The Reason For The Season
Stories
Object:
Contents
What's Up This Week
"The Reason for the Season" by David Leininger
"Time's Up" by John Jamison
What's Up This Week
Advent is all about time. We think back to the time when Mary was chosen to bring the Son of God into the world and the anticipation that led up to that world-changing event. We also look forward to the time when Christ will return to judge the quick and the dead, as the Creed states. However, much of our time in Advent has been taken over by the trappings of a commercialized Christmas season, where we are rushing to buy the groceries for Christmas dinner, putting up the tree, and getting our last-minute shopping done. David Leininger examines the historical backlashes against celebrating Christmas in "The Reason for the Season." How are we spending our time this Advent? While we busy ourselves with preparing for Christmas, perhaps we should take the time to watch and pray, or else we may miss it, as John Jamison illustrations in "Time's Up."
* * * * * * * * *
The Reason for the Season
David E. Leininger
Romans 13:11-14
It intrigues me that just as folks begin to think seriously about the upcoming holidays, with all the attendant hoopla, not to mention all the attendant parties, the lectionary gives us these words from Paul, instructing us: "Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery..." Hmm.
Truth be told, through the years there have been serious attempts to regulate holiday celebrations, to ensure the decent behavior called for by the apostle. Historians will recall England during the tenure of Oliver Cromwell. His Puritan party passed legislation outlawing Christmas festivities. No more lavish and raucous celebration, no more commercial exploitation -- there would be no more Christmas, period.
That did not go over well, to say the least. The people were outraged; there was rioting in the streets. In fact, Christmas celebrations were held in secret all over England. But Cromwell retaliated. Parliament decreed penalties of imprisonment for anyone caught celebrating the holiday. Each year, by order of Parliament, town criers went through the streets a few days before Christmas, reminding people that "Christmas and all other superstitious festivals" should not be observed, and businesses should remain open. There were to be no displays of Christmas decorations.
In 1647 popular riots broke out in various places demanding the legalization of Christmas. But the Puritan government stood firm and proceeded to break up celebrations by armed force. People were arrested and jailed. The Puritans seemed surprised by the strength of popular resistance to their anti-Christmas policies, but they would not alter them or compromise their principles. They simply went down to defeat in the next elections. The Puritans were thrown out of power -- Christmas was back!
In America we too have a complicated history with Christmas. No surprise, it goes back to the Puritans, who despised it and considered the celebration un-Christian on these shores as well as the ones they left. They could not find December 25 in the Bible, which was their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date simply derived from Saturnalia, the Romans' wintertime celebration. (Which is NOT correct, by the way -- the date is simply precisely nine months after the traditional Feast of the Annunciation, March 25. Do the math.) On the first December 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and made an ostentatious point of ignoring the day. From 1659 to 1681, Massachusetts went even further, making the celebration of Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting, or in any other way" a crime.
The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritans faded away. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting, and swearing." Throughout the 1800s, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches were closed on December 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just eighteen states. It did not become a federal holiday until 1870.
Christmas began to gain popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's drawings in Harpers Weekly, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and shooting and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. We have been battling that ever since with a notable lack of success -- to the great relief of the nation's retailers, who do their best business of the year just prior to Christmas. (Historical details are from an article by Adam Cohen, "This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else," New York Times, December 4, 2005.)
While most of us think of Christmas as something we have been doing forever, our present practices are relatively new. It was not until immigrants from Ireland and from the continent began arriving in great numbers that Christmas in America began to flourish. The Germans brought the Christmas tree. The Irish placed lights in their windows. Catholics from eastern Europe brought their native carols as well as the idea of staying home from work on Christmas Day! Very soon their neighbors followed suit. In the end, neither the authority of the church nor the power of the state could prevent the spirit of Christmas with all its excess from breaking out, parties and all.
To be sure, this passage from Romans has an eschatological orientation: "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." Yes, enjoy your parties... RESPONSIBLY... but don't forget the reason for the season.
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series VI, Cycle A), God of Justice: A Look at the Ten Commandments for the 21st Century, and A Color-Blind Church, his account of the intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
Time's Up
John Jamison
Matthew 24:36-44
Let's start this off with a story. You remember it...
