1987 DuPage Christmas Prayer Breakfast
Dr. Charles Mueller,
Pastor, Trinity Lutheran Church, Roselle
December 17, 1987
We have many wonderful people in our Company who make the spirit of Christmas an everyday experience. I would like to tell you about one of them: Brigitte Meckerman. Whenever she sees you, she has a pleasant smile, beautiful brown eyes, and a cheery word. When you call her on the phone, she says, “This is Brigitte. May I help you?’ And you really feel she wants to help you.
Brigitte was born in Halle, Germany, and came to America in the early 1950s. She was in a car accident in New Mexico that very seriously injured her spinal cord. She spent two painful years in the Bellevue Hospital in New York City.
After leaving the special care center, she spent years in rehabilitation. Today she is a paraplegic.
Brigitte will tell you that she does not want to be considered a handicapped person, even though he spends all of her waking hours in a wheelchair she has said, “I am an ordinary person, extraordinarily blessed by the Lord.
I am sure each of us could tell of many people who make the spirit of Christmas an everyday experience. C.S. Lewis, in his book, The Joyful Christian, writes about our immortal destinations.
“All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization¡ªthese are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit -immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
C.S. Lewis said it well. sphere of influence … influence for good in our homes, in our communities, in our country, in our state, in our nation. and even around the world.
At this Christmas season, will each of us commit ourselves to making the spirit of Christmas an everyday experience?
Today people lean on Brigitte for support, help, and encouragement. People find a strength n this fine Christian woman. It is her loving spirit award everybody that attracts many people to her. She will tell you that her favorite Bible verse Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Brigitte is a person who makes the spirit of Christmas an everyday experience.
Life is made up of relationships … relationships with each other . . , family, social, business, and government relationships. The most importantrelationship for any person is his relationship to God. For me, this relationship is possible through personal faith in Jesus Christ. Christmas is a good time for each of us to assess where we are in this most important relationship of life.
Each of us here today has a tremendous and pick up the ball. Now, I’m almost sixty and the ball always goes under a bush and I come up angry at my little grandson. And I say, “What’s the matter with you? Why can’t you throw the ball?” There’s nothing wrong with my grandson, but I am sixty. A lot of things happen at sixty. We know things happen at sixty. If you are around sixty you are going through a faith crisis. You are wondering about what in the world is going on. I deal with a lot of older people in my parish.
It’s an amazing America we have here. In the early 1900’s America had a population that looked like a pyramid. In the 1950’s it looked like a barrel. Now it’s starting to look like a balloon. There is a lot of us. A lot of struggles, cares and concerns. And we need a Zacharias and Elizabaeth who first of all hear the angel say, “Don’t be afraid.” Then they went ahead and did what they had to do and brought us John the Baptist.
Then we had Mary and Joseph. Joseph, an interesting man, an intriguing man. We don’t know much about him. He’s just kind of a shadow figure, He of good spirit. When the young lady came to him and said, “Joseph, I’m pregnant,” he could have done a lot of things. He could have stormed and stomped and yelled and shouted. He could have done many things; but he chose, for the moment at least, to say “Mary, you and I both know that’s not my child. But I’ll let it happen that way. I’ll put you aside, and if at a later time they say, ‘Oh, I see, Mary had a baby,’ in that little town, I will not say it is not mine. But I cannot claim it, for it is not mine.
And Joseph was right. It’s all of ours. And then the angel again said¡ªthat angel, look out for that angel–“Don’t be afraid.” If you ever meet some guy who says, “Don’t be afraid,” listen to him, because he is ready to say something to you. He could say some frightening kinds of things, but he said, “Don’t be afraid.” You talk about natural childbirth — there it was, in the manger. And the angel immediately came with another message. “Don’t be afraid!
Take that baby to Bethlehem.” Dr. Ray Bache talking about this says that over half of all the children born this year are Asian-born. And the place where most political refugees are is Africa. Our Lord Jesus Christ, by the time He was three, was both of these, for an Asian-born Jesus became a political refugee in Africa. And then again the angel said, “Don’t be afraid,” and they came back home.
We hear about Joseph, at the time when Jesus was in the temple and Mary said, “Your father and I… ” Any time Dad says, “Your mother and I,” kids know it’s all over– the battle is done — it’s finished. It isn’t very often it happens. Then one more time, when the people asked,
“Isn’t that Joseph’s son?” They called Him Joseph’s son, so they must have known Joseph.
We had the wise men. They were strange men who came from other places. But you know, there were two sets of wise men. One set of wise men had all the answers and one had all the questions. And so when they came to Herod the King and asked, “Where is this to happen?”
The wise men with all the answers said, “Oh, we know the answer to that. It says so and so and such and such and such and such…” And they all went home, settled down for the evening, and watched the Chicago Bears. That’s what they did. They just settled into their life. The other wise men went on.
You’re going to see a lot of signs around that say, “Keep the Christ in Christmas.” Folks, you couldn’t possibly get the Christ out of Christmas. Jesus Christ is here among
He is a very real vital part. When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, He dwelt. It’s not whether you want to keep the Christ in Christmas or you want to keep the Christ out of Christmas. You don’t have any control over that. Whether you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and King, or you don’t believe Jesus Christ is your Lord and King, doesn’t make any difference about his being the Lord and King. It’s the difference whether you claim Him as Lord and King.
But the thing that you do have a lot of control over is the mess. Get the mess out of Christmas. That’s what we need to do. Get the mess out of it, and not in a general way. The policy in DuPage County will be to get the mess out of Christmas! Well, you can’t do that — it’s like boiling the North Atlantic.
But what about you? What about your life. A great Christmas hymn says:
Dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
Make thee a bed, soft undefiled
Within my heart that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for thee.
Another carol expresses this prayer:
Have thine own way, Lord, have thine own way,
You are the potter I am the clay
Mold me and make me after Thy will
While I am waiting, patient, and still.
That’s something you can handle. And the Holy Spirit calls upon your heart to do just that. It’s not just a celebration, it’s not just a holiday. For a lot of us, it’s a Holy Day when we remember the stars and the scary angels and the faithful old folks and the young couple and the wise men and women who heard and who followed.
May it please the Lord that this Christmas be so full of Christ that the mess is all gone.
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