Well, it starts tomorrow afternoon; the eve of Christmas.
Santa’s sleigh is loaded to max gross weight, weight and balance forms are checked, it’s pre-flighted, fueled and he is filing his flight plan. He’s ready to kick the skids and pull pitch or whatever he does to make that thing fly.
For you who have procrastinated, you have mere hours to secure those gifts that your beloved family and friends are expecting to find under the tree in about 48 hours. Good luck with that. And, fyi, the office is closed on the 26th. If you need to get marital counseling or find a place to sleep for a couple of days, you will have to wait.
Most folks who were traveling are in place by now, though some hearty, thrifty, and trusting souls are still en route, arriving excited and exhausted to hopefully enjoy and not just endure a few days of family fellowship.
These last few hours can be really trying, exhausting, as the stress of last minute planning for attending church – you are planning to be in church for Christmas right? Because this is still Advent, today doesn’t count for Christmas, and it doesn’t count for next Sunday either…. just saying………..
You will be hunting down the last few elusive gifts, planning the meal and a host of other last minute details and urgent demands erupt and threaten to subsume and eradicate the spiritual work we have been doing this Advent season.
So this may be an appropriate time for an attitude check. When I was in the Army we would occasionally perform this motivational exercise when we fell in for PT at 0-dark thirty. An officer or an NCO would call out in the formation: attitude check”. And all in the formation would respond in unison “We hate this place”. The leader would then call out: “Positive attitude check”. And the formation would respond: “We positively hate this place”. Then the leader would call out: “Negative attitude check”. And the formation would call out: “We don’t hate no-place like we hate this place.”
I don’t expect that our responses would be the same. But it might be the time to stop and consider: What is our attitude right now, where are we focused, spiritually? Are we still Advent-ish, preparing our souls and minds and lives to be ready for Jesus? Or have we slipped over to the dark side with worry and anxiety about other things?
So, where are you right now? Have you felt your relationship with Jesus growing? Do you know him better? Trust him more? Are you spending more time in prayer since Advent has started? Maybe picked up a bible and read some?
Have you been identifying those inconsistencies and incongruities in our lives that don’t match up to what Jesus calls us to – are our behaviors, actions, lifestyles what Jesus expects of us as his disciples? And if they are not – those things are what Jesus and the Bible call sin – have we taken action to ask God to forgive us and change our ways? That is called repentance, and it is part of what this season of Advent is about: Preparing.
So how are we doing? Are we excited about Christmas coming? Are we ready to meet Jesus, or not so much?
But, if he really were to come tomorrow evening, and he would obviously not be following the Mayan calendar if he did because he would be late, would he find us ready?
Would he find us with our eyes expectantly looking up, our arms opened to receive him? Or would he find us up to our knees in crumpled wrapping paper griping about the mess and not getting the gift we thought we deserved? What is our attitude regarding where we are right now?
I would have us consider a couple of examples, models of attitudes about the coming of Christ.
The first we hear in the gospel this morning, from Mary the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth her cousin.
Mary: A poor, teenage, Jewish girl. She is visited by an angel and told God has chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah. That would be a fairly stressful encounter in and of itself.
She then finds herself pregnant by divine act of God but she is betrothed to an older man who initially was not on board with her story and intended to divorce her. She is single and pregnant in a culture in which this condition exposes one to ostracism, persecution and even death.
She was told Jesus was coming and her preparation was confusing, dangerous, and costly to her personally.
So how does she respond, what is her attitude? We hear it in the reading this morning called the Magnificat, Mary’s song, and she is definitely not singing the blues!
My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of his servant.
But Mary, what about that scary angel? You are pregnant and you are not married, what does every body think? Are you delusional? You really think God will make this all come out?
For behold, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me and Holy is his name.
But Mary – these things don’t seem like such great blessings – we would call them trials, problems. And you are praising God for them, really?
And then there is her older cousin Elizabeth. Her husband, Zechariah, is an older fellow who was struck dumb while serving in the temple during worship. He made signs and wrote about an encounter with an angel who told him his child would be a prophet, like in the old days and would usher in the time of the Messiah. And he was to be named John.
Everyone was asking, was it a vision? Did something really happen? Did he have a stroke?
And then she’s pregnant when she is well beyond child bearing years. It is a blessing to have a child but at this age, really? Elizabeth had plenty to deal with in her life, too.
Yet when her young pregnant cousin Mary comes to visit her, her baby kicks her and she is filled with an unaccountable joy and knowledge, trust that God is in control of everything and she exclaims to Mary: Blessed are you among all women. And blessed is the child you carry. Joy of joys that i should have this happen to me, that my Messiah’s mother would come to me! You are blessed, Mary, for trusting what God had told you.
i would say both Mary and Elizabeth had extraordinary attitudes given their circumstances as they prepared for the coming of Christ.
But let’s listen to another who has a differing attitude about preparing for Christ.
A merry Christmas, uncle, God save you, cried a cheerful voice. It was his nephew who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
Bah, he said. Humbug!
Christmas a humbug, uncle? You don’t mean that, I am sure.
I do, he said. Merry Christmas? What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.
Don’t be cross uncle, said the nephew.
What else can I be, returned the uncle, when I live in such a world of fools as this?
Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in’em through a round dozen months presented against you?
If I could have my will, said the uncle indignantly, every idiot who goes about with merry Christmas on his lips, should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!
Which model most describes your attitude at this late point in Advent : The gospel ladies or that of Ebenezer Scrooge from Dickens’ Christmas Carol.
Mary and Elizabeth are consumed with their faith and trust in God. They are so focused upon the Lord and so expectant of their place in his plans that the depth of their own circumstances are lost to them. They can’t wait for Jesus to come! They are looking for him. They are prepared, they are Advent-ish.
Mr. Scrooge on the other hand is so consumed with his own circumstances and material frustrations that he has no place in his life to consider Christmas at this point.
There is no place in his life for Jesus or anyone else for that matter. He doesn’t care that the Messiah did come, and couldn’t care less if he were to come again. He would have those who would, boiled in their own pudding with a stake of holly driven through their hearts.
He is not Advent-ish. He is, what shall we say, self-ish. But even that story has a great ending; visions change him too – read the book.
So how is it with you on these last few hours of preparation before we celebrate the coming of Jesus the Messiah? When asked if you are properly prepared, do you think of gifts and credit card bills or are you thinking about how much you love and trust Jesus even in the midst of your trials?
Are you looking for him or looking at yourself? Are you feeling like our gospel ladies and being Advent-ish, or are you feeling like Scrooge and being self-ish?
Let’s check our attitudes today and remember; our attitudes merely reflect who we are looking out for.
May these last few hours be a peaceful and holy end of a spiritually fruitful and productive Advent season.