If it kept up like this he wasn't going to get anything done all morning. After the telephone calls, that paper-jam in the copier, and now this, he was beginning to feel that it was pointless to try.
She stepped into his office, "Sorry to interrupt you Reverend, I know you are busy, but I need to talk to you!" She went on to tell him about a problem a dear friend of hers was having, and how it would be really "nice" if the pastor could stop by for a visit sometime. Soon. He wanted to say that if people would just stop bothering him long enough to get his work done he would be glad to go out and visit, but he smiled instead and thanked her for stopping. She had gotten his attention. Four other members had stopped by in the last two days worried about the same couple. One of those worriers was even a son of the couple. He believed it was Shem, although he never could tell those three boys apart. And they all said the same thing. They were concerned about them. Well, not both of them exactly, mostly just about the husband.
And that wasn't all. Just yesterday, during his Kiwanis luncheon, the pastor overheard others at the table talking under their breath about how the old man had "gone off the deep end," and that, obviously, "retirement just didn't suit him well." Apparently all that extra time on his hands had gotten to be more than he could handle. Somebody said it looked like "The old guy's oil didn't even register on the stick anymore!" The pastor couldn't help but chuckle along. It was all so strange.
The couple had made great plans for retirement. They would plant a huge garden, he would tend his roses, and they would take plenty of time for travel. But the only traveling he did was back and forth, to and from the lumberyard. In the backyard, the rose bed and the spot staked out for the garden, was covered over by this big, uh, wooden thing.
By the way, the guy down at the lumberyard felt a bit guilty about selling the old man all that lumber. And the nails. Noah was no carpenter, and bent more than he drove in. But the old man had made it clear that if he couldn't buy his materials there, he'd just get them someplace else, and, after all, business IS business.
But none of this was news to the pastor. He had been aware of what was going on for months. It had all started back that week when Noah told his Sunday school class (which he had taught for 27 years) about the dreams he had been having. Since that morning, a couple of class members had made it their mission to keep the pastor informed as to what was being taught. Each week it had become stranger and stranger, and the pastor had begun to wonder how to talk to the old man about retiring (without hurting his feelings) when one Sunday morning after class he walked right into the pastor's office and resigned. It seemed he just didn't have the time to prepare a lesson each week and still get enough work done on the "project." And, he said without a smile, "I'm almost out of time." It sounded a lot like this retirement was really getting him down.
But about this thing in the backyard -- at first the neighbors were intrigued. They all thought it was kind of cute to see the old guy out there climbing around with his hammers and saws, although some mornings he started hammering way too early, and some evenings kept sawing way too late. It was cute how his wife kept yelling at him about how she knew he was going to fall off the ladder and break every bone in his body.
It was kind of fun to try and guess just what it was that he was hammering and sawing on. First, it was a deck for the yard, then a greenhouse for the roses, then a garage. By now they were betting on a very BIG greenhouse, but thought there really should be more windows. And no one could understand why he built it to look so dog-gone much like a boat, until someone remembered that his hometown had been over on the river and that it must bring back some pleasant memories for him.
But it was getting way too big. The cuteness was beginning to wear as thin as the sunlight that was getting to the neighbor's flowerbed. It seems that a windowless-greenhouse-shaped-like-a-big-boat casts one whale of a shadow. There definitely was a zoning problem. Those same neighbors had a backyard wedding set for next Monday afternoon for their only daughter, and this pile of wood cast its shadow all over those well-made, and highly paid plans.
But the straw that broke the camel's back was the camels, and the elephants, and the chickens, and the lizards, and the penguins. Enough, after all, was most likely enough. When they asked about him moving the shadow the old man mumbled between nails "There just isn't time," which left them with no choice.
