Here are several original writings I read on the Baraca Radio Sunday School Class from First Baptist Church, Anderson, South Carolina, on December 30. The class is heard each Sunday, 9:50 to 10:50 on WRIX-FM, 103.1, in Anderson. The lesson also is available each week on the church website: www.andersonfbc.org.
This week’s Baraca hour consisted of Christmas music alternating with the readings. The material which follows includes a Christmas prayer, several short articles, and a Christmas hymn.
PRAYER
Lord God of Love,
You reveal Yourself to us in the small experiences of everyday life, things we often don’t notice till we look back. But when we stop and think, we hear Your voice in the kind word from a neighbor. We see Your hand reaching out through the handshake of a friend. We feel Your warm embrace in the hug of a child or a husband or wife.
Also, You reveal Yourself in larger ways we take for granted: the gift of life; the gift of work, of a place to live.
In this season of giving, Your gifts make us want to say “Thank You.” In words, yes. But also in our actions, recalling how You said we give to You when we feed those with empty stomachs; we give to You when we give warm clothing to those without coats or gloves; we give to You when we reach out in friendship to those who don’t look like us or don’t talk like us or don’t dress like us.
But we dare not forget that gift we celebrate in the Christmas season---the gift St. Paul called Unspeakable. This gift came in the form of a Man. Or, rather, as a helpless little Baby Boy, who would become a Man and live and work and teach and reveal Your love in all the relationships of life--Then unfold that love in a way truly unspeakable, love that defies description as He died to give us the gift of life eternal.
In the name of Jesus Christ, the Gift Who Keeps on Giving. Amen.
12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS
There’s a man in our neighborhood who is so eager to get Christmas over and done with that he has his tree down at the curb for the garbage truck by noon on Christmas Day.
Another man, a friend of mine here in First Baptist Church, may not get rid of his tree that quickly, but he says of Christmas, “When it’s over, it’s over.” Once he gets past December 25th, he wants to put it behind him.
Such an attitude may not be surprising, when you consider, the stores put out their Christmas merchandise about Labor Day. For weeks before the Big Day, you hear carols and winter songs on radio and TV, at the mall, and ‘most everywhere you turn. So, yeah. I’ve had it with Christmas by the time the 25th gets here. Let’s clean up the mess of wrapping paper, take down the tree and the mistletoe, and get on with our lives.
On the other hand, the older liturgical denominations -- Catholics, Lutherans, and Episcopalians -- insist Christmas isn’t over until the sixth of January. These churches celebrate twelve days of Christmas.
Chances are, when someone mentions twelve days of Christmas, the first thing we Low Church Baptists think of is a partridge in a pear tree. Along with lords leaping, ladies dancing, swans a-swimming, and the rest of the gifts the singer receives in that song.
But the twelve days were intended to provide Christian people a longer time to reflect on the significance of Christ’s coming into the world. Here’s the way the twelve days of Christmas got started. We have no real idea when Jesus was born. So different dates were celebrated for several centuries after He was born. The two most popular dates were December 25th and January sixth. So, when the present date was adopted, they hung on to the January date to mark the coming of the Wise Men. That gave twelve days of celebration.
I know, lots of us don’t pay attention to the twelve days, except to see whether we can remember all the gifts in that funny song. But if we were serious about “putting Christ back in Christmas,” one way to do that would be to take some time day by day after December 25th, when the big rush is over, and reflect on the spiritual dimensions of Christmas.
We hear a lot of lamenting about how the holiday has been hijacked. Or how there is a “war against Christmas.” If the season HAS been hijacked, did you stop to think it was hijacked by the commercialism that sends us out to spend up to the limit on our credit cards? Where is Jesus in all that? Maybe we’re the hijackers.
If there really IS a “war against Christmas,” we Christians could win that war by restoring its meaning as individuals and as families. It has nothing to do with whether clerks say, “Happy Holidays” or “Merry Christmas.” We can win the so-called “war against Christmas” if we try buying less and giving more of ourselves.
