Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

A pietistic Jewish priest once called his congregation together right in the middle of a working day.

He sent youngsters out to announce to everyone in the community that they must come to the synagogue immediately.

They called every housewife from her housework, every clerk from his counter, every working man from his labors, and every business man from his office that they might come into the sanctuary to hear the Rabbi's important message.

When they had all assembled the Rabbi arose with great dignity and said, "I have an important, a very, very important announcement to make.

Listen carefully that you may all hear it.

There is a God in the world," he said, and then adjourned the meeting.

What a let down that must have been, and what a disappointment after their interest had been aroused.

What a shattering of their expectations to make all that bother just to hear the commonplace fact reported that God is in the world.

What a waste of time and a foolish interruption of life's schedule just to hear the obvious.

This incident illustrates the problem Christians face every Christmas.

The very heart of the Christmas message lies in the name Emmanuel which means God with us.

In the babe of Bethlehem God invaded, not only time, but human flesh.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

This is the most fascinating fact in all of history, but it can become so familiar to believers that it loses its power to produce wonder.

The problem is not that the believer does not know the meaning of Christmas, but that he has difficulty in making that meaning meaningful.

How can we fill the old, old story with the wonder of its original glory?

Children sense the wonder of it all-the announcement of the angels, the shining of the star, the worship of the wise men who traveled from afar-are all exciting revelations to their souls, but as we grow older the familiarity with the wonderful causes it to lose its luster.

The glory becomes too dim to stimulate adoration and expectation.

Wordsworth put it,

Trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God who is our home;

Heaven lies about us in our infancy;

Whither has fled the glory and the dream?

At length the man perceives it die away,

And fade into the light of common day.

So many adults are heard to say that it just doesn't seem like Christmas.

The cause for this is not only familiarity, but a perspective of life that makes it harder for the adult to concentrate on the wonderful and lose himself in the carefree world of joy.

The children still fight and disobey.

The dishes still get dirty and need washing.

The milk still gets spilled, and planes still crash, and fires still burn, and all the troubles of life continue right on without taking a day off, even for Christmas.

Familiarity with the marvelous and experience of the miserable combine to negatively alter our adoration and extinguish our expectation.

The question we must wrestle with every Christmas is, how can we rekindle in our hearts that great flame of expectation that burned in the hearts of men who looked at the birth of Jesus from the other side?

What expectancy we find there.

Mary was an expectant mother in more ways than one, for she knew she was giving birth to the Messiah.

All Israel was expecting the Messiah's soon coming.

All the world was looking for a Savior and Deliverer.

The entire universe of intelligent beings was pregnant with expectation, for the angels themselves stood on tiptoe to see the birth of Emmanuel.

Never in all eternity had such a wonder ever been of Deity becoming flesh.

Here was the miracles of miracles.

That God should create the heavens and the earth is a logical act for one with almighty power and infinite wisdom, but that He should enter His creation and be born as a baby is a mystery beyond comprehension.

It defies logic, and it depends on love completely.

God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son.

There is no other explanation for the marvel and the mystery of Christmas.

How the angels must have tingled with expectation to behold this great event.

How the shepherds must have ran to the stable with excited expectation to see the child the angels spoke of.

How the wise men must have been filled with expectation as they patiently plotted along following the star that would lead them to the King of Kings.

Expectation was a part of all those involved in the Christmas story.

Walter C. Smith put it into poetry when he wrote,

Earth was waiting, spent and restless,

With a mingled hope and fear;

And the faithful few were sighing,

Surely, Lord, the day is near;

The desire of all the nations,

It is time He should appear.

You would think that the fulfillment of such a universal expectation would go on exciting people through all generations, and it has, but history has been as variable on this matter as it is in the individual life.

One year we can be excited and then the next it can all be dull and drab.

It all depends on which aspect of Christmas we center our thoughts on-the changeable worldly aspect, or the unchangeable Christian aspect.

In the early centuries Christ's birthday was not celebrated at all, and even in the fourth century some felt it to be sinful to celebrate His birthday like the pagans celebrated the birth of their kings and gods.

Dec. 25th was a great day of celebration for the pagans.

There was excessive drinking, dancing, gluttony, and spectacular plays.

After much debate the church decided to use the custom of the Empire that it could not abolish by making it a Christian holiday.

In about 350 A. D. the date of Dec. 25th was set as the day for the Feast of the Nativity.

From that point on Christmas has been, as one put it, "A strange medley of Christian and pagan rites."

The pagan element has never been eliminated.

During the Reformation Calvinists declared Christmas to be a mere human invention, and they disapproved of its pagan origin and excesses.

When the Puritans came to power in England in 1642 they passed an act forbidding the celebration of Christmas, and Easter as well.

Everyone was ordered to go on with work as usual.

Shops were to stay open on Christmas Day, and no one was allowed to light Christmas candles, or to eat holiday cakes.

The town crier went around on Christmas Ever shouting loudly, "No Christmas!

No Christmas!"

As might be expected such a law caused rioting in the streets, and ministers and their congregations were actually arrested for attending services on Christmas.

When the Puritans lost control and the monarchy was restored under Charles II the old yuletide customs emerged from hiding and Christmas was again a gala affair.

Both traditions were brought to America, and both extremes have been in our land from the start.

The Pilgrims who gave us our Thanksgiving despised Christmas.

The men on the Mayflower worked all day on Christmas, and the next year after their landing in America Governor Bradford again insisted that they work and have no religious observance.

It was a battle, however, for the traditions of Christmas were too strong.

In 1659 the Pilgrims passed this law:

"Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas and the like, either by forbearing labor, feasting, or any other way upon such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for each offense 5 schillings as a fine to the county."

Twenty-two years later the law was repealed, and then five years after that Governor Andros conducted the first legal Christmas service in the Boston Town Hall.

All attempts to suppress the joy of Christmas have failed, and though we understand what motivated the attempt to halt paganism on this day, we cannot understand how Christians could by pass it and allow pagan perversions to kill the spirit of Christmas joy.

History should make it clear to us that we cannot impose a Christian Christmas on the world, nor suppress their pagan Christmas.

This ought not to be our aim.

Our aim ought to be to honor Jesus as our Emmanuel.

This is the unchangeable eternal truth that ought to excite us and be the center of our Christmas celebration.

Every year preachers rack their brains trying to think of ways to rescue this most marvelous message from the dullness of familiarity, and fill people with the brightness of expectation.

One of the popular methods of doing this is by taking the negative approach of considering the question, what if Jesus had never been born?

What if their was no Emmanuel, and so no assurance of the reality that God is with us?

Phillips Brooks, the great preacher of Boston, once dreamed that Christ had not been born.

He saw the world filled with sin and problems without an answer.

There was no good news to proclaim to a world lost in darkness, and he wept when he awoke.

Certainly as we consider the horror of a world without a Savior we cannot help but be impressed with the gratitude, wonder and joy that ought to be ours at Christmas.

Martha Nicholson wrote,

Suppose that Christ had not been born

That far away Judean morn.

Suppose that God, whose mighty hand

Created worlds, had never planned

A way for man to be redeemed.

Suppose the wise-men only dreamed

That guiding star whose light still glows