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One of my fondest and most early memories of Christmas as a child was hearing, waking up to the Ramsey Lewis Trio's— ‘The Sound of Christmas,’ early on a Christmas day’s morning. It was quite sad to recently hear that it was stolen from my parents’ home, during in their last move, since it was a highly cherished family memento. I even miss what it looked like for she only had the white insert sleeve remaining and it had a blue record label. It's not only just an album, but the song itself—The Sound of Christmas,’ has become both a point of grief as well as Joy as it is so much a song of looking back, at people, places and things long lost. This song as well is a song of looking forward with hope. This song is purely an instrumental Jazz tune of many instruments but the sound itself is “awakening.” It stirs something in my heart much like how the Spirit stirs us and opens our eyes to the reality of God working through our lives!
The sound of Christmas on that very first day of creation
was the Word. In the beginning, as we know— was the Word and the Word was with
God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came
into being through Him and without Him, not one thing came into being. What is
come into being in Him was life and the life was the light of all people.
These words are just the beginning of that beautiful suspected ancient hymn,
prologue that begins the elusive Gospel of John. Here was a gospel writer whose
primary focus was everything and anything in discovering Christ. You could say
that his perspective upon Christology, (one of those $20 words) is the
strongest of all the Gospels combined.
It was fascinating to read some historical accounts have
him depicted as a young troublemaker at times before joining the disciples as
one of the sons of Zebedee. By the time the Gospel was penned it was suspected
that he may have been something like a 100 years old and that the younger John
recorded his witness to Jesus and what Jesus was to mean for the sake of the
world. Witness is a powerful thing
especially when it is seeking an understanding to a faith that comes from that
very witness! Much like those “Pavlov
tears,” mysteriously sprung upon hearing that Ramsey Lewis tune, ‘The Sound of
Christmas,’ there is a rustling in the heart, where God is working upon our human
frailties….
The Word was that light that entered the hostile
Darkness... the hostile Darkness of our world, where seeking understanding has
become something more or less around the self instead of seeking the light of
God to transform the heart into that TRUE marker of ‘progress’—the New Creation. Often times, the things our faith journey has
us see and live through are those dark obstacles, those stumbling blocks. These
are those very places where the Evil One has you feel that grief, or despair or
looming sadness that tries to do more or less what the Grinch did—rob you from
the TRUE joy of Christmas.
When that light does affect us. When we truly allow it to shine and burn away
that darkness… It, indeed illumines our hearts to reap that New Nature—that longed
for restoration of that genuine childhood—the one God wanted us to live and
grow forward from. Much like a seed planted in the earthiness of our
hearts, the Son shines His light there and thus it begins to germinate our
conversion or transformation into a New Creation! Where the beauty of the
small things we do in our lives out of a love for God and neighbor inspire us
to know real joy—to live GRACE upon grace! This is the TRUE joy and meaning of Christmas!
Speaking of the joy, of the season of Christmas, I'm sure
many of you have send out many cards, emails, gifts and so on to friends,
family & coworkers. This year, my husband and I decided to send out an
electronic Christmas message. The reasoning behind this was not only to save a
tree but that it could reach more people quicker. One of life’s hardest lessons
to be taught, however, is to be careful who you send to…. Let’s just say that sometimes
that New Nature can get us into trouble especially when we simply try to reach
out with that olive branch of peace and just send a friendly message to someone
who perhaps thinks of you now as the enemy. This was the case for me this year in
perhaps making the grave mistake of sending my Christmas card to a former
friend who basically verbally shot down my kindness by trying to start a war
over politics. The context was simple enough, a few years back, our friendship
simply ended because my husband is in politics and is not of the “preferred
politics…” of this former friend… Ridiculous, but true.
One of the tragedies of our current culture is how we
have come to politicize everything and anything in view. What this has created
however is that we are now polarizing people, basically categorizing and
alienating them (putting them into exile) purely out of our self-righteous judgmentalism.
Those that we should be considering our neighbor, we condemn with words of
intellectualized, and self-justified hate. What we must recall is that we are
to love God and neighbor with all of our heart, soul, and mind and this is a
part of “The Growing Pains” of dealing with our Humanity..... Here, basically,
is where I have shed my tears this year.