On Friday afternoon, the papers were filed at the courthouse. They would be served first thing Monday morning. The "Big Boat" as it had come to be called, would be dismantled and carried away in time before the big wedding. So would the old man. This later part was the reluctant decision of the old guy's family who felt that some time in a safe, peaceful setting might help him come to terms with the "stresses of retirement." Monday morning would come as quite a surprise. The family called to ask if the pastor would be there as well, to help them help him understand.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the surprise came one day early. It was midway through the second hymn on Sunday morning. "Crazy Old Noah" was sitting in his usual every-Sunday seat, with his family looking rather embarrassed as everyone smiled at them. The pastor closed his hymnbook and started to reach for his sermon notes. But right at the spot where folks usually sang "Amen," God sang instead. It was a bass note. It kind of rumbled around the sanctuary, and down the street outside the church, bouncing off the bank and the furniture store, just thundering its way to wherever thunder goes. And it started to rain. Now, you need to understand that it NEVER rains around here this time of year. But it was raining. Everyone got up and walked to the doors and windows to watch. The pastor saw old Noah just sit there in his seat. The old fool let out a big sigh, looked up at the preacher and said, "Time's up!"
All that the pastor could think as he looked around was that if this rain kept up like this there probably wasn't going to be any wedding tomorrow afternoon.
Now, every time I wade my way into the pulpit, I look around into the faces. One of these days ...
It may be a crazy, old, bearded man.
It may be a young, baby boomer, career woman.
It may be a middle-aged, slightly paunched, nobody.
But I know it as a certainty. One of these days, right in the middle of my full calendar and my printed order of worship, someone is going to look up at me and sigh, "Time's up!"
(from Time's Up, CSS Publishing Company, Inc. [Lima, Ohio: 1992], pp. 9-12)
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply email the story to us at storyshare@sermonsuite.com.
**************
StoryShare, December 2, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
What's Up This Week
"The Reason for the Season" by David Leininger
"Time's Up" by John Jamison
What's Up This Week
Advent is all about time. We think back to the time when Mary was chosen to bring the Son of God into the world and the anticipation that led up to that world-changing event. We also look forward to the time when Christ will return to judge the quick and the dead, as the Creed states. However, much of our time in Advent has been taken over by the trappings of a commercialized Christmas season, where we are rushing to buy the groceries for Christmas dinner, putting up the tree, and getting our last-minute shopping done. David Leininger examines the historical backlashes against celebrating Christmas in "The Reason for the Season." How are we spending our time this Advent? While we busy ourselves with preparing for Christmas, perhaps we should take the time to watch and pray, or else we may miss it, as John Jamison illustrations in "Time's Up."
* * * * * * * * *
The Reason for the Season
David E. Leininger
Romans 13:11-14
It intrigues me that just as folks begin to think seriously about the upcoming holidays, with all the attendant hoopla, not to mention all the attendant parties, the lectionary gives us these words from Paul, instructing us: "Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery..." Hmm.
Truth be told, through the years there have been serious attempts to regulate holiday celebrations, to ensure the decent behavior called for by the apostle. Historians will recall England during the tenure of Oliver Cromwell. His Puritan party passed legislation outlawing Christmas festivities. No more lavish and raucous celebration, no more commercial exploitation -- there would be no more Christmas, period.
That did not go over well, to say the least. The people were outraged; there was rioting in the streets. In fact, Christmas celebrations were held in secret all over England. But Cromwell retaliated. Parliament decreed penalties of imprisonment for anyone caught celebrating the holiday. Each year, by order of Parliament, town criers went through the streets a few days before Christmas, reminding people that "Christmas and all other superstitious festivals" should not be observed, and businesses should remain open. There were to be no displays of Christmas decorations.
In 1647 popular riots broke out in various places demanding the legalization of Christmas. But the Puritan government stood firm and proceeded to break up celebrations by armed force. People were arrested and jailed. The Puritans seemed surprised by the strength of popular resistance to their anti-Christmas policies, but they would not alter them or compromise their principles. They simply went down to defeat in the next elections. The Puritans were thrown out of power -- Christmas was back!
In America we too have a complicated history with Christmas. No surprise, it goes back to the Puritans, who despised it and considered the celebration un-Christian on these shores as well as the ones they left. They could not find December 25 in the Bible, which was their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date simply derived from Saturnalia, the Romans' wintertime celebration. (Which is NOT correct, by the way -- the date is simply precisely nine months after the traditional Feast of the Annunciation, March 25. Do the math.) On the first December 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and made an ostentatious point of ignoring the day. From 1659 to 1681, Massachusetts went even further, making the celebration of Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting, or in any other way" a crime.
