December 4, 2006

GREETING CARDS

Jeremiah 33: 14-16; 1 Thessalonians 3: 9-13

            Hallmark, the world’s leading greeting card manufacturer, wraps up its mission statement with the familiar phrase when you care enough to send the best.  There are many ways to express the message of Advent.  We’ll mail packages of goodies, or plan trips to be with loved ones, or give fruit baskets to the needy.  Somehow many of us do find a way to give witness to God’s love and grace.

            However if we had to choose one medium through which people have tried to convey love during this season look no further than a Christmas card.  And that’s good news for the greeting card industry.  Sales from greeting cards average 6 billion dollars annually with Advent and Christmas being the most popular holidays.

            From Thanksgiving Day on, the greeting card aisles at any retailer are jammed, whether it’s serious religious themes or just plain silly cards, we all try to find the perfect card that puts into words what we cannot say ourselves.  The plethora of holiday greeting card choices is a sign that we are still trying to get at the heart of what psychiatrist and psycho therapist Viktor Frankl called our search for meaning. 

            This is what the apostle Paul does when he pens his own greeting card message.  In fact, his words are intended to reach his readers and listeners innermost core of being, their hearts and souls.  He cuts to the chase, now we can give thanks to our God for you.  That’s on the face of Paul’s card, open it up and he continues, we thank him for the joy we have in his presence in your faith.  May our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus prepare the way for us to come to you.  May the Lord make your love for one another and for all people grow more and more and become as great as our love for you.  In this way he will strengthen you.

            This is indeed Hallmark worthy, it’s like a wonderful Christmas letter stuffed inside a card.  Paul’s vision is seasoned with hope, that he and his company will visit the faithful in Thessalonica.  But Paul’s hope and Paul’s faith are not just words on a page, it is a living vision and a living hope and a living faith.

            Paul’s life and his words offer encouragement in the midst of hardship, and his friends in Thessalonica appreciate it.  This is the same encouragement people need today in the midst of hardship. We have to remember that the Christmas season is a holy season, that it has substance, worth and character.  Our culture has a consumerist love affair with Christmas, but this is at the expense of its true meaning.

            Advent is a time to recover the theology of the incarnation.  The emphasis on family, fuzzy feelings, caroling, presents and chocolate are all good, but a strong emphasis on the theology of Advent can help people to rediscover that the Christmas season, at the heart of it, is so much more than just a cultural celebration of the birth of Christ.

            Too many times Christmas exhausts us and can even depress us, days that should be full of energy and joy and thankfulness are instead empty.  My grandfather growing up couldn’t wait to take down the Christmas tree.  My birthday December 30 was the end of the Christmas season for him.  How many of us today sigh in relief after Christmas.

            The holidays need to be viewed and experienced as holy days, the need to help people to savor the savior’s presence in this world.  We need to focus on a ministry of presence rather than a ministry of presents.

            Advent should be a hallowed time.  These are the days to bring to folks the God whose child was born to live, days to give hope for a future that rests in God, a future whose seeds are planted in the present situations of everyday life.  The holy days of Advent leading to Christmas are days to run to church and sing the great hymns and carols proclaiming the God who lives in our now’s and who invites all people to live in them fully and authentically.

            This is what Paul meant when he said, “we thank God for the joy we have in his presence because of you”.  The key word in Paul’s greeting is presence, God always lives in the present, God is here, and God lives in the present situation of all people.  When people refuse to or neglect to find God in their present, in the now, these days become hollow days.  That’s why Paul cared enough to send the very best greeting card he could.

            Today we need to do something, if the church isn’t careful, it to will fall prey to a cultural effect of hyper-commercialism.  There are a lot of folks who experience the tinsel and tapestries of Christmas without ever being inspired to actually change anything about their lives.  All Christians are going to need to do their part this ear and every year.

            The spiritually sound thing that the church can do is reach out this Advent and Christmas to the lost, the vulnerable, the needy and the forgotten with whom we live each and every day.  And it has to be done genuinely and with conviction.  The best greeting is one that finds people where they are in life, not where we think they ought to be.  The best greeting for Christians is one that reflects the very life of the Christ of Christmas, the living Christ in the greeter’s life.  It may sound somewhat trite, silly or even novel, but the best way Christians can reach out to all people this Christmas is to be real-live greeting cards.

            Wherever believers go this season, they (we) are the live greeting cards God sends to all people.  Jesus, the reason for this season, was God’s ultimate, consummate greeting to the world that can set into motion a living, thriving industry of God’s love and grace.  This industry, read church here, has flourished and has no boundaries in terms of its value and purpose.

            Living greeting cards express to people who feel alone that they are not alone.  Living greeting cards show people that they are loved.  Living greeting cards work to release people from oppression and injustice in an unjust and oppressive world.  Living greeting cards bring strength and encouragement to the weak and discouraged. 

            Care enough to send the very best this Advent and Christmas season.  Send yourself, be God’s living greeting card this season.

            Amen.

            Let us pray.