12/19/99, Crestwood United Church of Christ  

Marcia Sietstra:  Pastor

Children under middle school age were out of the sanctuary during this sermon, participating in a special Christmas activity.  This sermon was inspired by, and borrows heavily from,  Bishop John Shelby Spong’s book The Bishop’s Voice (see footnote).  

Probably the most famous of all editorials was written in response to a letter from an 8 year old girl.  Little Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the editor of the New York Sun in December of 1897.  Her letter said:  "Dear Editor, I am 8 years old.  Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.  Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.’  Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?  [Signed] Virginia O’Hanlon, 115 W. 95th St."  

I was probably about 8 when I began to wonder how a sleigh could be big enough to carry enough toys for all the children in my school, let alone the whole world.  How could Santa, even using magic to get up and down chimneys, possibly make it around the world in one night?  There comes a time when all of us question Santa’s ability to answer every letter, to make all those toys, and to know whether each child has been naughty or nice.  It finally overwhelms credibility, and the literal  Santa story has to change.  

But the New York Sun editor who responded to Virginia’s letter was wise enough to write this reply:

"Virginia, your little friends are wrong.  They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age.  They do not believe except they see.  They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.  All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. [I notice he didn’t mention women’s minds. Probably just an oversight!]  In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.  He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.  Alas!  How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus." 

  I will not take time to read the entire letter, but here is how it ends:

"There is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.  Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.  Is it all real?  Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else more real and abiding.  No Santa Claus!  Thank God!  He lives and lives forever.  A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood."[1] And that is how the editor’s letter ends.  

I imagine that when little Virginia grew up, her idea of Santa matured and changed, until she too knew that when we talk of a bearded, red-suited, jolly old man named Santa, our words point to a presence, a spirit that resides in people who act as Santas by giving happily and generously and widely at Christmas.  

I used to confuse Santa with God. I suspect I’m not the only one here who prayed to Santa as a kid, and I remember very clearly wondering if God was the one really putting those presents under the tree.  God, I reasoned, could do miracles, so presents delivered all around the world in one night would be no problem.  I knew God was "making a list and checking it twice" looking for "who’s naughty and nice," just like Santa.  I often prayed as a child in a way similar to a Dear Santa letter, asking for things I wanted.  I was also not above reminding God of how good I had been when I asked for things.  God was regularly portrayed to me during my childhood as a year-round Santa who rewards good behavior, and punishes bad behavior!  I saw heaven as the ultimate reward for good behavior, and hell as the extreme version of coal in my stocking if I was bad.   

The similarities don’t end there.  Sometime in my late childhood I dismissed the literalized myth of Santa Claus, when I realized the story was no longer credible.  And sometime in my early adulthood I  dismissed the view of God that I had as a child because it was no longer credible.  My experience of the world convinced me that God didn’t act like a heavenly Santa. And so, like many people, I decided God was simply no longer credible.   

Obviously, I’ve changed my mind about God since then!  I was able to find a more mature belief in a God who does not act like a heavenly Santa.  But it seems to me that many, many people today reject God, because they have not been given an opportunity to question traditional views of God which they may have been taught.  When their consciousness can no longer accept their childhood view of God, they decide there is no God at all for them.  It’s a little like saying, if there is no literal Santa Claus, there can be no Christmas at all.  And of course, we know that’s not true!  

Let me give you an example.  A college student once told me that Christmas carols and the Christmas Eve service just didn’t make her feel as good as they once had, because she didn’t believe anymore in a virgin birth or angels appearing on a hillside, singing to shepherds, presumably in Hebrew.  In fact, she had abandoned Christianity because she could not accept these 1st century symbols of divine birth.  She could no longer believe in all the details of the story, but she missed the feelings it had aroused in her as a child.  

  I asked her if she believed that Jesus spoke words of incredible insight and wisdom.  She said, yes.  I asked her if she believed Jesus revealed to people the joy of forgiveness, the power of love given without thought of reward, the hope of peace in the midst of life.  Again, she agreed.  We talked about how Jesus affected people in such profound ways that they began to view him as a source of fullness in their lives...how the 1st century followers come to believe that power such as his must have a divine source. Jesus, in choosing to die rather than recant his message of love, inspired them to believe that love could embrace all the hostilities of human life and still not cease loving.  No wonder people were so touched by his life that they came to believe he was connected to God in a way unlike anyone else.  All of this made sense to the student.  

Finally, I suggested to her that she need not  reject Jesus or the message he gave us, just because she couldn’t accept some of the stories that people developed about his birth.  They were trying to illustrate what they believed-- that he was somehow divine, i.e. that the source of his Wisdom was God.  

The 1st century Christians found ways to speak of this divinity by talking of a virgin birth, angelic choruses, a star in the sky above a humble stable.  In that time, such miracles and celestial manifestations were thought to accompany the births of great people, and surely such a one as Jesus.  I suggested to her that she did not have to believe in these things in order to believe in Jesus and in the God he revealed.  There is room in Christianity for those who do believe in the details of the traditional Christmas story; there is also room in Christianity for those of you who cannot believe the details of the Christmas story but who do trust in Jesus.

