by Jay Therrell
December 20, 2022
My wife, Kendra, and I are Christmas nuts. It is most definitely our favorite time of the year, and so on our first Christmas together as a married couple I wanted to do Christmas right. We were in a new home that we had bought just a few months before and we went out and bought the largest live Christmas tree we could find. There it stood – the best tree in the lot. I cleared a spot in the corner of our family room and set it up. This perfect tree was wide at the base and came to a perfect point on top. On it hung many beautiful Christmas ornaments. Several of the ornaments we had purchased as a special gift to each other on our honeymoon. Some of the ornaments were heirloom ornaments from grandmothers and special friends. All of them were glass and very breakable.
I wasn’t a pastor in those days. I was still practicing law. One evening, Kendra and I came home from my office Christmas party. I realized I couldn’t see the Christmas tree very well, and then as I walked on our hardwood floors, I began to hear glass cracking under my shoes. We turned the lights on only to find our perfect Christmas tree fallen over on the floor with all our beautiful and, to us, priceless ornaments pulverized. The ornaments weren’t even recognizable as they were mostly piles of glass dust and glitter.
Kendra immediately started to cry, and I don’t just mean cry – she was sobbing. I was trying to calm her down while keeping our two dogs from walking through the glass dust. There we were in what hours before had been a perfect Christmas, and now we found ourselves in the midst of a mess.
I am absolutely telling the truth when I tell you suddenly Kendra picked up the fallen Christmas tree all by herself and hurled it out the front door – with the lights and tinsel still on it. I’m sure the neighbors were wondering why there was a Christmas tree on the curb for the trash three weeks before Christmas. Kendra didn’t want to put up another tree that year, but I went out and bought a little three-foot artificial tree from Walgreens and we salvaged what few ornaments were left, the non-glass ones, and hung them up.
As I reflected upon our Christmas turning into a mess I realized some things. First, Christmas really wasn’t a mess. As big a Christmas fan as I am, and as much as I enjoyed our Christmas tree and ornaments, Christmas was still coming and the reason we celebrate it – the birth of Jesus – was still very much at the center of our Christmas experience.
Second, I began to realize that there in the mess of our fallen tree and pulverized ornaments was the Christmas story. On the outside we like others to think we have it all together. You know the song, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year….” Our perfect tree standing tall in our family room represented that. Inside we know differently. We know hurts, pains, brokenness, disappointments, anger, and bitterness. And of course, there’s that mess that we call sin in all our lives, me at the top of the list. Our fallen tree represented that. No matter how many heirloom ornaments Kendra and I hung on our tree, and no matter how many were destroyed, the real reason for Christmas was still with us. God was and is with us.
The Christmas story is not about God seeing how nice we were and coming down to spend time with sweet people. It’s the story of God seeing twisted, hurting, sinful, broken people – you and me – and coming to save us in the midst of a mess. It’s a story about love and grace. God came to bring salvation and save us from sin. In the midst of the mess, there is Jesus.
You see, God loves you and me. As Max Lucado puts it, God loves you so much that “if God had a refrigerator, your picture would be on it.” (1) The first gift of the first Christmas over 2,000 years ago is the same gift that God gives to us this year. In the midst of the mess – trying to put up decorations, getting Christmas cards in the mail, doing holiday baking, wrapping presents, attending parties, dealing with dysfunctional families – there is Jesus. In the middle of the brokenness of our world – disaffiliating churches and Methodist dysfunction, crime, illness, addictions, war, hunger – there is Jesus. Jesus comes in the midst of the mess and brings grace, peace, and love. Jesus enters into our lives and brings salvation to us by inviting us to say “yes” to Him and then further inviting us to help in His plan of salvation for others.
That’s what Christmas is all about. It’s about the story we read in Luke 2 that Jesus Christ, the living Son of God, came into this world to bring grace and love that frees us from sin and death. It’s about a God that loves us so much that He left Heaven of all places to walk among us, to be tempted like us, to die with us, and to rise from the dead for us. It’s the story of our God that came amidst the poorest of the poor and instead of announcing His birth to kings and senators, proclaimed it to lowly shepherds so that we would know God’s salvation is available to all of us – no matter what status we hold in life. It’s about God “moving into the neighborhood” as one translation of The Bible puts it.
John Ortberg in his book God is Closer than You Think (2) tells the true story of Father Damien, a Belgian priest who lived in the 1800s. Father Damien became famous for his willingness to serve lepers. He moved to a village on the island of Molokai, in Hawaii, that served as a leper colony. For 16 years, he lived in their midst. He bandaged their wounds, embraced the bodies no one else would touch, preached to the hearts that would otherwise have been left alone. He built homes so that the lepers could have shelter. He built coffins by hand so that, when they died, they could be buried with dignity.
Father Damien was not careful about keeping his distance. He dipped his fingers in the poi bowl along with the patients. He shared his pipe. He did not always wash his hands after bandaging open sores. Then one Sunday he stood up and began his sermon with two words, “We lepers….” Now he wasn’t just helping them. Now he was one of them. First, he had chosen to live as they lived; now he would die as they died.
The first Christmas day God came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ and began His message to us, His people: “We lepers….” Now God wasn’t just helping us. Now He was one of us…in the midst of the mess. Now we were in it together.
There in that feeding trough for cows and pigs, the Savior of the World came into a terrible mess, but He came bringing great Light to all of us. He came bringing a light that continues to shine into the darkness to this very day – bringing salvation to those who seek it. Our world has never been the same since.
The mess is still around. It changes from time to time and takes different forms. Our messes can cause problems that affect us on a global scale as much as they can also create great personal havoc in our own lives. But the salvation and love of Jesus that is God’s gift to us at Christmas is always available to us. God is with us this Christmas and always. And like Father Damien who gave up his life for the lepers in Kalawao, Jesus came that we might have life, true life, and have it abundantly.
It truly is the most wonderful time of the year, even amidst the messes and Methodist drama. It’s the most wonderful time of the year not because of the presents and decoration. It’s the most wonderful time of the year because God moved into the neighborhood! Jesus, the Emmanuel, God with us, is here to save us, and calls us not only to receive that wonderful Christmas present, but to participate in giving it to the rest of world.
There are plenty of messes, but Jesus and His saving grace are the gift that can truly transform them and use even them, even us, to save the world.
On behalf of the Wesleyan Covenant Association: Merry Christmas, friends.
The Rev. Jay Therrell is president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association and an ordained elder in the Global Methodist Church.
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1. Lucado, Max. A Gentle Thunder (Word, 1995).
2. Ortberg, John. God is Closer Than You Think (Zondervan, 2005), p. 103-04.