Christmas Eve 2003             The Tale of the Pointless People

Rev. Roger N. Haugen

 

Chapter 1 is a short story entitled “Snakes” by Ann Herbert.[i] 

In the beginning, God didn’t make just two people; God made a bunch of us.  God wanted us to have a lot of fun and said you can’t really unless there is a whole gang of you.  God put us in Eden, which was a combination garden and playground and park, and told us to have fun.

 

At first we did have fun, just like God expected.  We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, climbed on the trees, swung on the vines, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest and acted silly.  We laughed a lot.

 

Then one day this snake told us that we weren’t having real fun because we weren’t keeping score.  Back then, we didn’t know what score was.  When he explained it, we still couldn’t see the fun.  But he said we should give an apple to the person who was the best at all the games and we’d never know who was best without keeping score.  We could all see the fun of that, of course, because we were all sure we were the best.

 

It was different after that.  We yelled a lot.  We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games.  Others, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score.

By the time God found out what had happened, we were spending about 45 minutes a day actually playing and the rest of the time working out scoring.  God was wroth about that – very, very wroth.  God said we couldn’t use the garden anymore because we weren’t having fun.  We told God we were having lots of fun.  God was just being narrow minded because it wasn’t exactly the kind of fun God originally thought of.

 

God wouldn’t listen.  God kicked us out, and God said we couldn’t come back until we stopped keeping score.  To rub it in (to get our attention), God told us we were all going to die and our scores wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

 

God was wrong.  My cumulative score now is 16,548 and that means a lot to me.  If I can raise it to 20,000 before I die, I’ll know I’ve accomplished something.  Even if I can’t, my life has a great deal of meaning because I’ve taught my children to score high and they’ll be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000.

 

Really, it was life in the garden that didn’t mean anything.  Fun is great in its place, but without scoring, there is no reason for it.  God actually has a very superficial view of life and I am certainly glad my children are being raised away from God’s influence.  We were lucky.  We’re very grateful to the snake.

 

Chapter 2[ii]  Barbara Lundblad continues the tale:

God kept trying to find us and to slow us down. God kept saying things like "Remember, remember the strangers. Remember the widows and orphans. Remember when you cut your fields to leave some at the edges, to leave some for the sojourner in your land." That was no way to get ahead.

And so we perfected our score-keeping with a vengeance. God told us there were only two things we really needed to remember. God said, "Love me and love your neighbor." But we said who can play a game with only two rules? So we wrote pages and pages and pages and pages of rules, and pages more!

"Remember the Sabbath," God said. We didn’t have time to rest. We had to keep score, we had to keep racking up the points. I wanted my children to get far better than my cumulative lifetime score of 12, 263.

God didn’t understand that kind of game at all.

God gave us such little tiny words. "A shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse." What sort of word is that -- a "shoot"? "A little child shall lead them." Is that any help?

And then an ordinary fellow appeared from Nazareth -- we said to ourselves, did any winner ever come from Nazareth? God breathed on him in some particular way so that when he stood up in his hometown synagogue, he read the word from Isaiah as though it was about him! "The Spirit of God has anointed me, " he said. And then do you know what he did? Do you know what he did?? He went up to people like fishermen and whispered in their ear, "You don’t need points!" And then he sat down beside a Samaritan woman at the well and told her everything about her loser sort of life and said, "You don’t need points either!" Then he sat down with Nicodemus, a teacher of the Law, and said to him, "You don't need points, Nicodemus." To Mary and Martha, to Mary Magdalene, to all of them he said, "You don’t need points!" And those who gathered around him, listening to what he said about the kingdom of God being in the midst of them, soon looked at each other and him and said, "This kingdom is pointless!"

Well, he didn’t say a thing except to smile. They had pointless banquets where the guest lists were thrown away. They had pointless picnics on the hillside where everyone got plenty to eat, and there was still some left over. They even had a pointless parade into the city with children leading the way and people waving palms instead of swords. How pointless is that??

Dan Erlander finishes the chapter[iii].  All the people who were in charge of the scorekeeping were threatened.  They arrested Emmanuel and killed him.  Emmanuel’s followers wept.  They said, “There is only one thing to do now.  Go back to keeping score.  It was too good to be true.”  They laid him in a borrowed tomb.

God said, “The scorekeepers think things have gone back to normal.  Ha!”  Then God called Emmanuel in the tomb, “Get up, Emmanuel!  Get up, Emmanuel!”  and Emmanuel got up.  He met his friends and said, “Let’s get on with the parties!”  They joined hands and the dance went on.  Then Emmanuel breathed on them and they received power to carry on the parties and to carry his yoke – the yoke of caring for the each other, caring for the world – and getting in trouble with the scorekeepers.  Emmanuel departed, but before he left, he whispered, “Remember, the snake was wrong.”

Chapter 3 continues in North Battleford, a pointless sort of place:

The pointless people of 2003 looked around and saw lots of people keeping score in great frenzy.  They pushed and shoved in the malls wanting to get to the best deals before anyone else.  They had their lists of people who had given them gifts last year so they would not forget anyone and be sure to get them something better this year to raise their point total.  They had their list of who sent them cards last year because to forget to send a card would give points to the other, and no one wanted that.

The pointless people said, “This is all so pointless!” and they gathered with other pointless people in nativity pageants and became shepherds, wisemen and angels alongside children.  And they gathered on Christmas Eve to frolick, to laugh and to celebrate.  Tonight, all over the world, and in North Battleford, pointless people gather to sing carols, to light candles and smile at the other pointless people, knowing that Emmanuel, God with us, has come again, whispering in our ears that, “The snake is wrong!”  So the pointless people gather to light candles and delight in the candle-light, to delight in the wonder of children and rekindle the dim memory of what it felt like to frolick and play for the simple pleasure of it.

For one evening we remember what it was like not to keep score, we throw away our score cards and sing as we have never sung again because Emmanuel has whispered in our ears once again, “You don’t need points!  It’s not what you gain, its what you are.  You don’t need points!”  So the pointless people remember that they are baptized and can gather with others who are children of God, forget about keeping score and frolick and play, sing and dance, celebrating the one who came and comes again, Emmanuel, God with us.

Once again the pointless people remember their task, to frolick and play and to go into the world to whisper in peoples’ ears, “The scorekeeper is wrong, you don’t need points.”

Tonight the snake is very sad.  The scorekeepers in Iraq and Afghanistan, Israel and Palestine, Canada and the U.S. hoard their score piles.  But all over the world the party of the pointless people continues celebrating that the snake was wrong.  Tonight the snake is very sad indeed.