Advent Conspiracy – Worship Fully
Sycamore Creek Church
December 4, 2011
Tom Arthur
Various Texts
Peace, Friends!
I have a love hate relationship with Christmas. Personally, I am not a big gift giver. That’s probably one part stinginess (I do like buying stuff…just for me) mixed with one part I-don’t-communicate-love-through-giving-gifts. I always feel really good when Sarah has a new book out that we can just give to everyone. Nice and easy.
But then I do love getting gifts! In fact, some times I obsess about what I’m going to ask for. When I was growing up I pulled a serious coup one Christmas. I really really really wanted this new video game system. It was called Turbo Graphx 16. The only problem was that it was too expensive for my parents to buy just for me. I tried to talk each of my brothers into going in with me on this request, but none of them would. So I turned to my sister. To this day, I’m still not sure how I talked her into it, but she agreed. So we both asked for the Turbo Graphx 16. I think she played it once.
Do you know that the amount of money we spend on Christmas in America is close to forty-five times the amount of money it would take to supply the entire world with clean water (Advent Conspiracy pg 13)? Whoa! That puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? There’s a story we’re telling ourselves at Christmas and it’s not the Christmas story. It’s a story of consumption and consumerism. We end up worshiping less. Spending more. Giving less. And struggling more.
OK, I love my doctor, Amanda, but I have to poke a little fun at her right now (I did ask her if I could share this story). She was incredible at delivering our baby. She spent more time with us than the usual last-fifteen-minutes-to-catch-the-baby part. But here’s the funny thing. Sarah, my wife, began labor on Thanksgiving night last year. Around 3:30AM she decided it was time to call Amanda and let her know that we were going to be coming in to the hospital at some point. She felt really bad about calling her at 3:30AM, but it’s part of the job. So she called Amanda expecting to get a groggy and sleepy voice. What she got instead was a super peppy and cheerful voice that said, “Hi Sarah! You’re in labor, aren’t you?!” Sarah was a little befuddled. She could hear music in the background and all kinds of noise. She asked Amanda, “Where are you?” Amanda said, “I’m in Younkers. It’s Black Friday!” Yes, our delivery doctor was in Younkers at 3:30AM making sure to get the best sale prices for Christmas.
Christmas is a little weird, isn’t it? It causes us all kinds of stress. I asked on Facebook about stress at Christmas time. I found out that some people get stressed because other people are stressed! Others get stressed planning, shopping, cooking, and doing activities. Then there’s fulfilling everyone’s expectations, making everyone’s schedules work, meeting end of year work goals, working at a department store and having customers yell at you because you’re out of the latest Buzz Lightyear toy, and last but not least, trying to celebrate Christmas without any money. So at Christmas we end up with stress rather than authentic life in Christ.
We all tend to get a little lost around Christmas these days. Our culture and what it says Christmas is about tends to suck all of us in. It’s almost impossible to do something else. But what if we could opt out of our cultural Christmas? What if opting out would give us the opportunity to worship truly and to love all; to spend less and receive more?
Christmas equals two competing worship events. One is the cultural Christmas. This worship event worships the god of stuff. It is a love story. We love the stuff we get. The other Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. In this story we worship the God who became a baby. This too is a love story. And as Jesus himself said, it’s hard to love both God and stuff (Matthew 6:24). You can’t really do both worship events at Christmas. One will crowd the other out. I suspect for most of us, myself included, that the worship event with stuff is crowding out the worship event with God. What you worship then shapes what you love.
This Christmas let’s go back to the Christmas story itself and see what we can learn about how to approach Christmas in a different way. Each of the characters in the story can teach us something about true worship at Christmas.
Mary (Luke 1:46-55)
Mary is a fascinating character in the Christmas story. She’s a young unwed mother who becomes miraculously pregnant. She submits to God’s will for her life and is blessed. After the angel greets her and announces what is about to happen, she sings to our redeeming God. She says, “Oh, how I praise the Lord. How I rejoice in God my Savior!” (Luke 1:46-47 NLT). Mary reminds us that Christmas is first and foremost about God. We praise God for God’s amazing goodness. We praise God for looking out for the lowly. We praise God because God loved us enough to enter into the story in the form of a baby. Christmas is about praising God. That must come first if we are to opt out of the cultural Christmas and its worship and love of stuff. Mary teaches us to sing to our redeeming God.
Joseph (Matthew 1:18-24)
I love Joseph. He’s such a realistic character. He makes the whole story believable to me. Joseph teaches us to obey without regard to cost. He finds out his fiancée is pregnant but not by him. He’s a good guy, so instead of taking her on to the Jerry Springer show, he decides to quietly leave her. But Mary’s not the only one who is visited by an angel. “An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. ‘Joseph, son of David,’ the angel said, ‘do not be afraid to go ahead with your marriage to Mary. For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit’” (Matthew 1:20 NLT). So Joseph goes ahead with the marriage. Can you imagine for a moment the potential embarrassing situation Joseph is walking into? She’s pregnant but not by you? How long have you been married? How old is Jesus? I imagine Joseph’s friends and family trying to talk him out of it. You’re going to raise someone else’s baby? She’s disgraced you? If she’s been unfaithful now, how do you know she won’t be unfaithful in the future? She says she became pregnant by God? Yeah…that’s a story! But Joseph is undeterred by the cost to his reputation. God has told him what to do, so he does it. Joseph teaches us to obey God without regard to cost.
