the car. My husband was wondering why I was crying and holding Erik so tightly and why I was saying “God forgive me!” I had just witnessed Christ’s love shown through the innocence of a child who saw no sin, who made no judgment; a child who saw a soul, and a mother who saw a suit of clothes. I was an adult who was blind, holding a child who was not.
The ragged old man had unwittingly reminded me: “To enter the Kingdom of Heaven we must become as little children.”
Christmas is about the birth of a special child—the one who as a grown man taught us that except we receive the kingdom like little children we could not enter.
Today each one of us can put our trust back in God, like a little child, and two things will immediately start to happen:
· We will rediscover the Christmas spirit of love and peace and joy and kindness.
· We will discover that we have got citizenship. The Kingdom of God, that immense peacefulness, hope and joy that spreads all over the earth at this time of year, belongs to us all year long.
If we do this we will find Christmas again for the first time as fully childlike adults.
Yes!
Thanks be to God!
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