Today we continue looking at what some of the great films of Christmas can teach us about our faith tackling the ideas that come to us from one of my favorite Christmas moves, A Christmas Story. Now, last week I said that this was one of my favorite movies, and after worship my daughter Abigail said, “how can this be one of your favorite movies if you never watch it.” To which I had to replay, “well it’s one of my favorites, but mommy doesn’t like it at all, and so I don’t get to watch it.” And that’s true even though every year TBS shows this film for twenty-four hours straight, which I don’t think can be said for any other Christmas movie. Now, one thing in Linda’s defense, and that is that she does allow me to watch Hallmark Christmas movies, even way outside of the Christmas season, and for that I am grateful.
A Christmas Story for those poor unfortunate souls who have never seen the film, tells the story of Ralphie who is obsessed with wanting to receive a bb gun for Christmas, but not just any bb gun, but the holy grail of Christmas gifts, a Red Rider Carbine Action 200 shot Range Model with compass in the stock and a thing that tells time. The film takes place in 1940 in Indiana, and is narrated by Ralphie’s much older self, looking back on the events of this particular Christmas. It’s based upon a novel by Jean Sheppard, who actually is the narrator of the film, and Ralphie is played by Peter Billingsley who many of you also know as Messy Marvin from the old Hershey Syrup commercials, which really begins to date us. As an aside, Billingsley is an alum of Phoenix College, as am I, so we have something in common, and he also escaped the curse of childhood actors and is now an Emmy nominated producer and director, including producing the Iron Man films which were directed by Jon Favreau, who directed the movie Elf, which we talked about last week, and so there’s another connection too.
But Ralphie goes to extraordinary lengths to try and convince others to try and get him his red rider gun, but before we delve into that, there is one other key place to start with A Christmas Story. We all like to think that we know a lot, and that can often get us into some tough spots, and so one of the rules of faith and life, is to know when to back down when you in fact don’t know what you’re talking about, take a look… Now that really doesn’t have anything to do with my message for today, but the triple dog dare ya scene is so famous, and so funny, that I just had to include it. So, learn your lesson that before you go spouting off about something for which you don’t know anything about, remember it can get you into a situation you would rather not be in, like with your tongue stuck to a pole.
Now the movie begins with Ralphie looking in the elaborately decorated window of Higbee’s department store and seeing his dream gift, at first he starts with subtle hints, like putting an advertisement for it in his parents copy of Look magazine, where they will just happen to stumble upon it, or saying that a friend say a grizzly down by the candy store, but then in a slip of the tongue when his mother asks what he wants, he tells her the truth, and his mom comes back with the ultimate mom block “You’ll shoot your eye out.” But, Ralphie has elaborate Walter Mitty like dreams of him saving his family with his gun, his well oiled blue steel beauty, and so does he give up? Of course not, and when his teacher asks for everyone to write a theme on what they want for Christmas, he knows this is his chance to write a theme so elegant and magnificent that not only will he receive an A+ and win the teachers sympathy so that she will talk with his mother, but he will also be exempted from ever having to write another theme for the rest of his life. But then he gets his paper back, and not only did he only get a C+, but she also wrote at the bottom of the paper, and let’s say it together, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” His mother must have already gotten to his teacher. Thinking that all his hopes are dashed, he realizes he has one more shot to bypass his mother, by going to the big man himself, the head honcho, the connection, Santa. And even if he might be a scoffer, in the zero hour you do what you have to do, and Santa could get him past the trap of his mother. Take a look…
What’s the best Christmas present you ever received? Most of us have that one thing, or maybe there were two or three that really stand out for us, but for the most part the gifts we get each Christmas, as important as they might be at the time, we can’t remember them. But, even worse is the gifts we desperately want, especially as children, that turn out to be hugely disappointing, that we think they will bring us happiness, we think they are exactly what we need, they are what our heart desires the most, and it turns out that it was never as great as we imagined it would be, perhaps it wasn’t even what we thought it would be at all. I know it’s true for me, and it’s also true for our kids, the things we are desperate to get that end up just sitting on a shelf, sometimes even just days later and never getting played with again. Rev. Bruce Rzengota said, “The greatest Christmas present I ever wanted lacked satisfaction.” It’s because we imagine how things will make us feel, how they will make us better, how they will make people think more of us, and so we seek for approval of our own self-worth from other things. We can see this in the dreams Ralphie has of saving his family, or his dream of his teacher and classmates celebrating his brilliant paper, but we also see it in other characters in the film.
