John 1:4-5,9-13 Bah! Humbug!

Rev. David Holwick ZP

First Baptist Church

Ledgewood, New Jersey

December 18, 2016

John 1:4-5,9-13

BAH! HUMBUG!

I. Not everyone thinks "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

A. It has become an overwhelming season.

1) How many times have you heard "Jingle Bell Rock" or

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas"?

a) Are you catatonic yet?

b) It begins the week before Thanksgiving so 10% of the

year is filled with this theme.

c) We may end up loving Christmas to death.

2) It is not a specifically Christian focus.

a) Even the Christian radio stations play large numbers

of songs that don't mention Jesus or faith.

b) The key is nostalgia. The website for the Christian

station 99.1 says their songs "remind us of

Christmases from when we were growing up."

B. What makes you grumpy about Christmas?

1) It might be the onerous chores of writing Christmas cards

or the endless gift list.

2) The Holwicks simplified the gift list by using an internet

application called Elfster.

a) You give it your list of family members and it

assigns one of them to you to buy presents for.

1> It also asks each person for their gift preferences.

b) To be extra helpful, it pesters you every day with

suggestions on where you can buy those gifts.

1> What would Christmas be if you didn't try to make a

buck?

C. The negatives of Christmas can cut two ways.

1) They can turn you off to God, or they can make you refocus.

2) We have to figure out what Christmas really means for us.

II. The influence of a short novel.

A. Charles Dickens has had an incredible impact on our Christmas.

1) His 1843 novella "A Christmas Story" transformed the holiday.

2) It popularized the saying "Merry Christmas!"

3) But he also shifted the emphasis of the celebration. [1]

B. Dickens gave Christmas a sentimental, family-oriented focus.

1) Up till then, Christmas had had a church focus.

2) Protestants shunned all the revelry because that was

something Catholics did.

3) Dickens celebrated Christmas as a time of family love.

a) Tiny Tim with his happy family around the dinner table

became the new ideal for the season.

b) But is this what Christmas is all about?

C. He also stressed the importance of social justice and giving.

1) Even in Victorian England, Christmas was commercialized.

a) They pretty much invented Christmas cards and

extensive gift-giving.

b) Industrialization led to greater prosperity for many,

but great poverty for some.

2) Dickens had a special heart for the poor.

a) The way that the left-behinds were treated really

bothered him.

b) It is something he had experienced personally.

The Dickens family was on shaky financial ground from

the beginning.

John Dickens did not have a particularly good head for

numbers or finance, which was rather unfortunate

since he worked as a clerk for the government.

The family moved frequently.

By 1823, things had gotten bad enough that Charles

was forced to withdraw him from school because

his parents could no longer pay the fees.

The following year, 1824, was a nightmare for the whole

Dickens family.

Two days after his twelfth birthday, Charles had to

take a job at a boot polish factory.

That same month, his father was sentenced to prison

for his failure to repay a debt.

The entire family - with the exception of Charles, who

was still working at the factory, and his older

sister Fanny - moved in to John's prison cell. [2]

c) You don't have to be a psychologist to see how deeply

this experience affected Charles Dickens and

influenced his fiction.

1> His portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge undoubtedly

reflects men he actually encountered in life.

2> They valued money but not people. The things that

should be really honored were just "Bah! Humbug!"

to them.

d) One lasting result of Dickens's "A Christmas Story" is

its emphasis on being generous to everyone,

especially the down-and-out.

1> We take it to heart - Roxbury's food pantry is

overflowing this time of year.

2> It is a good thing - but is it the true focus of

Christmas?

D. Dickens's novel is religious in a hidden kind of way.

1) He emphasized family and generosity, but there was more to

Christmas than that.

2) Christian themes are woven throughout the book. [3]

a) Some classify it as an allegory of the Christian concept

of redemption.

b) Dickens's statement that Jacob Marley "had no bowels" is

a reference to the "bowels of compassion" in the King

James version of 1 John 3:17 --

"But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother

have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion

from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

3) The transition from "sinfulness to regret to repentance to

salvation" can be found throughout the novel.

a) It is not in Christian language, but it is there.

b) REDEMPTION is the real meaning of Christmas.