The concern that Christmas distracted from religious piety continued even after Puritans faded away. In 1827, an Episcopal bishop lamented that the devil had stolen Christmas "and converted it into a day of worldly festivity, shooting, and swearing." Throughout the 1800s, many religious leaders were still trying to hold the line. As late as 1855, New York newspapers reported that Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist churches were closed on December 25 because "they do not accept the day as a Holy One." On the eve of the Civil War, Christmas was recognized in just eighteen states. It did not become a federal holiday until 1870.
Christmas began to gain popularity when it was transformed into a domestic celebration, after the publication of Clement Clarke Moore's "Visit from St. Nicholas" and Thomas Nast's drawings in Harpers Weekly, which created the image of a white-bearded Santa who gave gifts to children. The new emphasis lessened religious leaders' worries that the holiday would be given over to drinking and shooting and swearing, but it introduced another concern: commercialism. We have been battling that ever since with a notable lack of success -- to the great relief of the nation's retailers, who do their best business of the year just prior to Christmas. (Historical details are from an article by Adam Cohen, "This Season's War Cry: Commercialize Christmas, or Else," New York Times, December 4, 2005.)
While most of us think of Christmas as something we have been doing forever, our present practices are relatively new. It was not until immigrants from Ireland and from the continent began arriving in great numbers that Christmas in America began to flourish. The Germans brought the Christmas tree. The Irish placed lights in their windows. Catholics from eastern Europe brought their native carols as well as the idea of staying home from work on Christmas Day! Very soon their neighbors followed suit. In the end, neither the authority of the church nor the power of the state could prevent the spirit of Christmas with all its excess from breaking out, parties and all.
To be sure, this passage from Romans has an eschatological orientation: "The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." Yes, enjoy your parties... RESPONSIBLY... but don't forget the reason for the season.
David E. Leininger is the pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Warren, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Lectionary Tales for the Pulpit (Series VI, Cycle A), God of Justice: A Look at the Ten Commandments for the 21st Century, and A Color-Blind Church, his account of the intriguing match of two congregations -- one black, one white -- in a small community following the reunion of the northern and southern streams of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in 1983.
Time's Up
John Jamison
Matthew 24:36-44
Let's start this off with a story. You remember it...
If it kept up like this he wasn't going to get anything done all morning. After the telephone calls, that paper-jam in the copier, and now this, he was beginning to feel that it was pointless to try.
She stepped into his office, "Sorry to interrupt you Reverend, I know you are busy, but I need to talk to you!" She went on to tell him about a problem a dear friend of hers was having, and how it would be really "nice" if the pastor could stop by for a visit sometime. Soon. He wanted to say that if people would just stop bothering him long enough to get his work done he would be glad to go out and visit, but he smiled instead and thanked her for stopping. She had gotten his attention. Four other members had stopped by in the last two days worried about the same couple. One of those worriers was even a son of the couple. He believed it was Shem, although he never could tell those three boys apart. And they all said the same thing. They were concerned about them. Well, not both of them exactly, mostly just about the husband.
And that wasn't all. Just yesterday, during his Kiwanis luncheon, the pastor overheard others at the table talking under their breath about how the old man had "gone off the deep end," and that, obviously, "retirement just didn't suit him well." Apparently all that extra time on his hands had gotten to be more than he could handle. Somebody said it looked like "The old guy's oil didn't even register on the stick anymore!" The pastor couldn't help but chuckle along. It was all so strange.
The couple had made great plans for retirement. They would plant a huge garden, he would tend his roses, and they would take plenty of time for travel. But the only traveling he did was back and forth, to and from the lumberyard. In the backyard, the rose bed and the spot staked out for the garden, was covered over by this big, uh, wooden thing.
By the way, the guy down at the lumberyard felt a bit guilty about selling the old man all that lumber. And the nails. Noah was no carpenter, and bent more than he drove in. But the old man had made it clear that if he couldn't buy his materials there, he'd just get them someplace else, and, after all, business IS business.
