If PNC Financial services is right, this has been the most expensive Christmas since they started figuring out the costs many years ago. Last year the price of French Hens spiked up by 30%, this year they were a deal! The price of calling birds actually went down by 13%: the four of them….do you remember pricing them out….were $519.96. By far the priciest gifts on the list were the 7 swans a swimming at $6300, while the geese-a-laying were only $162.00. (I’d go get mine for free near the Wal-Mart parking lot, but who asked me?!). I was SHOCKED that the 9 dancing ladies cost as much as the swans, while the 8 milking maids went for about $7 each, right at minimum wage…..which leaves me wondering what kind of ladies these are!
Anyway, the total this year for the entire bunch was a deal at slightly over $24,000, UNLESS you want to buy the entire SET…..you know, 12 partridges instead of just one, 22 turtle doves instead of 2 and so on. DO that and you end up with about $101,119, not including the cost of shipping live birds!!
Unless you couldn’t withstand the pressures of some of the fancy car commercials, your Christmas most likely didn’t cost nearly that much did it? In fact, the average American family…..whatever that is……spent about $384 on Christmas last year, a lot less than I would have figured.
Truth be told and budgets out of mind for a moment, I don’t think anybody but Scrooge McDuck really wants to think about Christmas in only fiscal facts and figures. That’s NOT how we want to “measure” Christmas, is it? What’s the cost of a smiling child on Christmas morning? How do you put a price tag on the candlelight singing of Silent Night last evening? Can we even begin to gauge mom’s delight when that new puppy “baptizes” the carpet a few times and eats her best shoes? That can’t be done!
If we’re actually figuring the cost of Christmas, it’s not in terms of dollars at all. It’s going to be in relational terms.
Some of this does happen on our side of the equation: trips to the post office, time spent driving ‘over the river and through the woods,’ hours of joyful wrapping and family time together. All of that is incalculably priceless, isn’t it? Its kids coming home and time spent eating cookies, telling stories, visiting neighbors and just plain being….together. All that can’t be priced. It’s far beyond that.
But there’s another relational factor to be considered: what it cost Jesus! Listen again to the words of the disciple John in our traditional Christmas Gospel: The WORD became flesh and made His dwelling among us; and we have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, Who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (NIV John 1:15)
History tells us that when the disciple John was writing these words, the early church was fighting a heresy, or false teaching, known as Docetism. The word comes from the Greek word which means “to seem.” Teachers of this false message claimed that Jesus didn’t really become a human being, which would have been too much of a demotion for the TRUE GOD. They tried to put forward the case that Jesus was only pretending to be a human being, and that Jesus didn’t really suffer and die, He only pretended to do it.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, John defended Jesus by telling his readers, “NO, I walked with Him. I ate with Him. I saw Him cry! And I watched Him bleed and suffer and DIE!” That was the core of John’s Gospel message: Jesus was the true second person of the Trinity who became a true human being and then died for all the rest of us. Now that’s costly, my friends!
John goes even farther back, tying Jesus not only to the passion and the cross, but to the very creation of the world, and that if Jesus hadn’t been there, the world wouldn’t have been made. He was the very WORD through which the Father spoke His creation into being. John is arguing against another heresy here, one called Gnosticism, which had declared that all of creation, all physical material was inherently BAD, and only the Spirit was good. By linking Jesus’ spirit to the creation of the world, John declared the essential goodness of the world…..and that God would Himself become a part of it!
Christmas, from His very first one on earth til His last one, became a very messy endeavor for Jesus. It cost Him pain, work, blood, sweat, tears and eventually, a face to face encounter with Satan and then death itself. That’s costly too, isn’t it?
The truth is, “doing Christmas the way GOD did Christmas” is always going to be messy, difficult, and costly….in relational terms. It means pouring ourselves into the lives of friends and family members. It means becoming vulnerable ourselves as we share time with them. It means finding ways to CONNECT with them. Maybe it means rearranging our priorities for theirs; rearranging our schedules to meet theirs; sacrificing some of ourselves so we can be with them.
All of these things God did for us that very first Christmas. John’s Gospel began with the words “The Word (Jesus) became flesh….we get that part, the Baby Jesus part….and “made His dwelling among us.” (J 1:4). The “made His dwelling” means “set up camp” in the middle of us. Have you ever gone camping? I don’t mean the “motor-home, smaller than usual microwave and tinier shower” type, I mean REAL camping with sleeping on the ground and cooking over wood and, you know, “doing what bears do in the woods” kind of camping? It doesn’t get more real than having someone you love volunteer to crawl out of their sleeping bag into the frosty cold, fire up the stove and make coffee for you. That’s LOVE, friends.
Jesus did that. He didn’t come to be some “angelic fly on the wall.” He “camped out” in the middle of us; being with real people for 33 years….until those same real people hung Him on the cross.
He let them do it; of course…..the ultimate sacrifice that, at the onset, looked to all His followers like it would put an END to their relationship. Until He came back…..from the dead! That’s a reestablished relationship that was worth sharing, and share it they did, with everyone they met!! And that relationship, which now goes on in heaven, proved costly for each one of the disciples, and for thousands more believers. While the WORD accepted them, the WORLD didn’t.
I’ve heard and seen plenty of Jewelry commercials in this Christmas season hawking products with slogans like “share your heart.” While it may be true that those gifts come from the heart, Jesus shared HIS heart to such an extent that it cost Him His life. That’s commitment……commitment we can trust forever.
On the cross Jesus basically said this: This is how much I love the world that I entered when I was born: I am willing to die for it! He did…..and He asks us to share our hearts…..which are filled with HIS love…..with people around us. In other words written by that same disciple (1 John 4), we hear this: Beloved, if God loved us, so we ought to love each other!
What kind of relational costs will you lay out for yourself this Christmas? IS there someone who doesn’t know Jesus? Is there someone who has allowed himself or herself to be cut off from the One who died for them? On Sunday, Dec 11 Linda Seybold shared a moment of Hope with us….that at the Angel Tree party she was able to share the Christmas Story….the real one….the Jesus story….with children who had NEVER heard it before! No one had ever loved those kids enough to tell them about Jesus!
Truly “relating” at Christmas may not be easy. It might require stuffing some pride away; moving out of our comfort zone; allowing someone else to occupy your heart; certainly not being politically correct (you might get thrown out of a post office!) and who knows what else. But that’s our call.
Let’s close with a simple question: “Who?” Who is it in your world that you are being called to connect with this Christmas? Who needs to know Jesus came to be their Savior? Who needs to know you have been called as their “aggelos,” their angel, their messenger, to share with them the good news of Jesus.
Christmas can be costly, especially if you’re charging 5 diamond rings and hiring a bunch of dancing ladies. But we can ALL afford to connect….the way Jesus did. The impact of earthly gifts will fade…..but not the impact of the heavenly gift. It’s the one gift that keeps on giving forever.
Merry Christmas!
