Tasting the Gruel of Love

Blue Christmas

Dr. Larry Thorson
December 7, 2008

Isaiah 40:1-11

Each of my Advent messages recalls a Christmas song. Some of these songs are secular, some are sacred. Our song for this Sunday, Blue Christmas. “I’ll have a Blue Christmas without you. I’ll be so blue thinking about you. Decorations of red on a green Christmas tree, won’t mean a thing if you’re not here with me. I’ll have a Blue Christmas that’s certain. And when that blue heartache starts hurtin’. You’ll be doin’ all right, with your Christmas of white. But I’ll have a blue, blue Christmas.”

What a strange song to become a country music Christmas classic when Ernest Tubb first recorded it in 1948 and a rock and roll classic after Elvis recorded it in 1957. Even the Beach Boys had a version in the 60’s.

Christmas is known as the happiest time of year and to think that a sad Christmas song could be such a hit. But as you know not everyone is full of cheer at Christmas. In fact, this is a season when depression is at a peak for a lot of people.

There’s another popular song I could have chosen for this Sunday titled, “Please Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas).” That one didn’t reach the popularity of “Blue Christmas” when it was sung by none other than that clean-cut, and wholesome, “Rocky Mountain High,” John Denver.

Denver was singing from the point of view of an eight‑year‑old, reminiscing about a Christmas when Daddy drank too much and fell down underneath the Christmas tree, much to Mommy’s dismay. He asks Daddy to show some restraint this year because he doesn’t “want to see my Momma cry.” For some people this sentimental song will be all-too-relevant during this Advent/Christmas season. It reminds us that holiday memories aren’t necessarily happy in many families.

Every Christmas I dedicate at least one sermon to those folks for whom Christmas is a difficult time. Listen to the prophet Isaiah writing to a group of downtrodden, depressed people.

Isaiah 40 begins… 1 Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

3 A voice of one calling: "In the wilderness prepare the way for the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4 Every valley shall be raised up, every mountain and hill made low; the rough ground shall become level, the rugged places a plain. 5 And the glory of the LORD will be revealed, and all people will see it together. For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."

Isaiah was speaking to what remained of a once proud nation. Much of the nation of Israel had been carried away into exile much as if Americans were carried off to Iran. They so wanted to go home.

Isaiah assures them that God has not forgotten them nor forsaken them even though it felt like that. But their suffering was almost over. Isaiah tells them that God will build a vast highway over which they can travel through the wilderness from Babylon back to their home, the Promised Land. In the New Testament John the Baptist cries that soon God will build an even more important highway linking humanity and God. The message is the same. God cares about a broken world. God cares about broken people.

If you’re feeling broken in anyway during this season Advent is God’s way of telling you that he cares about you whether it feels like it or not. Whatever your heartbreak this day, God wants to offer you His comfort.

Advent says, first of all, that God cares about a broken world. Advent comes from a Latin word meaning “to come.” Jesus came into our world that he might walk in our shoes. Jesus came into our world to identify with the world’s suffering. That’s the whole point of the Advent season.

Stephen Arterburn in his book Flashpoints has a great illustration of what it means to identify with someone. There was a woman named Pattie Moore who when she was seventeen years old, she was a promising student at the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, New York. One day a bus she was riding on stopped for a traffic light at a busy intersection. An old man on the sidewalk caught Moore’s attention. He was unkempt, but clean and he carried two loaded shopping bags, one under each arm. He moved slowly. Each step seemed to be a challenge for him.

Not having been around older people much in her life it suddenly occurred to Pattie that older people have difficulties doing even simple tasks that she took for granted. This became a major motivator for her.

After graduation Pattie moved to New York City and accepted a job with a prestigious industrial design firm where she began to design products with older people in mind. With each assignment she would ask herself, could my grandfather whom Pattie loved greatly manage this with his aging eyes and hands?

One day Pattie decided to go further. With the help of a friend who was a makeup artist for NBC, Pattie decided to spend several months disguised as an old woman. She wanted to discover for herself how America treated the elderly. Her friend fitted pieces of latex to Pattie’s face to instantly age her. She wrapped her legs with Ace bandages; then she wore support stockings over those bandages to bind her movements. She put wax in her ears to make hearing more difficult and drops of baby oil in her eyes to cloud her vision. She wrapped adhesive tape around her fingers to simulate arthritis and wore gloves over the tape.

Pattie Moore discovered how much the elderly are ignored, shoved, cheated, ostracized, and even mugged. “When I was in character,” she said afterwards, “if I got a smile or a hello from a passerby, I felt like I’d received a hug from God himself.” The only way she could learn about the needs of the elderly was to experience for herself what it was to be elderly.

Here is what is so amazing about the coming of Christ celebrated during Advent. God came to us as a tiny baby not as a grown man or woman, but as a tiny babe. Other religions have gods that come to earth, but only the Christian faith speaks of a God who emptied Himself completely and went through the entire human experience.

God knows the challenges we face. God knows the pain of being human. The highway that God constructed between heaven and earth was a two-way road. God came down to us so that we might go up to Him.

Dr. John Claypool was a great Baptist preacher who later became an Episcopal priest tells about an experience he had when he was a very young pastor. He was called to minister to an elderly farm widow. Her husband had just died and Claypool went to offer as much comfort as he could to her. But, he was young. He had never lost a person who was close to him. His knowledge of grief was abstract and academic. He did the best he could, but there was no way he could really understand what she was going through.

An older woman about this widow’s age came into the room while he was there. She embraced the grieving widow and all she said was, “I understand, my dear. I understand.”

Someone told Claypool later that this second person had lost her husband six months before. Claypool writes, “I could almost see the bridges of understanding coming to exist between them. That woman who had shared the same experience as my grieving friend had a way of connecting, had a way of making clear that she understood, that I was not able to because I had not walked in her shoes.”

God has walked in your shoes. God knows your pain. This is the Gospel. This is the Good News. God cares about a broken world. Jesus came into our world to identify with the world’s suffering.

Here is your God, a helpless babe in the manger of Bethlehem, then fleeing for his life, spending his early years in a strange land where people didn’t speak the same language as his parents. Here is your God, baptized in real water by John in the river Jordon…facing temptation, and being criticized. Here is your God, hanging on the painful cross of Calvary, making the ultimate sacrifice to show His love for a sick and dying world.

This is who our God is. In the words of Isaiah, “He tends his flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart; he gently leads those that have young.” Here is our God.

God cares about a broken world. Jesus came into the world to identify with our suffering. If you’re having a blue Christmas look in the manger of Bethlehem. Here is your God who can feel what you feel. Write down whatever it is that’s making your Christmas blue and pray it once again back to God. He knows what you’re feeling and knows how to bring you through this even though it may not feel like.

Dynamic Preaching Sermons, Fourth Quarter 2008, King Duncan, ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., 2008, 0-000-0000-20