But none of this was news to the pastor. He had been aware of what was going on for months. It had all started back that week when Noah told his Sunday school class (which he had taught for 27 years) about the dreams he had been having. Since that morning, a couple of class members had made it their mission to keep the pastor informed as to what was being taught. Each week it had become stranger and stranger, and the pastor had begun to wonder how to talk to the old man about retiring (without hurting his feelings) when one Sunday morning after class he walked right into the pastor's office and resigned. It seemed he just didn't have the time to prepare a lesson each week and still get enough work done on the "project." And, he said without a smile, "I'm almost out of time." It sounded a lot like this retirement was really getting him down.
But about this thing in the backyard -- at first the neighbors were intrigued. They all thought it was kind of cute to see the old guy out there climbing around with his hammers and saws, although some mornings he started hammering way too early, and some evenings kept sawing way too late. It was cute how his wife kept yelling at him about how she knew he was going to fall off the ladder and break every bone in his body.
It was kind of fun to try and guess just what it was that he was hammering and sawing on. First, it was a deck for the yard, then a greenhouse for the roses, then a garage. By now they were betting on a very BIG greenhouse, but thought there really should be more windows. And no one could understand why he built it to look so dog-gone much like a boat, until someone remembered that his hometown had been over on the river and that it must bring back some pleasant memories for him.
But it was getting way too big. The cuteness was beginning to wear as thin as the sunlight that was getting to the neighbor's flowerbed. It seems that a windowless-greenhouse-shaped-like-a-big-boat casts one whale of a shadow. There definitely was a zoning problem. Those same neighbors had a backyard wedding set for next Monday afternoon for their only daughter, and this pile of wood cast its shadow all over those well-made, and highly paid plans.
But the straw that broke the camel's back was the camels, and the elephants, and the chickens, and the lizards, and the penguins. Enough, after all, was most likely enough. When they asked about him moving the shadow the old man mumbled between nails "There just isn't time," which left them with no choice.
On Friday afternoon, the papers were filed at the courthouse. They would be served first thing Monday morning. The "Big Boat" as it had come to be called, would be dismantled and carried away in time before the big wedding. So would the old man. This later part was the reluctant decision of the old guy's family who felt that some time in a safe, peaceful setting might help him come to terms with the "stresses of retirement." Monday morning would come as quite a surprise. The family called to ask if the pastor would be there as well, to help them help him understand.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, the surprise came one day early. It was midway through the second hymn on Sunday morning. "Crazy Old Noah" was sitting in his usual every-Sunday seat, with his family looking rather embarrassed as everyone smiled at them. The pastor closed his hymnbook and started to reach for his sermon notes. But right at the spot where folks usually sang "Amen," God sang instead. It was a bass note. It kind of rumbled around the sanctuary, and down the street outside the church, bouncing off the bank and the furniture store, just thundering its way to wherever thunder goes. And it started to rain. Now, you need to understand that it NEVER rains around here this time of year. But it was raining. Everyone got up and walked to the doors and windows to watch. The pastor saw old Noah just sit there in his seat. The old fool let out a big sigh, looked up at the preacher and said, "Time's up!"
All that the pastor could think as he looked around was that if this rain kept up like this there probably wasn't going to be any wedding tomorrow afternoon.
Now, every time I wade my way into the pulpit, I look around into the faces. One of these days ...
It may be a crazy, old, bearded man.
It may be a young, baby boomer, career woman.
It may be a middle-aged, slightly paunched, nobody.
But I know it as a certainty. One of these days, right in the middle of my full calendar and my printed order of worship, someone is going to look up at me and sigh, "Time's up!"
(from Time's Up, CSS Publishing Company, Inc. [Lima, Ohio: 1992], pp. 9-12)
**********************************************
How to Share Stories
You have good stories to share, probably more than you know: personal stories as well as stories from others that you have used over the years. If you have a story you like, whether fictional or "really happened," authored by you or a brief excerpt from a favorite book, send it to StoryShare for review. Simply email the story to us at storyshare@sermonsuite.com.
**************
StoryShare, December 2, 2007, issue.
Copyright 2007 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 517 South Main Street, Lima, Ohio 45804.