 Perhaps some of you can identify with this student’s situation if you have ever had to change or adjust your view of God.  I certainly had to change my view of God as I grew up. Many of you know that when I was a child, a lot of people in my family died.  I found that when I prayed for people in my life to live, they died anyway.  I discovered that God doesn’t always give us what we ask for, even when we are doing our best to be good. I could no longer see God as a heavenly   Santa, who would give me what I asked for if I was good.  And so I had to come of age in my understanding of God; I had to make a paradigm shift.  I had to change my understanding of who God is.  

That student who believed in the validity of Jesus and his message, but had trouble believing in miraculous birth and other details of the Jesus story-- she also had to make a paradigm shift, only for her it was a shift in her understanding of the symbols in the Christmas story.  She thought it meant giving up Jesus; it didn’t, no more than my letting go of my childhood view of God meant I had to give up God altogether!  

In the mainline Christian denominations we are experiencing radical religious change.  People are struggling to think of God in 20th century terms, in ways that acknowlege what we know of the universe. For example, most of us no longer think of God as habitating a space above the world, a heaven above the skies, as early Christians did; we’ve been to space and back and so we expand our view of where God is, and where a heavenly existence may be. We will continue to mature in our understanding of God, I think.  Paul said we see God only through a glass darkly.  And we need to admit, in every age, that the content we attribute to God is always limited by our inability to completely understand the divine.  A god who the human mind  could completely understand and describe would not be big enough to be God, who is, by definition, beyond us and beyond our meager attempts to define. 

Episcopal Bishop John Spong writes this in his latest book, The Bishop’s Voice:  "Santa Claus stands for the spirit of Christmas that finds its greatest pleasure in giving rather than receiving.  It is a spirit that binds the human family together on at least that one day of the year, a spirit so powerful that even opposing armies in the field have been known to suspend hostilities on December 25.  In like manner the word "God" stands for an ultimate truth that drives us beyond our symbols to the edges of our imagination.  The word "God" stands for the power of love that lifts us out of our self-imposed prisons and shows us what human life can ultimately be.  It points to the source of life that challenges us to walk beyond every human limitation into a reality deeper and richer than our [literal] minds can contemplate. 

 Yes Virginia, there is a God.  But God is not the man upstairs who pulls strings, sends sickness, or rescues the good while punishing the evil.  God is the symbol for our deepest human yearning.  The Christian life is [at one and the same time] a journey into this God [and a journey into the depths of our humanity.]  Because our journey begins inside a Christian context, our guide for this journey is the one we call the Christ, in whose total humanity the divine and holy God was believed to be revealed."[2]

Each Christmas a new group of children move from fantasy to reality in their understanding of Santa Claus.  In our century in particular a whole generation of adults are moving in their understanding of God.  We, as members of the church, should not insist that their views be identical to ours; that would be impossible in the UCC anyway, because of the diversity of thinking in our denomination.  We, as the church, can learn with them how to walk into the depths of our religious symbols and develop the ability to see the spirit rather than the letter of the word. 

The future of the church depends on our ability to expand our concept of God so that it incorporates what we know of life in a meaningful way.  And yet, what we say about God will always be a frail, human construct, a symbol, a faith story that drives us beyond the limits of words toward a presence to which our words can only point. 

 Those symbols are perhaps at no time more meaningful to us than at Christmas.  We journey inwardly until we discover Bethlehem, where Christ can be born is us; we listen to the angels sing "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill to all" when we find peace at last in our own faith.  We see the star when we live life in such a way that we can be a little light in someone’s world, showing them that in Christ God can still be met.  [3]Amen.

Offertory Sentence:

We make elaborate preparations for Christmas.  Most of the preparation needs to happen within us.  As we think about the hope that is ours because of Jesus’ birth, may we be moved to generously give our gifts in support of all God’s children, and also as a symbol of our commitment to God and one another.  The ushers will now receive the morning offering.

Pastoral Prayer:

Come, Emmanuel, for it is you who causes us to sing

with the angelic chorus, "Glory to God in the highest."

Come, God-with-us, and dwell with us,

Make us your people indeed,

the people through whom you bring love and justice to the world.

Come, and make your presence known

in the midst of illness, sadness, individual needs,

That we might be strengthened by the confidence that you are with us

In our daily lives,

caring, guiding, loving us into your peace.

Come, Jesus, and claim your rightful place in our hearts

and in the midst of our community.

Plant the seeds of hope among us.

Establish God’s will on earth.

For we pray as you taught us:

Our Father who art in heaven..."

Benediction:

And now may God, who by Jesus’ birth, gathers into one things ordinary and holy, bless us all as we go from this place into our ordinary lives made full by God’s holy grace.  Amen.  

  FOR  PARENTS:  

Today during the sermon, Pastor Marcia will refer several times to a popular mythical character associated with Christmas, the initials of whom are S.C.  She will mention that some people believe that S.C. exists as a spirit rather than in a literal sense.

Children will be given the opportunity to leave just before the adult sermon begins, to go into the Fireside Room for a Christmas video, so they will not hear the adult sermon.  This is to insure that the literal existence of S.C. is not questioned in the presence of those for whom it is still very important! 

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[1] Internet Site http://usnewspapers.about.com/medianews/usnewspapers/blxmas.htm

[2] John Shelby Spong, The Bishop’s Voice (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Co., 1999), p.211.

[3] Ibid, p. 211, paraphrase.