The Perfect Christmas

Rev Dr Mark Porizky

12/24/07

Various

When I was a kid growing up, Christmas was as much about perfection as it was about the coming of Christ. Whether she wanted to or not, my mom always felt that she needed to make sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, another casserole, a ham, a salad, cake, cookies and pies.

And, inevitably, it would happen. While trying to do ten things at once, she’d burn or spill something and the kitchen would fill with smoke or be slippery with eggs and my mom would end frustrated and crying.

Because, for the Christmas meal, everything had to be just right; everything had to be perfect. My mom would bring out the best dishes, her finest table cloth, make my sister polish all the silver, and insure that everything was as good if not better than last year. As many joyful memories of Christmas that I carry with me, I also have those haunting memories of everything having to be just so, or else Christmas would be ruined.

I also remember, and still today feel the pressure, the anxiety, the stress that comes with getting just the right gift for that special someone.

Nothing normal will do. You may not know this, but gifts are like finger prints!  There’s only one perfect match per person. Buy the wrong gift and you’re sure to disappoint.  That is the message that I heard then and still hear inside my head even today. Buy just the right gift, the perfect gift, and you’re sure to make this the best Christmas ever.  

One year when I was in high school I told my family that I didn’t want anything for Christmas; that instead, I just wanted to be with them all in church on Christmas Eve, even my dad.   Even still, I got a gift from everyone, along with the expectation and disappointment that I didn’t get anyone gifts in return. Needless to say, that wasn’t the perfect Christmas either. Long ago I gave up on Christmas cards:  the expectation, the pressure, the perfectionism that goes into picking out just the right Christmas cards, writing just the right message in them, and mailing them on time. I gave up but with each beautiful card I receive, especially those with a nice, but not too long, letter about the family, I still feel guilty that I don’t send out cards anymore.  Thank goodness Barb still does!

 
Aside from the perfect Christmas dinner, the perfect gifts and cards, there’s always the perfect Christmas attitude which an unwritten rule advises us to put on.

Much to my dismay, Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch are vilified; at least until they come into the fullness of the Christmas spirit of joy, happiness and glee that we’re all supposed to feel. This is the time of year that we’re told our attitudes are most on display and up for evaluation.  And we all know, Santa is making a list and checking it twice, trying to find out who’s been naughty or nice. 

It’s at Christmas more than any other time of the year that we try our best to perfect our attitudes and our actions; that we try to be on our best behavior when dealing with others. It’s at Christmas that God seems to return to his judgment seat and we plaster on smiles and in the hope that we’ll somehow be good enough to earn a front row seat to the birth of Christ Jesus.

Yet in reality, all of this yearning for perfection smacks in the face of God.

For the first Christmas, the best Christmas, wasn’t about perfection at all. Rather than being perfect, the first Christmas, the birth of Jesus was imperfect and ugly, it was ill timed and unfortunate, it was as far from normal, happy, and perfect as the mind can imagine.

Mary wasn’t supposed to be pregnant, but she was. Joseph and Mary should have been married, but they weren’t. It would have been best if the birth had been in Nazareth instead of them having to trek for miles to Bethlehem , but it wasn’t. The inn would have been perfect, but it didn’t work out. In each and every part of the nativity story, we don’t find perfection but rather its antithesis. Given all of the actors in this play, we’d be hard pressed to say that anyone got it right; that anyone did things perfectly.

It was into this imperfection that God was born and came to live among us. In the world’s greatest twist of affairs, God stumps us and elects to be born not into our perfection, but rather, into our mistakes, into our failures, into all those things that we seemingly run from come this time of year.

God, it would seem, takes our worst case scenario and calls it his own at this time of year. As we rush to make the perfect meal, buy the perfect gift, put on the perfect Christmas attitude, God sits and waits for the time when we will surely fail and will need healing, comfort, and support. God sits and waits for the place and the time when we’ll need her most.
 

This is the meaning of Christmas; this is the greatest gift of all. Christmas is NOT about our doing things perfectly. It’s NOT about our becoming more like God. Rather, Christmas IS about what God does for us. It’s about God choosing to become more like you and me.