We don’t know what Ralphie’s father does for a living, we actually don’t even know his name, but in his battles with the furnace and the electrical system in the house, and his car, it has the appearance that he is living a life of quiet desperation, as Henry David Thoreau said, and so he enters contests in order to win things, and finally win he does, and he receives as a prize a lamp in the shape of a woman’s leg with fishnet stockings, and he couldn’t be happier, even though, as you might imagine, it horrifies his wife, not just because it is so gaudy and tacky, but even more because he wants to display it in the front window of the house so that the entire neighborhood can see not just a lamp, but, what he calls, his major award for mind power. In what becomes known as legendary “The Battle of the Lamp”, Ralphie’s mother, breaks the lamp, although she says she doesn’t know what he happened, she was just watering the plants. While his father is overcome with the map, he loses all perspective, and although Ralphie has a fascination with it, no one is really happy with it, and only the old man thinks of it or sees it as an award. His treasure is being placed in the wrong spot and sacrificing other’s happiness.
But it’s more than just that. Ralphie submits the things necessary in order to get his little orphan Annie decoder ring, and he waits weeks for it to finally come in the mail so that he too can decode the secret message at the end of the program, only to find out that it’s just an advertisement for Ovaltine, the sponsor of the program. Even beating up Scut Farkus, he hated bully, does not bring him the pleasure that he so desperately thought it might bring. We build things up in our minds to be something, and too often they are disappointing, even when Ralphie finally gets his beloved red rider gun, it doesn’t work out quite like he had thought…
All along everyone had told him that he would shoot his eye out, and what happened? He shot his eye out, well, not all the way out, but close enough. Now I’m going to stop preaching and start meddling for a moment, and let me start by saying, I got a bb gun as a Christmas present, and I used it, not often in the ways approved by Daisy BB guns or by my parents, and I got play guns, and I took gun safety trainings and went target shooting, but I hope we are getting to the point where we realize that guns are not toys. Every day in America, 7.5 children under the age of 19 will be shoot and killed, and the risk of being a victim increases if there are guns in the house. So, if you own guns, please be responsible with them. The first is to make sure the weapons are not kept loaded, and that the gun and ammunition are kept in separate places, or even more simply, and better, is to lock them in a gun safe. So back to our regularly scheduled message. Now does shooting himself in the eye ruin Ralphie’s gift? No, he still says it was the best present he ever received, but what he remembers most about that Christmas was not that he got the holy grail of Christmas gifts, but what happens next. Because in trying to cover up for his shooting himself, he concocts an elaborate story of a falling ice cycle for his mother, who is caring for him, and in the chaos, the back door gets left open and the next door neighbors bloodhounds pour into the house and eat the turkey, the thing Ralphie’s father had most been looking forward to, his Christmas Holy Grail, and so instead of eating turkey they end up at a Chinese restaurant, the only place open on Christmas, and to this they discover, or are reminded what truly matters, and Ralphie says that "all is right with the world."
When we believe that happiness is somewhere else or with something else or with someone else, then we will never be able to find happiness here. When we draw a line in the sand about contentment that line will always be redrawing itself, because it will never be enough. Life doesn’t work that way, but it’s the myth that all of us battle, and it’s the myth that our entire advertising culture is based upon. If you just get this people will desire you, you’ll be successful, all your problems will go away, and you’ll be happy. But we know it’s not true. We know it’s not true, and yet we live as if it is. In Luke Jesus tells us that life is not about the abundance of our possessions. In the 23rd Psalm, the traditional reading says, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” but more modern translations are reading, “The Lord is my shepherd, I have all that I need.” There is a big difference between those two sayings, because one battles against wanting more, and we need to do that or trying to draw those lines of happiness, but the second says right here and right now I have everything that I need, and usually when we try and take stock the things that we need, are not the things we hunger for or desire, the things we want. If your home was to burn down today, what would you miss the most? I’m guessing that most of it would not be things you got for Christmas, but the things that are irreplaceable. Photos and kids’ artwork, family heirlooms. Those are the things that matter, and yet not the things that we often think of, and yet that is where our treasure should lie, because Jesus tells us in the passage we heard this morning from the sermon on the Mount that where our treasure is is where out heart is. So, don’t waste your time accumulating up treasurers that moth and rust and thieves can steal, instead accumulate your treasurers in heaven, which is not just somewhere else, but in the here and now.
Not to mix my metaphors and my movie types, but I’m sure most of you remember in the movie Field of Dreams, when Kevin Costner’s character finally meets his father, who is deceased and comes back to play baseball in his field, his father says, “Is this heaven?” and Costner says, “No, it’s Iowa.” Our heaven is where all is right with the world, where our dreams have come true, where our happiness is found, simply because we have stopped to notice what has been there all along, and to truly treasure and appreciate the things that really matter. It’s nice to dream about things, but as Ralphie finds out, as his father finds out, they won’t make us happy, because as the grinch reminds us, that things that make us happy don’t come from the store, the things that make us truly happy, that make all right with the world, is not our stuff, so remember that where your treasure is there your heart will be as well, so let us make sure our hearts in are the right place. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
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