III. Many people miss this deeper meaning of Christmas.

A. Recent broadcast of the radio personality "Delilah."

1) Delilah takes requests and gets callers to share their

personal stories. She is very popular, and a Christian.

2) This one was about a woman who had lost her faith in God.

She said she used to love Christmas and all its traditions.

But one Christmas her father had been rushed to the

hospital due to sudden illness.

He never came home, but died a few months later.

Soon after that, her mother had died.

Christmas no longer had any meaning to her.

3) It caused me to consider what this woman's faith was in.

a) Was it in a holiday and all the family traditions that

surrounded it, or was it in God?

b) It seemed to me that she had been seduced by the message

of Dickens that the holiday is all about family.

1> It is not.

2> Christmas is about God loving us so much he visited

the earth in the form of a baby, to save us.

J. I. Packer wrote in his book "Knowing God,"

"The really staggering Christian claim is that

Jesus of Nazareth was God made man ... and that

he took humanity without loss of deity,

so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully

divine as he was human. ...

Nothing in fiction is so fantastic as is this

truth of the incarnation."

#19535

B. Even the first Christmas was marred by tragedy and turmoil.

1) A young family is shunted off to a stable.

2) They have to become refugees in another country.

3) An evil king slaughters innocent children to protect his

throne.

a) Christmas has always had a hard edge.

b) God was coming to save a broken, sinful world, not a

nice one.

IV. What does Christmas mean to you?

A. Does it have significance beyond your family traditions?

1) Traditions are big in the Holwick household.

a) Celeste makes up stockings for every family member,

and puts together special advent calendar boxes.

1> She starts buying the small candies and trinkets

around April and accumulates bags of stuff.

b) Just this week we made gingerbread cookies with our

grandson Weston.

c) He wasn't very good at it. He stabbed his little

fingers in the dough, and got a 5% hit rate when

he tossed on the sprinkles. But Celeste loved it.

2) Our family traditions are icing on the cake, but not the

cake itself.

a) Our traditions are not our religion.

b) Our religion is faith in Jesus as our Savior.

B. Is this something you believe?

1) Our appreciation of Christmas is deeply determined by our

culture.

a) It bothers me to think of all the people who are stuck

in Florida for Christmas.

b) Lights on palm trees just doesn't cut it. You need

snow on evergreens.

c) This is ironic, because Palestine is loaded with palms

but gets very little snow.

2) If you moved to a non-Christian country with no Christmas

displays, would the holiday still matter to you?

a) Many people feel like Christians only when they are

surrounded by lots of Christians.

3) Experience the reality - know God in a personal way.

a) The first chapter of John tells us most people aren't

going to get it.

b) Only a few will leave the dark to follow the light.

c) Will you be one of them?

V. Go from humbug to hallelujah.

A. Christmas can be more than repetitive music.

1) It is a wonderful time of year to reconnect with God.

2) Tonight, sit by your tree, turn off all the other lights,

and contemplate what God means to you.

3) Hold hands with your family and say a simple prayer.

B. Christmas is all about change.

1) Scrooge went from being a mean tightwad to a happy and

kind man.

a) Love your family because God first loved you.

b) Be generous with others because God has given you

a priceless possession.

2) What could you do with Christ in your life?

a) "God bless us, every one!"

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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:

1. “The Development of the Modern Christmas,” by Lauren Ciriac Wenger;

<link>.

2. "Charles Dickens: Childhood," by the Shmoop Editorial Team, Shmoop

University, Inc., November 11, 2008.

3. Wikipedia, “A Christmas Carol,” <link>.

#19535 “The Really Staggering Christian Claim,” by J. I. Packer, quoted

in "Caught Between ‘Bah, humbug’ and ‘God bless us, everyone’,"

by Lee Eclov, November 16, 2015; <link>.

These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be

downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html

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