Xmas Or Christmas?
2 Peter 1:16-18
Rev. John R. Hannem,
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Listen to these words written by the Apostle Peter in 2 Peter 1:16-18. "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power & coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitness of His majesty.
"For He received honor & glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, saying, `This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with Him on the sacred mountain."
Bob Evans was blind. For the first 51 years of his life he lived in a dark world filled with sounds, but not sight. Then delicate surgery was performed, & for the first time in his life, he could see.
He has written of his experience in seeing things for the very first time, He wrote, "I couldn’t believe yellow. I never dreamed that yellow was so, well, yellow. And red. Red is my favorite color. It’s so brilliant & warm & penetrating. Then there are the airplanes flying high in the sky, stretching their vapor trails behind them. I love watching the airplanes."
"And the sunsets. There are times when I just sit outside to drink in the beauty of a sunset, followed by a night filled with the brilliant light of the stars, blinking in the heavens." He went on, "I wonder if you realize just how wonderful the gift of sight really is?"
We have always seen, haven’t we? We just open our eyes. Sometimes we need a little help from glasses that correct our vision & bring things into focus. But most of us have always had this wonderful gift of sight.
Bob Evans also wrote, "All my life I was surrounded by beauty & I never realized it until now. I didn’t even know what I was missing."
It is possible for us to be that way with God, too, isn’t it? To come to church & sing songs of praise, even to pray & read His Word, & yet never know Him, to know only what others have learned of Him & have taught us, but never really to know Him for ourselves.
Maybe our goal for Christmas ought to be to know Jesus for ourselves. Because the message of Christmas is this, "Heaven visited earth & made it possible for earth to get right with God. God became flesh & lived with us for a brief period of time, so that the eyes of man could behold Him, & ears could listen to what He had to say."
Would it be too bold a prayer for us to pray at Christmas time - that we might behold Him, too? Listen to these words of some who did see Him:
Thomas saw Him & fell to his knees & said, "My Lord & my God." Mary Magdalene saw Him & said, "We beheld the glory of the Lord." The two Emmaus-bound disciples saw Him & said, "Were not our hearts burning within us?" And maybe Peter said it best when he said, "We were eyewitnesses of His majesty."
Are you ready to see His majesty? Are you ready to behold the King of Kings & the Lord of Lords? Are you ready to stand in His company?
One thing is for sure. God is ready & anxious to reveal Himself to us. But the question is, "Do we want to meet Him? Are we really prepared to hear His words, & listen to what He has to say?"
If you are, then pew-warming will not be enough. Junk Christianity won’t satisfy. Once you know Him you’ll want to remain with Him. You’ll want to stay with Him. You’ll want to give your life to Him. You’ll want to serve Him. So do you really want to see Jesus?
I. WILL IT BE CHRISTMAS OR XMAS?
Christmas reminds us that God is near & that He is available to all who will open their eyes to see, their ears to hear, & their hearts to follow Him.
But our problem at Christmas time is that when we do open our eyes we see so many different things.
1. On one hand we see crowded shopping malls, & presents that need to be bought, & traffic jams, & a pile of cards to be sent out. We see all the commercialization of Christmas.
2. But on the other hand we see a manger & a young mother holding a baby in her arms. We see a tired carpenter who has led them across a desert area to a place of warmth & safety. We hear angels singing, & see shepherds coming in adoration, & wise men bringing their gifts.
The two pictures simply don’t go together. They conflict with one another. So we come away confused, wondering what we are really supposed to see at Christmas time.
I think C. S. Lewis hit the nail on the head when he said, "We really celebrate two holidays on December 25th. One we call ’Xmas’ & the other we call ’Christmas.’"
Maybe we ought to separate the two & understand that they are actually different holidays.
On the Xmas side, we have a figure - Santa Claus. And on the Christmas side we also have a figure - Jesus.
On the Xmas side we have symbols - a Christmas tree, jingling bells, & reindeer. And on the Christmas side we also have symbols - a manger, shepherds, & wise men.
On the Xmas side we have presents - trinkets that we buy & that often cost too much money. On the Christmas side we have a priceless gift that will last forever & ever.
And it is important that we separate the two holidays in our minds because you see, Grinches can steal Xmas, but Grinches can’t steal Christmas.
Circumstances can rob us of Xmas. If we can’t buy the gifts, if we don’t have the money, if we aren’t invited to the right parties, if we don’t feel a part of things, if the kids have gone away & aren’t coming home to visit, if we are suffering pain or hardship - all these can rob us of Xmas, because Xmas depends on circumstances, on presents & cards & celebration & all the things that go with it. And if they are not there then we’ll not have a merry Xmas.
But Christmas comes anyway, whether there are cards or presents or trees or feasts or parties. Christmas comes anyway. It is important to realize that nothing can rob us of the real joy of Christmas.
