(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “In-Between”, originally shared on December 27, 2023. It was the 291st video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
We are now
in-between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Christians live in-between lives
in many ways, and in some ways we do not. Today, we’re going to find out what
they are.
Today is the third day after last Sunday’s Christmas Eve. It’s also the third
day of the 12 days of the Christmas season that lasts until January 6th. It’s
also the fourth day before next Sunday’s New Year’s Eve, the second Sunday in a
row in which we will celebrate a major evening holiday in addition to morning
worship. Today, we’re going to find out what all those numbers mean.
We celebrated Christmas Day two days ago. For an
increasing number of people in our world, that’s it. Christmas is over. The
presents are opened and put away. The tree already seems a little out of place,
and it will be gone by the end of New Year’s Day, if not sooner.
Even for some Christians Christmas ended on
Christmas Eve. “We didn’t have a
Christmas Day worship service because, well, it’s a lot of work and we weren’t
sure people would come for a Sunday morning worship service as well as a
Christmas Eve service, much less a Christmas Day service, and people have out
of town family and guests to take care of, and we need to put stuff away when
we have people to do it, or we don’t care about Church seasons”, and so on.
Christmas is over, for others, when the
season of commercial preparations for parties and presents ends, and then when
it’s done, it’s really done.
In fact, some businesses and TV programs
marked the 12 days of Christmas as a countdown to Christmas. So, when
they’re over, they’re really over.
The Christian Church, however, starts
the Christmas season on Christmas Eve and celebrates it for 12 whole days,
until January 6th, the Day of The Epiphany of Our Lord, as in the song “The
Twelve Days of Christmas”!
So, now we have Christmas pretty much all to
ourselves and those with whom we share it.
There’s no more holiday stress. The long
nightmare of expectations and over-indulgence is over.
Now comes the Christmas blessing and we open
our hearts to receive it for 12 whole days.
BTW, the cost of the 12 gifts listed in the
song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” went up 2.65%
this year to $45,523, according to PNC Bank! Or, if you bought them online, $52,024.
Or, if you bought the items
over and over each day as the song suggests (that's 364 total gifts) they
will cost you over $200,167!
You
know, those exotic pets like turtle doves, geese, and French hens are
expensive, increasing the most, largely because of increased labor and food
costs. 😊
So, barring that
expense, continue to have a Merry Christmas for 12 days and don’t be embarrassed
for celebrating Christmas as a Christian. Be counter-cultural. Don’t take down
your Christmas tree, your lights, or your decorations. Leave them up until January
6th, and be a witness when you are asked why, or when you get funny
looks. 😊 As Jesus said, in Matthew
5:14-15,
14 “You
are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15 No
one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the
lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
Be bearers of that light.
John describes it in terms of the birth of
Jesus, in the Gospel of John which some churches will hot have heard read on
Christmas Day if they didn’t gather for worship, in John
1:3-5,
3All things came into being through him, and without
him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4in
him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness
did not overcome it.
In Advent we considered our lives lived
in-between the first coming of Jesus in his birth to save the world and the
second coming of Jesus at the end of history to judge the living and the dead.
In Christmas we consider our lives lived
in-between this world and the next.
But it’s difficult to live in the
in-between.
In 1884 there was a third political movement
called the Mugwumps that was often positioned between the Republicans and the
Democrats. They were comically criticized as having their “mugs” on one side of
the fence and their “wumps” on the other.
Of course, where you fit on a political
spectrum depends on who’s spectrum you are on. I consider myself a moderate,
but some on the right consider me a lunatic leftist while some on the left
consider me to be a raging conservative. It seems like someone is always mad at
me.
I’m OK with that.
I think that our positions should be based
on our principles and that our principles should be based on our beliefs, and then
where they fall, they fall. Moderation in all things, including moderation.
I don’t think that our positions should be a
kind of moderation that’s based on pleasing everybody.
We should not always expect to be popular.
Jesus said, in his sermon on the mount, in Luke
6:26,
26 “Woe to you
when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false
prophets.
It’s often said that we are in the world,
but we are not of the world. We are in-between. How do we live that?
By holy living that is not being nice but is
being redefined by God.
By worship that is not just checking the
boxes but is focused and engaged and directed toward the one true living God.
By doing justice that is not defined by
political attachments but by doing God’s will.
How do we talk about that?
By looking for common ground to communicate,
not by pandering to the world by looking like it.
By being a community of people that loves
Jesus as our Savior above everything else, including family, not by being a
community that is based on smug self-righteousness using religious language.
By being a people set apart that, a people
who provides clear differences and alternatives to being of the world, not by
appealing for popularity while pretending to have an outsider status.
Paul writes, in Romans 12:2,
2 Do not be conformed to
this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you
may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
As we stand between celebrations, preparing
now for living in a new year, let us stop and consider what it means to be
alive in Jesus Christ.
We were dead in our sin, but now we are made
alive. We have already passed though death in our baptisms. Paul writes in Romans
6:1-4,
1 What then are we to
say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we
who died to sin go on living in it? 3 Do you not know that
all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into
death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
We are, ourselves, both saints and sinners.
We are both under the religious Law and freed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
We are in-between in so many things. But not
in our passion for Jesus, for holy living, and for sharing the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. We are warned against this in an image of the last days, in what the
Spirit is saying to the seven churches in Revelation 3:14-16,
14 “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of
the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:
15 “I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you
were either cold or hot. 16 So, because you are lukewarm,
and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Of all the resolutions for the New Year that
we could be considering for making next Sunday, I would encourage all of us to consider
one based on last Sunday. I would encourage us to open our hearts to receive
new life and renewed life in a living relationship with the one true living God,
to be publicly passionate for God in lives defined by God’s in-between time.
Christ is born. Christ is risen. Christ will
come again.
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