Getting Ready for Christmas

Mark 1:1-8

Advent 2B - 2011

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Life today, especially during this time of year, seems much more hectic, faster-paced, and sometimes crazier, doesn’t it? Each day, there seems to be less and less time to get done all that needs doing, especially as we prepare for Christmas. There’s the shopping, the wrapping, the baking, the Christmas Cards, the parties, and the decorations. We look at the calendar and we panic as we realize that we’re running out of time… December 25^th will be here before we know it! It’s hard to believe, but Christmas is only three short weeks away! Seems like we just had the Halloween Party, and already Christmas is nearly upon us! So much to do, and so little time to do it!

All this stress and anxiety over getting ready for Christmas seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it? We rush around, filled with anxiety and stress, trying to get everything done in time for Christmas… as if the world will end if we don’t get it all done by midnight on 24 December! We rush from store to store, stressing about the parking, the lines, and the fact that they don’t have the right size or color.

Then add to this a good dose of what I call that good, old-fashioned, “Christmas Spirit” – you know what I mean… the specter of other stressed out shoppers – all racing and rushing from one sale to the other; fussing at their spouses to hurry-it-up; arguing with the store clerks over the prices; yelling at their tired, hungry, crying children; and all spending money they don’t have on things that they don’t need, for people who don’t really care… impatient, cranky, hateful, selfish, greedy, pushy, stressed-out folks all trying to get ready for Christmas –proudly wearing their “Keep Christ in Christmas” sweatshirts, and all presented to us to the crackling sound of Christmas music blaring over the store’s sound system. If an alien visited us from another world, and saw all this, they’d think we were all crazy; but we, as a society, do this year after year after year… racing, rushing, panicking, stressing out over one day of the year… a day on which we are supposed to celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World – Jesus Christ!

How and why have we, as a world – even as Christians – allowed this to happen? We have taken the most sacred and probably the singularly most important event in all of human history – the actual Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ – and turned it into a vulgar display of our own greed, selfishness, gluttony, and consumption! We have taken this event of God visiting mankind to bring salvation to the world, and twisted into a hideous occasion whereby we spend all our time, energy and money getting ready – not for the arrival of the Christ, but to get ready for Santa Claus. The selfless act of God in coming to us, and the peace and goodwill of which the angels spoke on the night of Christ’s birth have been replaced by insane and the inane pursuit of self – all bought and wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree… and the only peace and goodwill that we see is the occasional, miniscule glimpse of generosity displayed amidst the tidal-wave of self-indulgence.

My friends, the event which we will celebrate in just three-short weeks is not about trees and lights; not about packages and presents; not about sales and shopping; not about rushing from one place to another; not about stress and anxiety and panic; but rather it is about God coming to us and offering us some peace, and some hope in the midst of a world gone mad over itself.

Christ came to bring peace and goodwill and hope and joy to a world enslaved by its own passions, prejudices, pride, and pettiness. Christ came to bring deliverance from what the world says is important, and show us that the Kingdom of God awaits us if we will set aside ourselves and seek after God through this same Christ. This was essentially the message that John the Baptist preached while standing in the Jordan River – “Prepare the way of the Lord – make straight his path.”

If we as a Church, as those who profess a profound faith in this same Christ, would spend less time preparing for Christmas, and more time preparing for Christ – image the changes it could bring, first to yourself, then to your family, then perhaps to your friends and even your neighbors. If we would embrace the ideals of the Kingdom of God rather than pursue the expectations of the society of men, image the peace and goodwill, the hope and joy, that we could share.

If we would shift our focus from the worldly to the heavenly, from the selfish to the self-less, from the efforts at perfection at Christmas to the promise of perfection in Christ, from the exhausting efforts to buy a little joy to the refreshing realities of experiencing real joy and real hope through this same Christ, image the change that could take place in us and in others. All the time, energy, and money spent over Christmas would then all be redirected to preparing ourselves and others for this Christ to rule in our lives and in our world, and to then baptize us with his spirit.

Imagine a Christmas celebration at your house, where Christ is ALL that celebrated. Image a Christmas where the only gifts we gave to each other were joy, forgiveness, tolerance, patience, and a little goodwill. If we would embrace THAT model for Christmas, then we, like John the Baptist and those who came to him to be baptized, would be able to say that we indeed have prepared the way of the Lord in our lives, and that we have made straight a path for the Kingdom of God to be real in the world around us.

So instead of rushing, and stressing, and panicking, and spending, in order to prepare for Christmas as the world expects us to do, let us embrace this ideal of preparing for Christ in our hearts and in our homes and in our world, and thereby experience all the joy and wonder and hope that this Season of the Year promised when Christ first came. This year, let me encourage to prepare the way of the Lord, and let all the Christmas preparations just hang. Because in the end, it won’t matter that you got an ipad or an ipod for Christmas; it won’t matter that you got a new shirt or new shoes for Christmas; it won’t matter if you have a real or artificial tree for Christmas; and it won’t matter that you had turkey or ham for Christmas.

All that will matter – all that really ever does matter – Is that you got Christ for Christmas – that you listened to the words of John the Baptist, prepared a way for Christ, and that you shared with others this Christ and all that he taught us and all that he promised. That you heeded the advice of the Scriptures, and Prepared the way of the Lord… that you make a straight path in your life, and the lives of your children, for our God to be GOD over all and in all. So instead of keeping Christ in Christmas… let us keep Christ AS Christmas and keep in the center, the entire focus of our celebrations. I think you’ll be glad you did.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.