Today we begin a new worship series entitled Christmas in July, looking at some of the great Christmas films and what they can teach us about faith, and we begin today with the movie Elf. This is the newest film we will see, coming out in 2003, and it has already become a Christmas classic for many people, largely because of the goofy portrayal of buddy the elf, played by Will Ferrell. Now if you haven’t seen the film before, I do want to warn you that it does have some sophomoric humor in it, and just as an aside, why do we call it sophomoric humor? Why not freshman humor or senior humor? And if it’s sophomoric because it’s juvenile, that perhaps kindergartenmoric would be better. But I digress.
Although Buddy is raised as an elf, at the north pole, he actually isn’t an elf. When Santa, played by Ed Asner, comes to the orphanage where he goes after his mother dies, Buddy climbs into Santa’s bag and is taken to the north pole, but they aren’t sure what to do with him, and so papa elf, played by Bob Newhart, adopts him as his own and raises him up to be an elf. Except, Buddy doesn’t belong. Not only does he not fit in because of his size, but more importantly he’s just not good at doing any of the things that elves do, like make toys. Buddy tries he best and he puts his heart into it, but he just can’t seem to find his place amongst the other eleves. And so, Papa Elf decides to tell Buddy the truth that he is not really an elf, which shouldn’t come as a surprise to him, and yet in his naiveté, which is one of his redeeming characteristics, it does. Buddy is then told that his real father lives in “the magical land called New York City,” and that his father never even knew he was born. But even worse is that his father is on the naughty list, and so Buddy sets out and travels through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest, then through the sea of swirly-twirly gum drops, and then through the Lincoln Tunnel and he enters New York, the city so nice they named it twice. But if he thought he didn’t belong at the north pole, it’s even worse in New York where his kindness and generosity and joy contrast with the gritty reality of the adults around him, especially his father. But he loves his father, and he wants to redeem him and be in relationship with him, but his father keeps rejecting him, until he is called on to save Buddy and to save Christmas after Santa’ sleigh crashes because of a lack of Christmas spirit. But for our purposes today, I want to explore the three rules of Christmas that the elves have and what they teach us about how to live as disciples of Christ.
The first rule is to treat every day like Christmas. Now, most of you probably know that I love Christmas, and I also love Christmas movies, and while there are churches that have done their Christmas movies series in December, I didn’t want to do that, because honestly, I didn’t want to have to add one more thing either to my schedule or your schedule in showing the movies during December, which is why we are doing it now. But, that also builds into the idea of living like Christmas, is that doing this in July allows us to begin to strip away all the things that might make us dislike Christmas, or at least the season, and drive down to the essence of it. So, I want you to think of one thing you don’t like about Christmas. What is it? I bet that it actually has little do with what Christmas is really about, even if it’s things we think are crucial like family or gift giving. None of those are scriptural. They can be nice, and they can also be horrible, but they are not the essence. Now think of one of the things that you like about Christmas. It could be one of the things that other dislike. But, even better, think about how you remember Christmas as a child. What did Christmas mean to you?
Jesus tells us that unless we change and become like children, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven. We adults can really suck the joy out of life can’t we? At Christmas, we argue about whether Starbucks cups have Christian symbolism on them, or whether the cashier at Penny’s wishes us a Merry Christmas versus a happy holiday while we are buying things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t even like. Children approach Christmas totally differently. They approach life differently. They have a sense of awe and wonder and joy and funny and excitement about life, and so does Buddy. Take a look… Buddy gets excited because he saw a dog. Do you remember when that was exciting to you? Buddy goes through life with a sense of joy and a sense of awe and a sense of wonder and a sense of excitement, not because he has to, but because he gets to. Buddy doesn’t live life selfishly, he lives life elfishly, and he gives of himself to everyone, and he tries to spread that same sense of joy everywhere he goes.
When the angels appear to the shepherds according to Luke, they say first, “Fear not.” There lots of things that people, and politics and advertisers want us to be afraid of, but to live lives like everyday is Christmas means to live fearlessly. And we are to fear not, because the angels are bring good news of great joy that shall be for all the people. Do you live your life full of joy? If not, why not, because joy in the presence of God is not just because things are going well, but even when they are not, because, as Nehemiah says, the joy of the lord is our strength. “So, fear not, because we have good news of great joy that shall be for all people because for you, and you and you, a child, who is the messiah, the promised one, the Lord.” To live everyday like it’s Christmas means to live in that sense of wonder and joy and awe that comes from God, because God has come to us and God is with us in the power of the Holy Spirit because of the gift of Christ. Christmas is about giving, but it’s about God’s gift to us, because God believes strongly in the second rule of the elves and that is that there is always room on the nice list.