Ultimately, Christmas doesn’t depend on us at all; none of us can ruin Christmas or delay its coming. Christmas was God’s decision, was God’s gift to us and not something we make manifest through our perfectionist ways. If we think that our getting presents or lumps of coal depends on how good we’ve been, if we think that God’s love of us and approval of us and our salvation depends on our own merit, then we’re horribly, horribly mistaken.

God’s love is a gift which will never depend on us.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is the story of the prodigal son. For those of you who don’t know it, it’s a story about a father and his two sons. After the father has given them both their inheritance, the oldest son invests it wisely and stays with his father to help out, while the younger son moves to Vegas, blows all his money and becomes homeless. After a while, the younger son realizes his mistake and returns home since he needs some food and a place to stay.

As he pulls into the drive, the father sees him from the window and runs out to meet him, throwing his arms around him he tells him “welcome home” and throws him a huge party.

The older son takes his dad aside and asks why the party isn’t for him, since he’s the responsible one. He’s always been faithful to his father; he’s always been perfect, so he’s the one who should get the party, not his screw-up of a younger brother. To this the dad replies to his older son, “Son, you have always been with me. But your younger brother, he was lost and now is found.”

As I think about our posture as we enter into the Christmas season, it isn’t that of the older, more responsible brother—although we may sometimes fool ourselves into believing that this is the case. To the contrary, it’s that of the prodigal son. As we enter into Bethlehem and approach the manger, God sees us when we are still far off and runs out to greet us through the incarnation.

The birth of Jesus isn’t for the older, perfect brother, it’s for the prodigal son, and it’s for you and me as we struggle through life and fall down and skin our knees. As Jesus, the great physician once said himself, “Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick.” We are sick, we aren’t well, we are frail and fragile and break from time to time, we aren’t perfect. Yet ironically, this is what makes us the perfect vessel for God’s grace and love. Because we are lost we have been found.

But every once in awhile we need a gift to come to us to remind us that the perfect Christmas is in the gifts we were given a long, long time ago.  The most we can do is simply share that love.

Rev. Paul Richardson received an automobile from his brother as a Christmas present. On Christmas Eve when Paul came out of his office, a young lad in ragged clothing was walking around the shiny new car, admiring it.

"Is this your car, Mister?" he asked.

Paul nodded. "My brother gave it to me for Christmas." The boy was astounded. "You mean your brother gave it to you and it didn't cost you nothing? Boy, I wish..." He hesitated.

            Of course Paul knew what he was going to wish for. He was going to wish he had a brother like that. But what the lad said jarred Paul all the way down to his heels.

"I wish," the boy went on, "that I could be a brother like that."

Paul looked at the boy in astonishment, then impulsively he added, "Would you like to take a ride in my automobile?"

"Oh yes, I'd love that."

After a short ride, the boy turned and with his eyes aglow, said, "Mister, would you mind driving in front of my house?" Paul smiled a little. He thought he knew what the lad wanted. He wanted to show his neighbors that he could ride home in a big automobile. But Paul was wrong again.

"Will you stop where those two steps are?" the boy asked. He ran up the steps. Then in a little while Paul heard him coming back, but he was not coming fast. He was carrying his little crippled brother. He sat him down on the bottom step, then sort of squeezed up against him and pointed to the car. "There she is, Buddy, just like I told you upstairs. His brother gave it to him for Christmas and it didn't cost him a cent. And someday I'm gonna give you one just like it...then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in the Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about."

Paul got out and lifted the lad to the front seat of his car. The shining-eyed older brother climbed in beside him and the three of them began a memorable holiday ride.

That Christmas Eve, Paul experienced something no Christmas dinner, no gift, no card had ever caused him to feel.  That Christmas, because he met Jesus in a little boy with nothing to give but the love in his heart, Paul Richardson experienced a Christmas that was almost perfect.  (Story “A Brother Like That,” author unknown)

This Christmas, I invite you to be yourself and to enjoy life, knowing that your perfect or imperfect Christmas won’t change the world, for God already did that the first Christmas, the best Christmas, with the birth of Christ Jesus. This Christmas, don’t worry about what you think others are expecting of you, don’t even worry about what you expect of you. Instead, know that God’s love and grace come with no expectations, with no conditions.

Will you pray with me now?

St. Andrew Presbyterian Church, Groton , CT

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