Looking for Christmas
Introduction
You remember the scene from 1965’s A Charlie Brown Christmas: Charlie Brown is confiding in his pal Linus on a bright, wintry day but something’s amiss. “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus,” Charlie Brown says. “Christmas is coming but I'm not happy. I don't feel the way I'm supposed to feel. Just don't understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that but I'm still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.”
Apparently, Charlie Brown had been watching too many Christmas commercials and movies, where idyllic decorations brighten every corner of a home and attractive, good-natured family members laugh easily with one another while pajama-clad children chatter like Santa’s elves over boardgames and puzzles in front of a large, roaring fire. In our imaginations, we envision our friends and coworkers with a beautiful tree, a delicious meal, and their shiny, happy faces enjoying it all. Christmas is, after all, for two-car/two-career families in towns called Pleasantville. Somehow, we along with Charlie Brown, have been sold a bill of goods that that's what Christmas is all about.
Where did it all go south and how did we get it so wrong? While picture-perfect/happy people enjoy the presents and the feast of Christmas, that’s not how it all began. Jesus was not born in a mansion or castle or even surrounded by nobility. He was born to a simple peasant woman and her carpenter husband so that He could sympathize with our brokenness, heartache, pain, and greatest disappointments. The first people who took the time to find Him were not kings or queens or celebrities of any kind. They were working class shepherds who were working the night shift.
“Do not be afraid,” the angel said to them. “I bring you good news of great joy.” Perhaps the shepherds were thinking weekends off with pay but the angel went on. “Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.”
A Savior has come for the girl who left home at 16 and for the father who drove her away. A Rescuer has come for every child who has been abandoned by a parent. A Healer has come to bind up the wounds of the one who can’t escape the trauma of childhood. A Redeemer has come for every man or woman whose train wreck of a life careened off the rails years ago. That's who Christmas is for!
It’s for the lonely and the broken hearted. It’s for the widow or the family with an empty chair around their table. It’s for the single mom who works two jobs to feed her kids. It’s for the young woman who works in strip clubs and the mother at home who worries about her. Christmas is for the homeless man who waits for the doors of the rescue mission to open for a hot meal and for the lonely millionaire tucked away behind the moat that is his front-yard.
Christmas is for everyone who keeps looking for love in all the wrong places and hoping deep in their hearts that the hope of the Nativity really does exist. Christmas is for those who have lost everything: their job, their fortune, their good name, their family, or their dreams. Christmas is for those who punch a time clock and have swollen feet. It’s for those who ride a train an hour-and-a-half each way for work and for those who sell beauty and glamor when they themselves feel ugly and lost.
Christ came down from Heaven to heal broken marriages and mend fractured families. He came for those who drink too much, smoke like chimneys, inhale from a crack pipe, sell their bodies, or are addicted to online shopping, power, status, cosmetic procedures, work, exercise, money, or food. He came for those who find their happiness in a pill bottle, for those who gamble away everything, and for those who hide a burner phone from their spouse. He came for the depressed, the lonely, the anxious, the stressed, the hopeless, and the discouraged.
That dark, smelly Nativity scene filled with the stink and noise of animals is not a place to look down on or be pitied, but rather it was the beginning of hope for us all. Grace was born there. Peace penetrated our hopelessness there. Love shone bright in our darkness there. That is our comfort and joy.
Like Charlie Brown, if Christmas has got you down, if you can’t find Christ in Christmas, if you’re feeling that your life somehow doesn’t measure up to the hype, then the truth of the Nativity is for you!
Like the shepherds, let’s go to Bethlehem and look for the manger. Let’s explore why the birth of Jesus in that stable over 2000 years ago is the dividing point of history. Like Mary, let’s treasure up all these things, pondering them in our hearts. And like the magi, let’s go on a journey to worship the King of kings!