Dec. 25, 2019: Christmas A
Dec. 25, 2019: Christmas A
If you watched TV this week, inevitably you came across a classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Recently I watched the movie for the first time, and my takeaway from the movie was the question, “Can the birth of one person affect the lives of many?” All throughout his life, George Bailey reached out to help others at a great personal cost. As a teen he jumped into a frozen lake to save his brother’s life and subsequently suffered hearing loss in one ear. He intervened to prevent the pharmacist from making a deadly error in a drug prescription, yet the distracted pharmacist accused him of being lazy. As an adult he put off travel and college when his father died suddenly. He used his honeymoon funds to keep his father’s business afloat. Yet on Christmas Eve, his mind was preoccupied with the looming failure of his bank due to a missed debt payment. His mind was darkened to the point of wishing that he had never been born. That Christmas Eve night, all he could think of was a dashed dream of business success. He could not see the blessings he had brought others though his self sacrifice, and how blessed he was to have a beautiful family. He concluded that he had a terrible life.
When we look at our own lives, do we see some of our own difficult struggles and unfulfilled dreams? Do we wonder, as did George Bailey, what good is making a personal sacrifice when it seems others are succeeding by living self-centered lives? What good is my life when it seems so insignificant in the grand scheme of things.These wonderings help us appreciate the reason for God sending us His Son into this world to help us discover who we are and how we are to live here on earth.
A familiar Christmas hymn asks, “What Child is this who laid to rest on Mary’s lap is sleeping? Whom Angels greet with anthems sweet, while shepherds watch are keeping?” While this was a child of a poor, seemingly insignificant family from a very humble background, he forever changed the course of everyone’s lives. He opened the eyes of the blind, set free those under bondage of oppression, and forgave the sins of those who needed mercy. His sacrifices for others revealed God’s love to countless generations of humanity. He willingly suffered in place of all of us for the debt we could not pay. His death on the cross and resurrection brought us back into right relationship with Heavenly Father. Each of us are forever changed by our baptism in which we share the hope of eternal life with the Father. Each of us are given a new life through the sacrifice of Our Lord, and we are to use our new life in Christ to serve and enrich the lives of others. This life we have in Christ began thousands of years ago when God created the man and the woman. God had a plan to redeem the fallen human nature and save them from sin.
It was not an accident that Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and Joseph to announce the arrival of the Son of God in their lives and that they ended up in a tiny village of Bethlehem, the name which means “House of Bread.” It was not an accident that the three Kings noticed a strange star in the sky and felt the tug to make the long journey across the desert to an unknown destination only to encounter the Christ Child in Bethlehem. We are not in this church on one of the holiest days of the year by accident. Someone in our family generations before encountered the love and life of Christ and planted the seed of faith in our lives. How have we allowed the seed of faith to grow? Every encounter we have during the day impacts others and us, meaning every act of love enriches the lives of others while every act of selfishness impoverishes the lives of others.
Today we came to celebrate the birth of Christ and encounter his life in a new way. Are we leaving this church only looking forward to opening the packages, or are we leaving with a heart changed? Are we going to give thanks for the opportunity to emulate the life of Christ, who embraced the wood of the manger and the wood of the Cross?
When we look at our own lives, do we see some of our own difficult struggles and unfulfilled dreams? Do we wonder, as did George Bailey, what good is making a personal sacrifice when it seems others are succeeding by living self-centered lives? What good is my life when it seems so insignificant in the grand scheme of things.These wonderings help us appreciate the reason for God sending us His Son into this world to help us discover who we are and how we are to live here on earth.
Today we came to celebrate the birth of Christ and encounter his life in a new way. Are we leaving this church only looking forward to opening the packages, or are we leaving with a heart changed? Are we going to give thanks for the opportunity to emulate the life of Christ, who embraced the wood of the manger and the wood of the Cross?
