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What’s So Great About Christmas?
Luke 2:8-20

     Edna Hong wrote a book called “Bright Valley of Love.”  It’s the story of a boy named Gunther who was born at the end of WW I.  His dad was still away in the service at the time and his young mama couldn’t cope with her little boy, who was deformed and suffering from a severe case of rickets.  Grandma grudgingly took in Gunther, but she was a hard-hearted woman.  She made the child stay alone in a small room much of the day; she rarely spoke to him, and never came to comfort him when he cried.  At age six, Gunther couldn’t talk and his deformity had increased in severity so he couldn’t walk. 
      When his dad got out of the service he came home, got divorced, and soon re-married. His new wife refused to have anything to do with Gunther, who was non-verbal and in a wheelchair.  Gunther’s dad felt the best option for his son was to have him institutionalized at Bethel, a Christian home for epileptics and physically and mentally challenged youth. 
      With the loving care of the staff, Gunther was nurtured for the first time in his life.  He was put in a classroom and came alive.  He learned how to vocalize sounds, then words, and in time he could talk.  His world opened up; he could express his needs and wants and socialize for the first time in his life.  He was often smiling and laughing with others.      
      Gunther also had a special roommate, a man named Kurt who had epilepsy.  They got along well and learned a lot from each other.  One night before they feel asleep, Kurt told Gunther the Christmas story.  It was by far the most marvelous story Gunther had ever heard.  He hardly slept that night as he thought about a loving Father.  He was generous too, since He let His Son Jesus spend time on earth.  Gunther was especially happy to know Jesus had a gentle mother and a kind father.  Though he didn’t have that sort of family, he did have Kurt.  He also had all the staff at Bethel, they also made him feel like part of a family.      
      One cold December day Kurt sat near Gunther and explained that his illness was getting worse, and he’d probably be going to see God in heaven before Christmas came.  Gunther was terribly upset; alone in his room, he cried until he fell asleep, exhausted.  The next day Gunther kept to himself, not wanting to talk to anyone.  That evening Gunther was ready - it was a hard but good talk.  Kurt said God would make him whole in heaven, and he would be happier than happy there.  Gunther listened, and as the days passed, he loved his friend to the very end.  In the middle of December, just as Kurt predicted, he went to heaven.  
       That Sunday, as the children and staff gathered for their weekly church service in the chapel, it was Gunther’s turn to help light the Advent candle of Love.  The children quietly sang a carol and watched as Gunther went in his wheelchair, took the small lighted white candle, and reached up to light the candles in the wreath.  When he reached the fourth candle, symbolizing love, suddenly Gunther stopped.  He stared at the small white candle in his frail hand, then threw it on the stone floor. The children stopped singing the carol.  Everyone was startled when Gunther cried out in anguish, “There’s a crack, there is a crack in everything.” 
     The pastor picked up the broken white candle by his feet and slowly walked toward Gunther, whose head hung low.  When he looked up, he quietly said, “There’s a crack in everything!  What is so great about Christmas?”  Everyone’s heart ached with and for Gunther in his pain.  The pastor turned to the children and said “Gunther needs to know what’s so great about Christmas.  Will you help me tell him?”  A variety of answers were given, each simple and true.  The last one came from a five-year-old who said Christmas was about, “God sending his Son Jesus, to be OUR Savior.”  When the pastor asked why God did this, the young boy said: “We gotta have a Savior because everything has a crack.”
      I think that’s true. Haven’t we all been terribly hurt?  No one gets through life unscathed. Sometimes our own wrong choices leave their mark.  Or other people wound us deeply.  Circumstances beyond our control can traumatize us.  The result is that we, and everyone else on this planet, get “cracks” in us.  In Gunther’s case, it was the wrenching loss of his friend Kurt.  A pain went through him when he saw the cracked candle in his hand - he got mad because it too was broken. In that moment he despaired, seeing cracks in everything.          
       In that moment of clarity, Gunther was looking at our world in the same way God was before Bethlehem.  God grieved to see cracks in His people generation after generation.  That brokenness, the sin in our world, is why He sent his Son.  We all need more than a bit of patching that just covers what’s on the outside and doesn’t last.  Jesus came to make all things new! 
     That’s the answer to Gunther’s question, “What’s so great about Christmas?”  Our Savior was born - all power belongs to Him in heaven and on earth.  His mission to conquer sin was completed on the cross.  And the colossal crack we call death was conquered on Easter morning.  Since then, every pain-filled cry coming from someone like Gunther can be comforted with the Good News, first announced by shepherds watching their flocks by night.           
