Focus on the reason
Rev. Kelley J. Lackey II, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
Friday, November 20, 2009
Almost 20 years ago, the large Nativity scene that sat in front of White Auditorium was exiled to the front yard of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church after disputes arose about the line between church and state. It continued to be set up on church property through the following years. About five years ago, the crèche became too dilapidated and the city no longer brought it out.
This year the city’s Nativity scene will return to St. Andrew’s front lawn after being lovingly restored by our brothers and sisters in Christ from Messiah Lutheran Church. With the return of the crèche come the inevitable conversations about the “Seasonal Celebration.”
Every year at this time I begin to hear many folks around Emporia begin to grumble about how upset they are that the annual citywide school program can’t be the “Christmas Program” anymore, but is now called the more politically correct, if not more mundane, “Seasonal Celebration.”
Every time I hear this complaint, I try to listen more closely to try to understand if the person complaining is doing it out of a real commitment to Jesus Christ as his or her Lord, or if there is another motivation. Oftentimes the words “ACLU” or “those atheists” come up in the conversations more often than “Jesus,” “Good News,” “the Peace of Christ” or “my responsibility as a Christian.”
I find it sad, and more than a little bit tragic, what obscure and irrelevant things we Christians can find to cause a flap about. We spend a great deal of time trying to force our agendas and political positions on those around us and convince ourselves that we are somehow proclaiming the Good News of the Kingdom of God in the process.
We get into extraneous power struggles about the names of secular school events. But we rarely, if ever, pour that much raw energy into seeing that every one of those children involved in the Seasonal Celebration has the safety, love and resources necessary to nourish their minds, bodies and spirits to grow into the people God has created them to be.
We get annoyed at the non-Christmas greeting we may get at Walmart. But we may never stop to ask ourselves how many children are exploited for their cheap labor so that we may consume more stuff we really don’t need at “everyday low prices,” so that we can go on an annual spending orgy in the name of a little child who was born powerless to a poor girl in a remote village.
I suppose that as we drive by St. Andrew’s and see the crèche waiting to receive the infant Jesus (Episcopalians and Lutherans do not traditionally put the baby Jesus in our Nativity scenes until Christmas Eve) we can complain about all the ways that the secular world has cast out Jesus.
Or we can ask ourselves how we, as followers of this little baby who was cast out into a stable, are challenged by him to proclaim him as Lord of our lives in our commitment to all of those voiceless, powerless, poor who are considered as irrelevant in our world today as he was in that stable in a remote village.
• “Sunday Sermon” is a forum for Emporia area ministers to share their sermons, thoughts and observations. This week’s sermon is from the Rev. Kelley J. Lackey II, priest at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.