Much like the Grinch who tried to steal Christmas, this
man's scathing rebuke to the audacity of my innocence of sending him a
Christmas card, did try to snuff out that light. For a moment I did see the darkness
of this man's hatred purely invented through an intense self-righteous
judgmentalism to someone he really doesn't truthfully know too well at all. As we hear the sounds of this very Gospel for
this most blessed Christmas day—“9The true light, which enlightens
everyone, was coming into the world. 10He was in the world, and the
world came into being through Him; yet the world did not know Him. 11He
came to what was His own, and His own people did not accept him.”
The greatest irony about this former friend, is that he is
studying to be a pastor as well. He even has a GoFundMe page with something
like almost $12,000 collected towards his efforts to finalize serving “Justice”
for Jesus... If someone wanted to be very Old Nature, I could have taken that
whole dialogue of blatant hostility I received in that email and posted it on
his GoFundMe page saying: “Look at this, here's your future pastor you're
giving money to….” I don't believe in an “eye for an eye,” in fact it saddens
me to have nearly caved or even felt tempted to live into an Old Natured
solution.... Satan makes these kinds of reactions though, seem very easy and “logical.”
What it really does, however, is challenge us to abandon living into being
children of Grace and promise. Instead
this dark attitude helps us to become a graceless people in perpetual exile to
God’s grace only set to wandering in a purposeless and dark wilderness of our
self-justified sin!
This is why Christmas is so important it's not just
relating or reliving “Jesus birthday” but it is rethinking, reliving,
replanting and realizing a God who came down to us. The God bearer—Mary and her
betrothed husband Joseph, survived the slaughter of the innocents as ordered by
fearful political “leaders” (rulers in the world…), in order to bring forth the
miracle of God’s Son born in a manger of wood and straw. This is a God who chose to put on our flesh
in order to love us and open our eyes to a whole New world, which is kingdom of
God. His glory would be realized of course through the wood of that cross where
our sins were nailed there with Him.
I’ll leave you with a beautiful image of when you have
moments of seeing and hearing God at work in your very lives. I have been blessed to be working at the
moment, in full-time spiritual care. I
have been caring for someone who has just started hospice. If you’re not familiar with the term it literally
means end-of-life, process care. It is
process care involving nurses, chaplains such as myself, doctors and families. It is a painful road where being “hopeful,” is
more than a challenge. How do you reach
down to those in despair and bring them into the light of Hope? How do you even begin to remotely help them
to find peace and reconciliation? Wanting to rebel on both the patient and the
families’ ends is natural and is welcomed, for they need to vent coming to
understand where they now are… You can
look at all their pictures on their living room walls and cry with them or you
can as well, be and become that light of strength and loving understanding—compassion—that
they truly need to hear.
Being a disciple of Jesus, whether you are a pastoral
servant leader in His church or one of the many of the cloud of witnesses to
His Gospel from the very beginning to the very end—is realizing the Shalom of His
creation and recreation in the here and now of our lives. The love I felt the
other day in my simply serving God and neighbor was the work of the Holy Spirit
in my heart to recognize and trust Jesus at work. That, is the New Nature seed begun to be
reaped. The Son has shone His light upon
that seed, the darkness has been cast aside and the germination of love, peace,
mercy, compassion, forgiveness and so much more, begins to be born! Here’s my joy to share with you to hear…. Now it’s your turn.
Let us Pray,
Most gracious and loving God
There is Joy in the world this very day
For Your light is shining upon our hearts
For peace, love, mercy, compassion and all goodness to
germinate and come forth
In this very dark and broken world, help our hearts to
reap this New Nature
For the dawning of a New world
Help us out of our self-imposed exile of sin and darkness
To hear the very sound of Christmas
God coming down to us
AMEN
December 25th, 2016;
Christmas Day; Year A; SOLA Lectionary
Sermon by: Reverend Nicole A.M.
Collins
Psalm 98; Isaiah 52:7-10;
Hebrews 1:1-12; John 1:1-18 alt. Titus 3:4-7
This link is to the song, 'The Sound of Christmas,' Ramsey Lewis Trio 1961
The link below is from this sermon's delivery at the 8am service at the Grace Hub
https://youtu.be/xIQAMJK4ic0
https://youtu.be/xIQAMJK4ic0
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