God knows that we live lives of brokenness, that we don’t do what God has told us to do, and thus break our relationship with God, but we also break our relationship with each other. It’s that sense of selfishness again, but Buddy lives his elfishness and giving himself for others, and while I don’t want to say that Buddy is a Christ-like figure, but he really is, because why does he come down to the magical land of New York City? It’s to save his father, take a look… What sends Buddy to New York is to save his father, to get him off the naughty list and onto the nice list. God does the same thing through Jesus Christ. Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world, but to save the world, to redeem the world. Hear how Eugene Peterson translates John 3:16 in The Message: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.” He came to put the world right again. That is the good news, that God loves us so much that he doesn’t give up on us, no matter what is going on in our lives, that even in the worst moment of our lives, God says you are my beloved child and I love you. Do you understand that? Buddy does the same thing. No matter what his father does when he rejects him, even when he tells him to go away that he never wants to see him again, Buddy’s love for his father remains, and while the change in his father takes a lot longer, he also changes everyone else around him, because his love is infectious. The same should be true for us as well.
Once we have accepted that God loves us, and we have accepted that God sent Jesus to redeem us, to bring us back into right relationship with God and with each other, then we have to live that out, and that means living fearlessly and living in love. Knowing that there is always room on the nice list. Jesus says that we will be known as his disciples because of the love that we show to the world. And these two rules, knowing that there is always room on the nice list and living every day like it’s Christmas build off of each other don’t they? Because if we are living in the love of God then we are living into the good news that Christ was sent here to save us, to help us, to heal us, the empower us, to embolden us, to give the good news for others. Not just to tell them about it, but to live it each and every moment of each and every day. That we should be transformed by Christ, through the waters of baptism, when God claims us again, and go out to be transformative. And that leads us into rule three, which is the best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear.
Buddy just cannot contain the joy he has for life, the awe he has for life, the love he has for the world, and so he just has to sing, and to try and get others to sing as well. After making his way to magical New York, he ends up in Gimbels department store, and because he’s dressed like an elf, others think he works in the Santa area, and there he encounters the girl he will fall in love with, and tries to encourage her to sing. Take a look… How often have we been told, metaphorically at least, “we don’t sing at the North pole?” And how often has our response been, okay, rather than yelling out “yes we do.” Buddy sings because he’s filled with joy, and so even though he can’t sing he just makes up the words to demonstrate how easy it is. And yet, we know it’s not, as does Jovie, who doesn’t want to sing in public, but has to overcome her fears, remembering to fear not, in order to lead a crowd in singing in central park so that Santa has enough Christmas cheer in order for his sleigh to fly, and so we’re going to do the same here, and we’re going to spread some Christmas cheer by singing loud for all to hear, but singing one of Charles Wesley’s most famous songs, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.” And while one of John Wesley’s rules for singing was not to bawl, but to sing with everyone, I’m going to invite us all to sing it loud for all to hear, even if you don’t think you can sing at all. Here we go…
When we strip away all the things about Christmas that distract us, we find at the heart the greatest gift the world has received, the gift of Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. It’s not that lights and parties and gifts and family can’t be fun or important, because they can be and they are, learning to give like God gives is important work, but not more important than beginning by celebrating the good news of Jesus Christ. And to begin to live every day like it’s Christmas day means that we have to recapture that sense of wonder and awe of Christmas that we had as children, that sense of the unknown and excitement, the sense the good things were out there just waiting for us, and that good things were coming to us. And they are, because God loves us and claims us, and says to us, just as buddy does to his father. “I love you. I love you! I LOVE YOU!”
Christmas lives in our heart and lives because Jesus came to put the world right, but not by himself, but with all of us, and he puts the world right not by wagging his finger and telling us how wrong we all are, but instead by inviting us into relationship, and to help us to know that there is always room on the nice list. That no one is ever beyond the love of God, as Paul says in his letter to the Romans. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God. Nothing in all of creation can separate us from God’s love. Nothing. Nothing you can do, or I can do, will ever make God stop loving us and pursuing us and seeking us to come home. As Jesus says the shepherd leaves the sheep to find the lost, and the woman seeks out the coin with all that she has, so to does God do the same thing for us, and because of that, we should indeed sing loud and clear for all to hear. So, this day, I invite you to remember God’s love for us and to live everyday like it’s Christmas day, which means living without fear and living in great joy, and celebrating with all people, because to us has been born a child, who is the messiah, the savior. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment