Advent 2C December 10, 2006 Best Christmas Ever by Donald Hoffman

Malachi 3:1-4; Luke 3:1-6

• Melody and I recently bought a DVD movie Elf starring Will
  Ferrell as Buddy, a human orphan raised up by elves. Raised WAY up,
  because he towers over Bob Newhart, his adoptive dad. He goes to New
  York by "pass[ing] through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest,
  through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops, and then [walking]
  through the Lincoln Tunnel." People who loved the film and people who
  hated it all had the same reasons: It's sentimental, Will Ferrell is
  overacting, it's your typical Christmas movie. And it's sticky sweet.
  There's one place where Buddy even puts pancake syrup on his
  spaghetti. He says, "We elves try to stick to the four main food
  groups: candy, candy canes, candy corn and syrup."

The problem, of course, with Buddy is that he is a six foot three
inch adult trying to live life as a child. It's okay for little kids
to behave like this. We even WANT them to behave like this, at least
during December. The rest of the year we want even the CHILDREN to
grow up, to take on ... "adult responsibilities." Buddy does what he
wants to, but adults do what they HAVE to. Buddy sees life as gift.
Adults see life as obligation. Buddy thinks everything is free.
Grownups think everything has to be paid for.

Look at Christmas from an adult perspective. Nothing is free.
Everything puts us under obligation. We have to pay, some way, for
everything we get. So after fifteen years of silence, Great Aunt
Maude has finally sent us a fruitcake. We all hate fruitcake, but
that doesn't matter. We have to drive sixty miles to Spokane over the
slick roads, push our way through the mall, buy a vastly overpriced
gift-wrapped box of something useless to send to Great Aunt Maude,
stand in line at the post office, pay too much for postage (because
it's late and we want to make sure it's delivered before Christmas.)
All because we don't want to be in debt. All because we don't want to
be under obligation, having received a gift but never having sent one.

We search madly through piles of paper for the envelope the Joneses
used last year to send us a Christmas card, so we can send THEM one
this year. It doesn't matter that Christmas cards cost more than
they're worth. It doesn't matter that we can hardly remember who the
Joneses were. We've been in debt to the Joneses for a whole year--one
Christmas card--and we have to pay up. Life for a grownup is a life
of obligation, a life of debt, a life of keeping score. We'd like to
get ahead, but we don't dare fall behind. We'll settle ... for
staying even.

That's life for a grownup. That's Christmas for an adult. Keeping
score. Staying even. Paying off debts. No wonder everybody in the
movie resents Buddy. Because he's not keeping score! What he receives
he accepts as a gift. What he gives, he gives freely, without
expecting anything back.

There's another way of keeping score, but Buddy doesn't play that
game either. We can keep score of all the hurts, all the injuries,
all the insults, all the put-downs other people have inflicted on us.
Paying back this kind of debt is called revenge. We need to save
face. We need to show we won't be pushed around. We'd like to get
ahead, but we'll settle for [grating voice] getting even.

This way of keeping score is not just for adults. Kids on the
playground keep this kind of score. This way of keeping score is not
just for individuals. Nations keep this kind of score. One cause of
World War 1 is that France wanted to get even. One cause of World War II
is that Germany wanted to get even.

Now let me ask you a question: What happens if you are really good at
keeping score? What happens if you are really skillful at paying back
the good things others do for you? What happens if you are also
really skillful at paying back all the insults others do to you? What
happens if you don't just stay even, but you get ahead? What happens
if you don't owe anybody, but everybody owes you? What happens if you
rack up ... the highest score every achieved in a human life!?

I'll tell you what happens: you die! You die, and the score counter
resets to zero. It's not like those computer games where your high
score earns an extra life. It's not like the game I told you about
two weeks ago, where you found your place on an honor roll between
Dan Quayle and Abraham Lincoln. You just die, and the counter resets
to zero. All your score-keeping earns you nothing. It doesn't matter
if you score higher than Mother Teresa. It doesn't matter if you
score higher than Saint Nicholas. You    still    die!

So maybe, just maybe, all the cynical adults in the movie are wrong,
and Buddy, the naive, child-like elf is right. Maybe, just maybe, all
the grumpy, sophisticated grownups in your family are wrong, and the
littlest kids, excited out of their minds, are right. Maybe the folks
who claim they are being realistic are not realistic enough. Maybe
they're living in a fantasy. The fantasy of working hard, the fantasy
of taking care of obligations, the fantasy of paying off debts, the
fantasy of getting even.

Because if we're all going to die (and I guarantee it!) then we're
already even, and no matter how hard we strive, we can never get any
more even. There is only one possible way of defeating death: by
accepting life as a gift.

               Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like a child,
               you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

Oh, my! Is that what Jesus was talking about?

And remember how we used to say the Lord's Prayer? "Forgive us our
debts,as we also have forgiven our debtors." Because if we're worried
about staying even, if we're worried about paying off debts, the
biggest debt we'll ever owe is to God, the debt we owe for life itself.

What makes the story of Buddy the elf work is that ... he sees life
as a gift. For people who hate the movie, what makes it so bad is
that ... he sees life as a gift. What makes children so irritating is
that they act like they don't owe you anything for all the wonderful
gifts you give them. Because in grownup life there's no such thing as
a free gift. Every gift has a string attached, with some other adult
on the other end, pulling.

Now I think being Christian means living life as a gift. I think
being Christian means we repent of our score-keeping fantasy and are
forgiven of the greatest debt we could ever owe, forgiven a debt we
could never repay. This repentance isn't easy. It means turning your
mind away from all the score-keeping that adults think is so
important. That's hard. Who could endure it?

"Who can endure the day of his coming?" says the old prophet Malachi,
and we've always assumed it means who can endure the pain, who can
endure the obligation, who can endure it when God knocks a million
points off your score? But what if it means: who can endure the
discovery that all our all our adult score-keeping is just a fantasy?
What if it means who can endure the thought that we've been wrong all
our lives, saying, "You'd better watch out, you'd better not
cry ..."? What if it means, who can endure the thought that God gives
gifts and doesn't try to [grating voice] get even with us?

All this time I've been dancing around a word without saying it, a
Christian word, "Grace." Grace means never having to say you're
sorry. [take-off on another old movie.] Grace means all life is a
free gift. Grace means God isn't keeping score. Grace means God isn't
trying to get even. Grace means WE aren't trying to get even. Grace
means we can stop pretending to be grownups, and change and start
acting like kids.

If you think about it, every one of us is an orphan raised by elves.
Or maybe angels.... If you think about it, every one of us got here
by "pass[ing] through the seven levels of the Candy Cane forest,
through the sea of swirly twirly gum drops." If you think about it
the four Christian food groups are repentance, forgiveness, grace,
and love....

And if you think about it, living life as a gift from God, becoming
like a little child who doesn't need to keep score, all debts
forgiven, all fantasies repented from, ... that ... can make this
Christmas, and every Christmas to come, the Best Christmas Ever.

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Creston, WA, USA