Shepherds (Luke 2:8-20)
Shepherds were outcasts of the day. They were on the fringe. They were poor and tended to be dirty and smelly. You would be too if you hung out in the wilderness with sheep all day long. But God has a special place in God’s heart for the poor and the outcast. And so angels show up to announce to the shepherds what is going on. Imagine the scene for a moment. The shepherds are in the middle of shepherding their sheep when angels show up and tell them to go check out this new baby. It would be pretty amazing to have an angel show up, but shepherds are pretty practical kinds of people. I suspect they might be wondering what it is exactly they’re supposed to do with their sheep. It’s not like they can take all the sheep with them (maybe just a couple to add some cute animals to the manger scene). But the shepherds leave their busyness to worship Christ. We’re told by Luke that “when the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Come on, let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this wonderful thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about’” (Luke 2:15 NLT). They leave the busyness of their livelihood to go be with Jesus. The shepherds teach us to leave our busyness to worship Christ at Christmas.
Magi (Matthew 2:1-12)
While the shepherds were poor, the rich also have a place in the Christmas story too. The magi were most certainly wealthy because they brought some amazing gifts for Jesus. Precious metals and fine spices. They had traveled a long way following a star to see this new king. They expected to find him in the power centers of the day, Herod’s court, but when they showed up Herod didn’t know anything about it. Now Herod wasn’t the nicest of guys. He had killed family members to get to his current place of political power, and you can imagine what he thought about these foreign dignitaries showing up to worship a newborn king that wasn’t on his radar. So he sends them on their way with instructions to let him know what they find so he too can go and worship. Yeah right. So he too can go and kill this baby is more like it. Matthew tells us that “when it was time to leave, they went home another way, because God had warned them in a dream not to return to Herod” (Matthew 2:12 NLT). I suspect Herod was pretty miffed at these guys and may have put a bounty out on their capture. But they had met Jesus and weren’t going to let any political power get in the way of worshiping him. The magi teach us to confront anything that stands in the way of our worship, whether worldly empires or our fears.
This Christmas Mary teaches us to sing to our redeeming God. Joseph teaches us to obey without regard to cost. The shepherds teach us to leave our busyness to worship Christ. And the magi teach us to confront any power that gets in the way of our worship. Which of these four characters do you need to learn from most this Christmas season?
Advent Conspiracy
Advent means coming and Advent is the time of preparing for the coming of Jesus.
Together these four characters invite us into a conspiracy this Advent, an Advent Conspiracy. Join in a conspiracy with me right now. Take a deep breath. There. You’ve joined a conspiracy. Con = with and spire = breath. Conspiracy literally means “to breathe with.” This Advent instead of conspiring with the cultural Christmas, I’m inviting you to conspire against the cultural Christmas and with the true Christmas. To join this conspiracy I’m asking you to:
Worship Fully – because Christmas begins and ends with Jesus!
Spend Less – and free your resources for things that truly matter.
Give More – of your presence, your hands, your words, your time, your heart.
Love All – the poor, the forgotten, the marginalized, the sick, in ways that make a difference.
We’ll explore one of these ideas each week through this series, but to join the Advent Conspiracy as a whole, I’m not asking you to do these things on top of what you usually do but instead of what you usually do. Conspire against the cultural Christmas and with the true Christmas. Here’s what this looks like practically.
Christmas Can Still Change the World
According to Forbes, the average American family spends $750 on Christmas gifts and when you add in all the parties, they spend $1000. This Advent and Christmas season, we’re asking you to spend 50% less and give it away.
Let’s do the math. There are about 120 families that give to SCC. If the average family spends $1000 on Christmas, then half of that would be $500. So 120 x $500 = $60,000! So we as a single church could give away $60,000 if we joined the Advent Conspiracy. We’re going to be taking an offering on Christmas Eve that we will give away entirely. Half of it will go to meet local hunger needs through the 2012 Food Drop in February. Half of it will go to meet needs in our larger world through our medical missions in Nicaragua and our conference-wide initiative for clean water in Sierra Leone. $60,000 would go a long way in meeting basic needs both locally and globally.
Now imagine with me if all the Christians in Lansing spent 50% less and gave it away. The Pew Forum on Religion and Life reports that 76% of the population claims to be Christian. That means that 86,615 people in the Lansing area would claim to be Christians. 86,615 x 500 = $43,307,500. That’s millions. Now imagine with me if all the Christians in Michigan did this? 7,577,200 x 500 = $3,788,600,000. That’s billions! All the Christians in the U.S.? 224,457,000 x 500 = $112,228,500,000. $112 billion! What story would this tell?
At Christmas God gave 100% in the form of a son, and that story changes everything! Christmas can still change everything today. Join the Advent Conspiracy this Christmas. Worship fully. Spend less. Give more. Love all.
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