• Please consider joining us tomorrow at 5:00 for the CPC family Christmas party (food served), an event that will benefit the kids of Sacred Road Ministries on the Yakama reservation. Here’s an interesting fact: when Paul’s quotes Jesus as saying “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), he is recording words not captured in any of the Gospels. These children can’t give back to you, which, to Jesus, is all the more reason to give (Lk14:13).
• Also, I want to urge the men to join us for the Men’s Night of Prayer beginning Friday Dec. 12 at midnight. Listen for the announcement this Sunday. You know the Holy Spirit has been conveying to you a need to grow in faith. Here’s your chance to do something about it. It’s the enemy getting in your head to argue to the contrary.
• Years ago, while traveling through Switzerland, I was gently rebuked by a citizen of that fine country for believing in the “pagan” holiday of Christmas. She was right of course. If by “pagan” she was referring to customs that could be grounded neither in Scripture, nor in the practices of believers closest to the original events, then most Christmas rituals can be classified as pagan, including the trees placed on our own chancel (the raised area in the front of the sanctuary).
• But it seems to me the weakness of the Christmas-as-baptized-paganism argument is that it relies on chronology: “Christmas was adapted to the prior pagan celebration of the winter solstice, therefore Christmas is fundamentally pagan.” Is that right? And who exactly gave ownership of the solstice — that final moment before the return of light and warmth in the Northern Hemisphere — to the pagans?
• God said to Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding… when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? …Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? …Declare, if you know all this. Where is the way to the dwelling of light, and where is the place of darkness… that you may discern the paths to its home?” (Job 38).
• As (in Christ) the rightful heirs of the God who created, owns, and sustains all things, it seems to me that all things are ours to do with as we choose, within the bounds of his commands. This is what Paul is arguing in 1 Cor 10:23ff, with the caveat that practices that could be construed as pagan worship ought to be avoided (for the sake of the weaker brother). The pagans may have borrowed the solstice for a time, but they certainly don’t own it, and they’re not using it anymore.
• So this Christmas I intend to celebrate Christ’s glorious advent by (among more sober activities) hanging fake-icicle lights on the gutter of my house, then coming in by the tree to get warm and drink some eggnog. Such things are not central to my celebration of Advent, but they are, as Paul would say, “lawful.” Personally, I enjoy all the customs of Christmas a great deal. To the person who cries “humbug” I say “keep it to yourself and hand me a frosted sugar cookie.”
– Pastor Eric