It’s a Christmas play
As an over forty something I have to admit that Christmas is still my favourite time of year. I still get up early and use the kids as my excuse for being up at a silly time and I still join them around the foot of the tree and use them as the excuse for being the first one there, and I still sit in wonder enjoying every second of every minute thinking what a wonderful day.
On the run up to Christmas as I have done for more years than I would like to admit I go and see one of my children’s Christmas plays. As is mandatory and probably a good laugh for the kids, we play the “lets sit the grown ups on the small seats and see if they fall off” game, which is then accompanied by the shuffling round to stop gangrene setting in game.
So there I was amongst the other parents and family shuffling around with a mixture of pain and anticipation, looking for traditional tea towel shepherds and cotton wool sheep, but there was not one in site. Instead we were greeted by two children dressed up like characters from “Doctor Who” who informed us they were time travellers and as the story unravelled we found out that they had come through time looking for the true meaning of Christmas.
But before I go any further there is one thing I must warn you about, and that is that sitting in the audience and watching the parents and friends at these events can be even funnier than what the kids do, so beware. This particular day I was sitting perched next to my wife and happened to look across the aisle, and there trying his best to look collected was a very sombre well dressed executive in a pin stripe suit who looked more interested in his phone than anything else. Smiling to myself I then made the fatal mistake of looking at his socks, and saw he was wearing the days of the week socks (you know the one with the days of the week on). Now its always concerned me how you get the right socks on the right days of the week, but it obviously didn’t bother him, because one day was Wednesday and the other I discovered after pretending to drop my program was Thursday. I was very good though and didn’t let my laughter escape until I whispered in my wife’s ear who promptly exploded and fell off her seat, exclaiming but its only Tuesday today.
Any way back at the front, the traveller’s journey of discovery started in a shop where all the Christmas gifts were on sale and came to life and sang a song, as they do. Then they visited a cracker factory where the Christmas crackers had a disagreement about who had the best joke, and from the jokes I deducted very cleverly that they were probably Taiwanese crackers.
A farm was there next stop, where the turkeys didn’t
realise they were top of the menu, and were about to be gobbled up (Christmas
cracker joke from
Surprisingly this left the travellers a little confused, so they set the clock back 2005 years on their cardboard spaceship, and guess what they found?
At last there were the shepherds with mums best tea towel, and the sheep were there loosing clumps of cotton wool as they bounced around, and in the centre of all this mayhem there was a little plastic baby wrapped in a blanket laying on a poor mans crib.
It was at this point that I noticed the audience, the shuffling and giggling had stopped, and even the executive had looked up from his phone. For a moment while the kids played out the nativity scene there was hushed silence.
I have never been to
I am certain that the shepherds and the wise men had no doubt that they were the first witness’s of something remarkable and never forgot that night.
And even though in the school hall Mary was Seven years old and the Donkey had plastic ears, the wonder broke through and for a moment we all utterly believed, our hearts were moved by the innocent touch of love.
After the play and the rapturous applause, the hush remained with me as I drove home, and I thought, that’s got to be one of the best sermons I’ve heard , wish I could preach like that.
Some would say “its just emotion”, some would say “ I haven’t got time for all that” some would say “ where is the relevance to my life”. Is Christmas just a play after all?
Christmas was an act of love on a heavenly scale,
because “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, and that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”.
The apostle Paul put
some meat on it and wrote this in a prison cell.
If I
speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but
the creaking of a rusty
gate.
If I
speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything
plain as day, and if I
have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I
don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake
to be burned as a
martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.
So,
no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up. Love cares more for others
than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut,
doesn’t have a swelled head,
Love
doesn't force itself on others, isn’t always "me first," Doesn't fly
off the handle,
Doesn't
keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes
pleasure in the flowering of
truth,
Love
puts up with anything; Trusts God always, always looks for the best, Never
looks back, But keeps
going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over
some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.
We
know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always
incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our
incompletes will be canceled.
But
for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us
toward that consummation:
Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love
Extravagantly. And the best of the
three is love.
If
you have gone off and done the washing, wrapped the presents, cooked the turkey
And
ignored everything else I have said. Do this.
Love
your family, love you friends, love your neighbor, and forgive your enemies.
Because if love is of God, then when we love are we being like God? Spooky stuff eh, thought you were exempt and could not possibly measure up to the “thou shalt nots”
Party on, be excellent to one another. Remember the reason for the season.