We would do better to examine our inner beings and determine that we will “keep Christmas alive in our hearts” for twelve days -- or even longer. We can work to keep alive the determination that this season -- above all others -- will be a time when we wage peace, when we wage love, when we wage generosity, when we wage forgiveness. It’ll take longer than twelve days to get that done. But that will win the war . . . if there is a war.
AN ANGEL SPOKE
Lawrence Webb © 2010
This Christmas song can be sung to several familiar hymns, including “Lead On, O King Eternal” and “The Church’s One Foundation.”
An angel spoke to Mary, “All Hail, Blest Virgin dear,
You soon will have a baby.” His words brought her great fear.
“How can this be?” she asked him. “I’ve never been with man.”
The angel reassured her, “All this is in God’s plan.”
An angel spoke to Joseph, When he was lost in grief.
The words were full of comfort, They brought him deep relief.
He journeyed far with Mary And came to Beth’lem’s town.
There, in a lowly manger, They laid their Baby down.
An angel spoke to shepherds, Among their flock that night.
The men came to the stable, Awe-stricken by the sight.
They knelt before the Baby, As parents hovered near.
Then on their way, returning, The shepherds spread good cheer.
An angel speaks in our day: “To you a Child is born,
Go share the blessed tidings With those who are forlorn:
This Child has come to save you, Down from His home above.
As you accept His blessings, Your hearts will fill with love.”
The two following stories are adapted from my book, Once for a Shining Hour © 2011. The book is available through www.amazon.com in paperback or Kindle editions.
A THREE-INCH-TALL JESUS
When I was about twelve years old, the Sears, Roebuck store in Sweetwater had a real-live Santa Claus who was just three inches tall.
He lived in a tiny house which sat on a table. You could look in through the picture window and see the little man sitting by the fireplace in his living room which had a tree and packages under the tree.
This Tom Thumb Santa would get up and walk, and he would look out and wave at us.
The most exciting thing was the tiny telephone by his chair. There was also a full-sized phone in the store.
Parents encouraged their kids to wave at Santa. If the kids were brave, they could pick up the phone and tell him their hearts’ desires.
Because I had parted company with Old Saint Nick a few years earlier, I stood and watched, trying to figure how they managed to get the real-live man to look so small.
After a while, I figured we were sort of looking through the “wrong end” of a telescope.
One day, I picked up the phone to talk to Santa. That was OK with him . . . the first time. When I left the area and came back and called him several more times, the three-inch Santa strongly suggested that I find something else to occupy my attention. Leave the phone for little kids.
As I think back to how Sears, Roebuck shrunk Santa Claus, it occurs to me that we try to do the same thing with Jesus. A three-inch high Savior is much more convenient than the full-grown One in the New Testament.
The Babe in Bethlehem, and shepherds and angels and Three Kings are a beautiful scene on our Christmas cards. If we have a manger scene in our family room, the stable is larger than the Sears house, and the adult figures are taller than three inches. But the Babe in the table-top manger may be just about three inches long. When the season is over, we can pack them all up and get them out of our way without great inconvenience.
There are serious ways of keeping Jesus small.
Some people shrink Jesus by saying He was a great teacher. Nothing more.
Another way is to deny that He performed miracles. For example, President Thomas Jefferson published his own version of the Bible which contained Jesus’ teaching but no miracles.
When it comes to the New Testament’s greatest miracle, the resurrection of Jesus, some modern interpreters say the disciples wanted so badly for Him to come back that they believed He actually was raised from the dead. But it makes little sense to suggest daydreams or wishful thinking could have caused the small movement to catch fire and grow, in the face of persecution, imprisonment, and death. The course of Christianity history cannot be so handily dismissed.
There are famous atheistic scientists who seek to reduce Jesus to absolute zero. But I have fewer problems with avowed atheists or agnostics than with some professing Christians, who seek to cut Jesus down to size. I’ve heard internationally known Bible professors say many incidents reported in the Bible simply did not happen. Without explanation, they just say these things are not possible.
