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Home , Boxing Day

TRINITY LUTHERAN CHURCH 1ST SUNDAY OF PASTOR ROB O’BERG 30, 2018

“AN OUTSIDE-THE-BOX CHRISTMAS” MATTHEW 2:13-23

We missed a . In much of the English-speaking world a holiday was observed on and we here this country didn't even look up. Do you know of the holiday I'm talking about? I'm talking about . Boxing Day is a very big day in the and in the Commonwealth countries -- almost like a second Christmas Day.

In the days of castles and lords, the common folk of the castle spent their Christmas serving the master of the house and his family. It was a work day like any other day. Because the servants were kept away from their own families and weren't able to celebrate , it became customary for the Lord and Lady of the castle to give everyone the day after Christmas off. Along with this day off, the master of the house would box up the leftovers from his Christmas Day feast and distributed them to the servants to enjoy the day after -- hence Boxing Day.

Nowadays Boxing Day is observed much like is in this country. Stores open early with great sales. Big soccer matches are played and people generally visit one another and make merry for no other reason than to stretch Christmas out for another 24 hours.

If you think about it, a box is a pretty good symbol for a lot of how Christmas is celebrated. Both Christmas and Boxing Day are very interested in what's inside the box. Why? Because that's where the stuff is! We all opened boxes on Christmas with great excitement, didn't we? Sure, we did! You don’t have to be shy about it! It's part of the fun of Christmas -- giving and getting gifts. Where the problem comes is when Christmas is only about what's in the box.

Today, I want to spend a little time talking about Christmas outside the box...outside any box. Outside the boxes advertising themselves as the true way to celebrate Christmas. Outside the boxes offering themselves as ways to contain and control the spirit of Christmas. Outside the boxes promising things that have nothing to do with ' birthday.

There is nothing about Christmas that can be fit into a small, portable package. The message of Christmas doesn't vanish overnight when the ornaments and are taken down and packed away. In fact, Matthew's description of the days after the first Christmas shows just how out of the box it was for Mary, Joseph and their little boy. Nothing was calm. Nothing was bright.

In a properly packaged Christmas, Jesus would have been born in a safe time and in a safe place. He wasn't. In a properly packaged Christmas, Mary and Joseph wouldn't have needed to spend so much time running for their lives. But they did. In a properly packaged Christmas there wouldn't be any room for a guy like Herod and his murderous schemes. But there was.

In reality there isn't anything about Christmas that is properly packaged. There isn't anything about Christmas that's inside the box. The box of a warm and supportive extended family to surround Mary at the birth of her first child was nowhere in sight. The box of a comfortable home, a bed, familiar things -- that box wasn't an option in the Jesus was born into. The box of a place to call his own, even that was denied Jesus.

When he grows up, Jesus describes his out-of-the-box existence when he says: Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head [Matthew 8:20].

The circumstances surrounding Jesus' birth are way out of the box and Jesus' later life is out-of-the-box too. Jesus spends his entire ministry living outside the box and it makes him an outsider to acceptability. He's an outsider because he identifies with outsiders -- the poor, the sick, the thrown away, the hated, the feared... he unacceptable. And this is what keeps Jesus well outside the box.

Guess what? Jesus wants you to keep outside the box as well! Jesus wants you to live an outside the box existence. And the reason for that is his story and our story are part of the same story. So, to keep Christmas an out of the box story we have to be out-of- the-box people. So, what do you think? Are you up to keeping the Christmas story and yourself out of the box?

So, what boxes am I talking about? Well, there is the storage box. Can you keep Christmas outside the storage box where so many believe it can be unpacked and repacked like a winter wardrobe? The first Christmas -- the real Christmas -- wasn't an event in time that we've been getting farther and farther away from with the passage of years. Christmas is the beginning of a journey whose ending is still in the future. Jesus began the journey that night in Bethlehem we sing about this time of year. You began the journey the day you were baptized.

So, Christmas isn't something that can be hung out for a month and then be put away. Christmas isn't confined to the time between and when the after- Christmas sales end. For that matter, Christmas really isn't even a season. Christmas is a promise. Christmas is an offer of a better way to act and to think and to believe. Christmas is a direction to live towards. That's Christmas outside the box.

There are other boxes to keep clear of -- boxes we need to keep ourselves out of. One of them we might call the mailbox. The mailbox is that place in your spirit other people send messages of their expectations of you. This mailbox is always there, but for a lot of people it's especially full around Christmas time.

Christmas is when we tend to get very traditional. We expect that Christmas this year will be like last year. We expect that certain rituals will be observed and things will be done in a certain way. People feel a lot of pressure about that at this time of year whether it's generated from other people or from within.

You all know about the ongoing battle between the "Merry Christmas" and "Happy Holidays" camps. I don't want to get into a big discussion about political correctness this morning but I do think things like this illustrate how powerful expectations can be. Turmoil and conflict are available wherever you want to find them—even in how you greet people in December! The question is: How do you allow the opinions of others to affect you?

Some people live by the expectations of others. Some people define their whole lives within the boundaries other people give them. That isn't a very authentic way to live but it is a safe one. Jesus worried only about the expectation of one person. He was only concerned about the expectations of God. Let me ask you this: if you reoriented your life right now to take account only of the expectations of God, would you have to change some things? I think we all would.

I'm not saying to ignore the expectations of everybody around you. But what I am saying is living outside the box means resisting the inclination to re-create ourselves in the image others prefer for us and expect from us. It means placing the highest priority on living into the image God has given us in his Son. And making his expectations the marching orders of our lives.

I sometimes think about what a great life Jesus could've had if he'd just lived up to other people's expectations of him. He would have been a renowned rabbi. A famous worker of wonders. A preeminent teacher. He just couldn't have been our Savior. He couldn't have been what God expected of him. What God has created you for is important to the world. What he expects from you is important. Living that out is living outside the box.

There are lots of other boxes that it's so easy for us to find ourselves trapped in…or on, for that matter. I'm thinking about how easy it is to get trapped on our own soap box arguing our positions so enthusiastically that we can't hear what God's position might be.

Then there is the Xbox. I don't know if you've ever played on one of those but they offer a fantasy world that is strangely compelling. You can drive rocket cars off cliffs and survive. You can go to war and get killed a dozen times and just keep hopping back up on your feet.

You can fly planes through time warps, battle evil wizards, para-glide onto magic islands to engage in combat and ride dinosaurs. About ten years ago now a 30-year-old man in China had died after playing an Xbox game for three days straight. They say he died of exhaustion!

What's the lure? I think the lure is the fantasy and fiction that these games offer. They are conspicuously not reality. But every so often reality needs to be confronted. Reality needs to be seen and known and challenged. And God expects that kind of activity from his church just as he sent Jesus to do the very same thing so long ago. And that story began with Christmas -- a Christmas outside the box.

Christmas will never fit inside a box. And neither will you as you live out the life God has given you. He sent Christ at Christmas to bring Good News to the world. And now he’s sending you to bring the same good news to a world where people feel boxed in and boxed out and boxed up and boxed around. No, it's not easy. And yes, sometimes it can be messy. But that's the way God designed it. All the real stuff happens outside the box.