Every year we hear people say, "Oh, I dread Christmas. I just hate to think that Christmas is coming again." Those are the people who are celebrating Xmas. They are all caught up in the pressure & the expense & the materialism of it all.
But the people who get the most out of it are those celebrating the joy & wonder & grandeur of Christmas, & nothing can take that away from us.
So which are we celebrating, Xmas or Christmas? Is it possible to separate the two? Now please understand what I am saying next. I don’t think there is anything wrong with Xmas as long as we don’t go too far with it. Let’s go ahead & have it but let’s be sure that we separate the two different holidays in our minds so that nothing can rob us of the real joy of Christmas.
II. THREE SUGGESTIONS
Here are three suggestions that may be helpful to us in keeping the two separate.
Number one, make sure that we are quiet enough to hear & see Jesus. If there is too much noise & confusion & conflict we simply can’t hear what God is saying to us.
I think it is extremely important in all the noise & confusion of the celebration of Christmas for us to sit down someplace along the way, take the phone off the hook, turn off the television & listen. In the Bible God says, "Be still & know that I am God." The Candlelight Communion Service this Thursday evening would be such a time.
Interesting, isn’t it, that when the angels made the announcement of the birth of Christ that they didn’t go into the busy streets of
Why didn’t the angels appear over the busy streets of
Maybe if they had hovered over
Maybe that is what needs to happen to us. We need to be still for a moment & know that God is God. And that God is real.
Secondly, maybe we need to clean house. I don’t know about you, but at holiday time it is so easy to find our trash accumulating. Presents to open, guests to entertain, children & grandchildren everywhere. We just hope we can bulldoze through & find our way to wherever it is we are going.
Sometimes it is that way in our heart, too, isn’t it? Sometimes there are so many thoughts & noises & images that we can’t see what we’re supposed to see. Maybe we need to repent & clean house to make room for Jesus so that He will feel welcome & received in the inn of our heart & our soul & our life.
C. So we need to be quiet, & we need to repent, & thirdly, we need to become involved in the lives of people who are hurting. There is a strong temptation at Christmas time to focus inward. There is a strong temptation to buy gifts for the people we love & we like, family members.
There is a strong temptation to pat each other on the back & wish each other a merry Christmas, but to be immune to the hurt & the heartache & the cries for help coming from the busy streets of the world.
If Jesus communicated anything to us, it was that as Christians we must be concerned about the masses of people who don’t know Him & who are in need. As His ambassadors we have a responsibility to reach out in a very special & loving & unselfish way & communicate the meaning & purpose of Christmas.
One of my favorite Christmas stories is about the old shoe cobbler who dreamed one Christmas Eve that Jesus would come to visit him the next day. The dream was so real that he was convinced it would come true.
So the next morning he got up & went out & cut green boughs & decorated his little cobbler shop & got all ready for Jesus to come & visit. He was so sure that Jesus was going to come that he just sat down & waited for Him.
The hours passed & Jesus didn’t come. But an old man came. He came inside for a moment to get warm out of the winter cold. As the cobbler talked with him he noticed the holes in the old man’s shoes, so he reached up on the shelf & got him a new pair of shoes. He made sure they fit & that his socks were dry & sent him on his way.
Still he waited. But Jesus didn’t come. An old woman came. A woman who hadn’t had a decent meal in two days. They sat & visited for a while, & then he prepared some food for her to eat. He gave her a nourishing meal & sent her on her way.
Then he sat down again to wait for Jesus. But Jesus still didn’t come.
Then he heard a little boy crying out in front of his shop. He went out & talked with the boy, & discovered that the boy had been separated from his parents & didn’t know how to get home. So he put on his coat, took the boy by the hand & led him home.
When he came back to his little shoe shop it was almost dark & the streets were emptied of people. And then in a moment of despair he lifted his voice to heaven & said, "Oh Lord Jesus, why didn’t you come?"
And then in a moment of silence he seemed to hear a voice saying, "Oh shoe cobbler, lift up your heart. I kept my word. Three times I knocked at your friendly door. Three times my shadow fell across your floor. I was the man with the bruised feet. I was the woman you gave to eat. I was the boy on the homeless street."
Jesus had come. The cobbler just didn’t realize it.
CONCL. It happens all the time, doesn’t it? He is always there & we are eyewitnesses of His majesty. We just don’t focus in very often. We just don’t hear clearly.
Peter said, "We saw. We saw with our eyes. We heard with our own ears. We are not giving you fairy tales. We are not telling you something we heard from somebody else. We saw it. We heard it & we want to pass it on to you."
That is my prayer for you & for me this Christmas season. That we’ll not just celebrate Xmas but that we will really celebrate Christmas. That we will be able to see Him as King Of Kings & Lord of Lords, & as our Savior, too.
We extend His invitation this morning & we pray that you will respond to it as we stand & as we sing.