      Do you realize that the first ones to give a gift on that first Christmas morning were shepherds?  They banged on doors and shouted the Good News of the angels, saying: “I bring you good news of a great joy which shall come to all the people.  For to you is born this day in the town of David... a Savior, Who is Christ, the Messiah, the Lord!” (Luke 2:11)
      The great and unforgettable gift those shepherds received and passed on didn’t come wrapped in red and green paper, nor was it hid beneath a fir tree, but it was the most satisfying gift ever. In typical Christmas plays you don’t usually see a scene where the shepherds in their makeshift belted robes get to knock loudly on doors, shout and carry on exuberantly as they share the Good News in the city streets.  If there was such a loud and boisterous scene, I think we’d get lots of volunteers to play those parts.  Do you have kids who would or could have played that sort of shepherd’s role?  
       There is more than meets the eye when it comes to the shepherds who lived in first-century Palestine.  For years, have you gently placed clean, youthful, mild-looking shepherds around your crèches at home and in church?  Well, truth be told they weren’t generally a very respectable bunch. 
      Being a shepherd was not seen as an honorable job.  Young Jewish men were warned by their local rabbis to avoid six particular professions.  A few on the prohibited list you can probably guess, but being a shepherd was on their list of forbidden occupations.
       For example, no respectable Pharisee would consider doing business with a shepherd!  When they had to buy wool or milk, they would go to a middleman, but never set foot near a shepherd themselves. 
       Shepherds were so looked down on that they weren’t allowed to give testimony in court.  Nor were they were permitted to enter places of worship like the temple in Jerusalem or their local synagogues. Doesn’t this make you wonder, why not?
     There were some good reasons why people believed these things.  First, shepherds were constantly walking among the droppings of the sheep, and that made them ritually unclean.  That then prevented them from being with their families, among other things. 
      Second, as shepherds moved their sheep throughout the countryside looking for good pastureland, they didn’t really pay attention to property lines.  In other words, they were constantly trespassing!  That sort of disrespect did not make them popular in the land. 
       Then there’s what many would call their side occupation. Since shepherds traveled a lot, and met up with all sorts of characters, they found it worth their while to do some underground networking.  To put it plainly, if someone needed something from the black market, they generally went looking for the nearest shepherd. 
       With this new knowledge, can you see why the locals living near the inn in Bethlehem wouldn’t want shepherds in their neighborhood, for any reason?  Nobody around really liked shepherds.  They were often dirty from their labors.  Their word couldn’t be trusted in the courts, and they kept the black market going strong.  It was commonly believed shepherds did a good deal of stealing, to make sure enough product was available.  If Willie Nelson had lived in that time, he might have re-written his song: “Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be shepherds, let them be farmers and Pharisees and such.”      
       But God, in his unsurpassable wisdom, decided to send his best angelic choir out to the night skies to sing the Hallelujah Chorus to those shepherds.  Why would God do such a thing?  Isn’t it strange that God gave this wondrous Christmas gift to society’s nobodies? There were many devout believers who yearned for that divine revelation, praying and watching for it.    
       What this reveals is that God’s ways are not our ways.  His Christmas list is generous. He wants to bring joy and salvation to more than those select few who seem “nice and decent” - the least and the lowest matter a great deal.    
       The shepherds proclaim the same message every year for Christmas: “For unto us is born a Savior, who is Christ, the Messiah!” Jesus came to see first-hand all the cracks in our lives and our world.  He hears our pain-filled cries, and those of little boys like Gunther too.  He came to tell us we needn’t stay in that place.  When Jesus enters your heart, you aren’t just patched up- God makes you brand new! 
      A Christmas card I received says this well:
Teachers can point us to knowledge, doctors to medicine,
theologians to religion, and philosophers to viewpoints.
But God points us to Jesus - because all that He is and all that we need
are found in the person of His Son!   

     If someone asks you, “What’s so great about Christmas?”, I hope you’ll tell them how much God loves people who are often seen as the lowest and least. Tell them Gunther’s story: how he came alive with nurturing and friendships, but when a loss crushed him, it put a crack in his heart.  Tell them Jesus’s love changed his life.  What is so great about Christmas is LOVE.  God’s love, bundled up in His infant Son, is the best gift ever!

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