Good morning! I am Tim Roberts, the pastor here at Sunrise. I
want to take just a moment to thank Evan for sharing his talent and love with
us this morning. I also want to thank you for being here. It truly brings so
much excitement and joy to see you each Sunday. You are truly a unique
community and it is so easy to feel God's love emanate from you each week and I
praise God for that.
This morning, we continue
to look at this conspiracy in which I invited you to join with me. As you may
recall, the word conspire means
to work or act together towards the same result or goal.
Last Sunday, we began this conspiracy as we challenged each
other to Worship Fully. Because we truly believe this season of Advent and this
conspiracy must begin with worship - that is looking beyond all of the
distractions, digging beneath all of the traditions and chaos that this season
finds itself enveloped and once again discovering at the core - Jesus.
Now, this morning, we
continue to conspire by working and acting together to Spend Less.
Christmas and Spend
Less. Those are two terms that just don't seem to complement each other, do
they. At least not as we look at our country's economic index. Many retailers
look to this time between Thanksgiving and Christmas as the "make it or
break it" season.
Well, for retailers,
it looks like they will have a good year. Wilkes University, which is one of
the leading institutions that economists look to for their studies, is
forecasting at least a 3% increase in holiday sales for 2012.
Their studies are
projecting that Americans will spend over $486 billion dollars during the
Christmas shopping season and that is not including sales at Wal-Mart, which
does not release their sales figures on a monthly basis.
Friends, that's roughly
a half a trillion dollars! A half a trillion dollars spent on buying gifts!
That's great news for our economy, but, I wonder, is it nurturing relationships
or making any significant impact in the name of Jesus?
I also wonder why do
we buy Christmas presents in the first place? After all, as my colleague, Mike
Slaughter says, "It's not your birthday!"
The custom of
exchanging gifts is rooted in several places. First, it may surprise you to
know that for the first three centuries, Christmas wasn't celebrated at all.
Christianity was illegal and anyone discovered to be a Christian was put to
death. It wasn't until the year 313, when Constantine I became a Christian and
removed the penalties that Christianity became accepted. A few years later,
350, Pope Julius I officially designated December 25th as the date to celebrate
Jesus' birth.
Why December 25th?
Isn't that the date of Jesus birth? Well, probably not. We don't know the exact
date, but this date was chosen for a very particular reason, to combat a few of
popular pagan festivals that fell around that period. First there was
Saturnalia, a Roman feast that was know for its merriment and gift-giving.
Another was the Mithraic religion of Persia that celebrates Sol Invictus: the
Invincible Sun in which they celebrated the rebirth of the sun. Lastly,
there was also the Kalends, which the Romans celebrated the first day of each
month (which is where we get the term calendar), and for the beginning of the
new year, there was also the exchange of presents.
So, the early Church
fathers, especially St. John Chrysostom sought to abolish these pagan
practices, but to no avail. Instead, the Christmas was established right over
top of all that. So, the Roman celebration of the rebirth of the sun, became
known as the Birth of the Son of God. Christmas then incorporated the
celebratory aura of Saturnalia. Finally the exchange of gifts from the Kalends
became Christianized as it recounted how the Magi brought gifts to honor the
Christ child.
While this briefly
explains how the exchange of gifts has roots in pagan rituals, it is also
rooted in a Christian practice. Around this same time, St. Nicholas of Turkey
was known for his generosity for giving gifts and money to poor children in
some unique ways, such as dropping the gifts down chimneys. But he is also
known to give presents to all children, regardless of need, because he felt
that childhood should be savored and lived joyfully. After Nicholas' death, the
movement of generously giving continued by others who took up the cause and
spread the custom throughout the world over the next few centuries.
In a nutshell, that's
how this annual ritual began. But maybe we need to ask, has it got out of hand?
Over the last few
years, my extended family has gravitated to where we now basically exchange
gift cards. I give a $25 gift card (which is the price limit) from Sears and
usually get a $25 gift card from Wal-Mart. Somehow though, that just isn't
getting it for me anymore.
So why do we do it? Is
it as some suggest, we have fallen in the social convention trap that says
that giving gifts, especially more of them and pricier ones are proofs of love.
Friends, Christmas has to be more than that.
We have all heard the
old adage, "Money can't buy happiness," right? So the question for
today is, why do we think gifts can? Do we really believe that buying presents,
especially a lot of them or really expensive ones really prove our love or will
bring a real sense of joy to our lives?
Let's take a look in
the Bible and see what wisdom it can share on this quandary.
Well, we have a
problem here. There is not a passage directly related to spending less on
gifts. Why is that? Well, it may be because that was not a problem of the day.
Very few people lavished needless gifts on each other. So does, that mean there
isn't any words of wisdom that we can find in here? No. Just because we can't
find the exact problem in scripture doesn't mean it doesn't address the root of
the problem. So let's take a look at what Paul says to Timothy about
contentment, in his first letter to him.
1 Timothy 6:6-8
6 But godliness with contentment is great gain. 7 For we brought nothing into the world, and we can
take nothing out of it. 8 But if we have food and clothing, we will be
content with that.
Humh. That should make
us stop to think for a moment. Do the gifts that we wrap up and put under the
tree reflect this biblical truth? In the end, will these gifts make an eternal
difference?
Now, friends, hear me
on this point: I am not saying or advocating that we should cease buying gifts
altogether, I am just convicted now that we need to practice moderation in our
spending. That's all.
We need to conspire to
become wiser in our spending habits at Christmas. Maybe as a way to help us to
do this, we can ask ourselves these questions:
1. Am I buying this to
try to prove my love?
2. How will this
present help me and the recipient celebrate God's gift of grace through Jesus?
Our scripture today
reminds me of a quote I recounted in a sermon a few weeks ago,
"The only thing
we can take with us to Heaven is other people" (Michael Slaughter,
Ginghamsburg UMC). Maybe that is also something we need to remember as we go
about on our Christmas shopping sprees.
Of course, as you
know, this Advent Conspiracy is indelibly tied to a mission - that is to make
this Christmas even more special as it changes the world. So far, I believe you
can see how by us conspiring to make some changes, we will see Christmas in a
whole new light. But how will that change the world?
I want to invite you
to help me in a small exercise.
[Begin
clapping - get people in the rhythm]
Alright let's begin
[number off
each 8th clap - do this up to count of 5]
Why did I have you do
this? To demonstrate to you just how fast people die. A person dies every eight
seconds as a result of waterborne disease
- During the time it
took to do that short exercise, five people died as a result of consuming
tainted water.
- During the time we
spend here today in worship, more than 500 will die from lack of clean water
- During the average
time of one shopping excursion of 2.5 hours, over 1000 will die because of
contaminated water supply. One thousand deaths while we shop for presents that
many people neither need nor want.
Today, I challenge you
to conspire with me to change that. As we spend less, I invite you to take a
portion, just a portion, of the money you save from spending less on Christmas
presents and give it to the special offering that we will take up on December
23rd and 24th. Last week, we gave out special offering envelopes to hang on you
tree and we have some more if you need one. Please know this about your
offering to this mission, 100% of what you give will go to boring new wells and
installing filtration systems in villages, so the people there will experience
drinking living water. Even better, it will be done in the name of Jesus
Christ, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas.
So how can we
accomplish this lofty goal conspiring to spend less? I believe you have some
ideas. Let's share some.
[Have them
share ideas with each other and then corporately]
Friends, that's some
Godly conspiring and it's how we conspire to Share the Love of Jesus so All Become His Followers.
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