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No Ordinary Prophet                        Matthew 11: 2-11                   December 16, 2007

Whenever Christmas is discussed, or thought about, for that matter, there is always tension present. Tension between what we might call the sacred meaning of the holiday - the birth of the Christ Child - and the more secular, cultural meaning - a mid-winter celebration with trees and lights and parties and presents.

And, while it is true that many of us are annoyed, frustrated and even angered by what we see as a present-day tilt toward the secular side of that duality, associating it with our National obsession with political correctness;

And still more of us bristle at the notion that greetings such as "seasons greetings" and "happy holidays" have replaced "merry Christmas" in the popular vocabulary, and that seasonal songs that don't even mention Christmas, much less Christ, such as "Jingle Bell Rock" are the only ones that are played in public places;

The truth is that this tension between the sacred and the secular is nothing new.

On the contrary, it has been around for centuries.

Bruce David Forbes, in a fascinating little book entitled Christmas: A Candid History, points out some interesting facts that can help Christians like us understand the tension - and, more importantly, also poses a suggestion that could possibly relieve the tension or, at the very least, help us enjoy the season without getting our backs up all the time.

First of all, we need to remember that the notion of celebrating the birth of Jesus does not really have its roots in Scripture. The first century Church - the body of believers from whose mouths and pens grew the Gospels and the other writings in our New Testament - did not celebrate Christmas. These early followers of "The Way," as the early Christian movement was called, focused not on Jesus birth but rather on his death and resurrection.

Paul, the author to whom nearly two thirds of the New Testament is attributed, says nothing specifically about the birth of Jesus. The only narrative we do have - the familiar one that we all read each year and on which we base our Christmas songs and Christmas pageants - must be pieced together from the writings of Matthew, who includes the wise men, the moving star and the family's escape to Egypt to avoid Herod's persecution, and Luke, who includes the shepherds and the angels appearing to them in the fields.

"When Christians eventually got around to organizing a special annual celebration of the birth of Jesus," Forbes writes, "they had to take the few crumbs provided by Matthew and Luke, put them together, and then add some additional traditions, in order to get much of a story to work with."

And then there is the small detail that it really helps to know when a person was born [Forbes continues] if you are planning to have a birthday party for him. Here, too, the early church had a problem, since there is nothing in the New Testament to indicate either the month or the day of Jesus' birth.

No, it wasn't until the new Christian movement spread westward and northward from what we now call the Middle East and the Mediterranean countries into Europe where the winters were colder and darker that the celebration of the birth of Christ was combined with winter festivals that were already in place in those countries, and not until sometime in the fourth Century that December 25th was agreed upon as the day to commemorate Jesus' birthday.

These ancient winter celebrations looked, tasted and smelled a whole lot like Christmas, by the way. They typically happened just when the days were beginning to lengthen (toward the end of December) and included a festival of lights, featuring candles and burning logs. They also often included evergreens as decorations - reminders of life in the midst of gloom and death.

These winter festivals served as a perfect platform on which to build a Christmas celebration. All the Church needed to do was to insert the Matthew and Luke birth narratives, add a few other pleasant, non-scriptural traditions and before long a wonderful celebration of the birth of Jesus was born.

I don't mean to dwell on them, but the added, non-biblical traditions are interesting. For example, briefly, there is no mention of a donkey, or any other farm animals for that matter, at the scene of Jesus' birth in the Biblical accounts, and yet we almost always include them in our pageants and manger scenes - including the one on our back table today. Also, while Matthew does mention wise men from the east, he never mentions the number - we traditionally infer from the three gifts that are mentioned that there were three Magi as well.

To summarize, then, the traditions of Christmastime have surely grown and evolved over the years, borrowing cultural customs along the way and spreading customs from one region to another.

During most of Christian history the Christmas tradition gained momentum, though for a time - when the Puritans came into prominence in England and here again in the New World -Christmas celebrations were actually banned. The British Parliament in 1642 proclaimed "no observance shall be had of the five and twentieth of December, commonly called Christmas Day, nor any solemnity used or exercised in churches upon that day in respect thereof." And here, on this side of the pond, William Bradford, the Governor of the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts, made keeping Christmas a criminal offense.