Also, a group of scholars call themselves the Jesus Seminar. They analyzed all the sayings attributed to Jesus in the four Gospels to determine which sayings are authentic and which are not. By their own authority, they declared, for example, that John, the Fourth Gospel, contains no authentic words from Jesus. They say the entire book was composed in a later generation, with no sayings which trace back to Jesus. This approach doesn’t even leave Jesus three inches tall.
St. Paul in Philippians says Jesus did His own whittling: He “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).
But Jesus in the Bible did not remain in the grave and did not remain in the whittled-down form. Instead, God the Father restored Him to His full stature: “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).
No three-inch Jesus here! He is sky high.
RUM-A-PUM-PUM
The story of the birth of Jesus stirs the imagination. At times, that imagination runs wild:
Think, for example, of the popular Christmas song of a little boy who brings his drum to the stable and wants to play for Baby Jesus. The song is called “The Little Drummer Boy.” Mary nods approval for him to play. When he plays, the Baby smiles at him.
Let’s use our imagination further about the Little Drummer Boy:
He is self-conscious as the Kings place their gold, frankincense, and myrrh on the ground before the Baby and His parents. He has absolutely nothing he can place alongside their costly gifts.
Anything he has ever owned in his whole life is shoddy by comparison. He wonders what led him here in the first place. But he feels he is no more out of place than those ragged, dirty, smelly shepherds. It’s the Kings who make him uneasy.
Earlier, he heard the shepherds talking among themselves -- about angels who told them to come to town and hunt this Baby whose coming is good news to everyone, for shepherds and, perhaps, he thought, even for a boy with a drum.
With all the to-do of the Kings, in their elaborate robes and with expensive presents, the lad isn’t sure what he should do. Maybe he ought to slip out and play his drum as he heads for home.
He’s been told, lots of times, that he’s good with the drum. Oh, sometimes his mother gets on him for playing, so he drifts out to the village, playing his drum as he goes. An old man down the street has helped him learn different rhythms. A couple of times, the old man even let him keep time on his drum when some other men were playing their lyres and pipes.
At the manger, as he’s wondering whether he should leave, the thought flashes through his mind that he does have one thing to offer the Little King. He could play his drum. But the woman and man might tell him to get out of their way, just like his mother when she wants some peace and quiet. Well, should he offer to play, or not?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No.
Yes!
So he asks, “Shall-I-play-for-you? On-my-drum-I-mean.”
The man smiles. The woman nods, as if to say, “Go ahead.”
So the Little Drummer Boy starts playing, playing with all his might. One or two of the shepherds slap their knees and bellies as he does licks the old man down the street taught him. He plays and plays, giving it his very best. Everybody in the stable is in rhythm. A passerby starts snapping his fingers, trying to keep up. Feet are tapping. Even one of the Kings is patting his hands together.
The Drummer Boy forgets where he is as he pours himself into his rhythms. Then he happens to glance down at the Baby. “He’s looking at me! Can you believe it? The Little King is smiling at me! Me and my drum!”
Then he stops playing. Everyone is silent. Nobody moves or says anything for several seconds.
Then he hears clapping. People gather around him, patting him on the back.
“Great rhythm.”
“Good show.”
“How long you been playin’, son?”
The Drummer Boy is speechless. He feels almost outside himself. As the others drift into the night, he still stands, looking at the family in the stable.
Finally, he puts his sticks in his belt and turns to go. But he feels a firm hand on his shoulder. He looks up into the kind, steady eyes of the man. “Thank you, young man. Thank you very much.”
“Oh, no. Thank you, sir. For letting me play for your little boy.”
As the woman begins wrapping the Baby more securely in the wide bands of cloth, she says, “That was so special. Thank you for coming to see us tonight. When he’s old enough to understand, we will tell our son what you did.”
“I wish I had something I could leave with you.”
“Oh, you do. You do. You’ve given something special. A memory we will long cherish. The sound of your rhythms will linger in our minds longer than you imagine. You gave him something only you could give.”
As he starts for home in the chill night air, his fingers tap almost silently on the drumhead. He smiles as he says over and over, “The Little Baby King smiled at me. Me and my drum.”
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