And you thought it was the Grinch who stole Christmas!

The point of all this is simple, really. No matter how you slice it, it is not really fair to complain that our Christmas observance has "gotten" secular - fact is, it was secular in the first place. Cultural celebrations held in the middle of winter were there before anyone thought about putting any of the stars and lights and greenery in churches. The Jesus birthday celebration was added later, taken away by those pesky Puritans, then re-inserted in a well-established and popular wintertime holiday period.

I don't mean to suggest, of course, that we Christians should not be celebrating the coming of Christ and the miraculous way he was born to two young peasants called Mary and Joseph. On the contrary, this event marks the beginning of the life of the one who would change the history of the world and who makes it possible for us to revel in the knowledge that we are forgiven.

Nothing could be more worthy of a celebration.

Just look at our Gospel lesson for this morning. It points out, in crystal clear terms, that this Jesus whose birth we celebrate at this time of year was no ordinary prophet. Greater, even, than John the Baptist, who, by Jesus' own description, was a truly great prophet.

"What did you go out into the wilderness to look at?" Jesus asks the crowd. "A reed shaken by the wind? What then did you go out to see? Someone dressed in soft robes? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist."

And as great as John the Baptist was, Jesus was greater still. Greater than any prophet - or any person, for that matter - before or since. This is our Savior we're talking about after all.

Yet, most of the world seems to miss the point of his birthday celebration, in favor of one more focused on Santa Claus and High-definition TVs and phones called "chocolate" that take pictures and store music and access the Internet. None of which is particularly evil, but none of which has anything whatsoever to do with Jesus or the message of peace and righteousness and justice that should be in our minds and hearts when we think about him.

Perhaps the answer - and again, I credit Bruce Forbes and his little book with the suggestion - but just perhaps, the answer should be to stop trying to put Christ back into a Christmas celebration that never was purely spiritual in the first place.

We are simply never going to succeed in that accomplishment. Far too many people - here in our country and around the world - celebrate Christmas without the slightest thought of the Jesus Christ that we hold so dear. Literally millions of people throw themselves headlong into Christmas, spending hundreds, even thousands of dollars on gifts and decorations, and never attend church - or for that matter ever intend to do so.

A more productive - and certainly a less anger-inducing - approach is to accept the fact that Christmas is a part of our culture, recognize that, at some level anyway, the lights and the cards and the brightly-wrapped gifts and the parties at work and school are at least a tip of the hat to Jesus' birthday.

After all, a seasonal acknowledgement of good cheer and warm greetings is not exactly the worst thing in the world. Better we should be greeting one another with a smile and a "seasons greetings" than ignoring one another completely.

I guess what I'm suggesting is this: don't let yourself get agida when someone wishes you "happy holidays" or invites you to a "holiday party." It could be worse.

But don't let it stop there either. Make sure that your family also sets aside a time to focus on this extraordinary man whose birth we commemorate each year. Forbes proposes that a good time to do that would be the twelve days of Christmas, the time between Christmas day and the Epiphany.

It's a compelling idea, I think. After the holiday hoopla climaxes, either Christmas Eve or Christmas morning - whenever your family empties the stockings and opens the gifts and eats the big Christmas meal - instead of just exhaling and feeling the sadness that almost always sets in when something that was so eagerly anticipated comes and goes, try focusing everyone's attention onto the spiritual meaning of the incarnation. Set aside a day, or two, or twelve if you can manage it, for pure reflection on the remarkable truth that God - that awesome Creator of everything - came to earth in the form of a humble child. For reflection on the truth that Jesus was no ordinary prophet - no, he was Emmanuel; he was and is "God with us."

So rather than trying to drown out all the noise of the Holidays, this year, after the Christmas celebration is over, perhaps each of us can set aside some time to be still and quietly listen to the voice of God. Who knows, it might turn out to be the best Christmas ever.

                                                                             AMEN