Sermon Tone Analysis

Our theme for 2022 is “Begin Again”

This Sunday is the second in our 2022 Advent Series.

Advent literally means “the coming.”

It is a time of building anticipation for Christmas, which is the celebration of Christ’s coming.

We recently completed a series on the Gospel of John, so someone suggested to me, “Why not do an Advent series from the Gospel of John?”

I thought it sounded like a good idea.

It’s especially interesting because John is the only Gospel writer who does not include any details about the birth of Jesus.

What John describes is the Creator of the world coming in to the world and the world not recognizing Him.

Last week we talked about preparing the way.

Or rather, recognizing that the way has been prepared.

God has been working through time and history - all leading us to this moment.

The One who comes behind us has already gone before us.

But how will we know God’s promise when we see it?

Seeing is believing - but believing is also seeing!

How can we be the ones who see and believe in the One who has been sent?

How does believing change us?

Do you believe in Santa Claus?

The legend of Santa Claus can be traced back hundreds of years to a monk named St.

Nicholas.

It is believed that Nicholas was born sometime around A.D. 280 in Patara, near Myra in modern-day Turkey.

Much admired for his piety and kindness, St. Nicholas became the subject of many legends.

It is said that he gave away all of his inherited wealth and traveled the countryside helping the poor and sick.

One of the best-known St. Nicholas stories is the time he saved three poor sisters from being sold into slavery or prostitution by their father by providing them with a dowry so that they could be married.

Over the course of many years, Nicholas’s popularity spread and he became known as the protector of children and sailors.

His feast day is celebrated on the anniversary of his death, December 6.

This was traditionally considered a lucky day to make large purchases or to get married.

By the Renaissance, St. Nicholas was the most popular saint in Europe.

Even after the Protestant Reformation, when the veneration of saints began to be discouraged, St. Nicholas maintained a positive reputation, especially in Holland.

The name Santa Claus evolved from Nick’s Dutch nickname, Sinter Klaas, a shortened form of Sint Nikolaas (Dutch for Saint Nicholas).

In 1804, John Pintard, a member of the New York Historical Society, distributed woodcuts of St. Nicholas at the society’s annual meeting.

The background of the engraving contains now-familiar Santa images including stockings filled with toys and fruit hung over a fireplace.

In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore, an Episcopal minister, wrote a long Christmas poem for his three daughters entitled “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas,” more popularly known as “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.”

Moore’s poem, which he was initially hesitant to publish due to the frivolous nature of its subject, is largely responsible for our modern image of Santa Claus as a “right jolly old elf” with a portly figure and the supernatural ability to ascend a chimney with a mere nod of his head!

Although some of Moore’s imagery was probably borrowed from other sources, his poem helped popularize the now-familiar image of a Santa Claus who flew from house to house on Christmas Eve in “a miniature sleigh” led by eight flying reindeer to leave presents for deserving children.

“An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” created a new and immediately popular American icon.

In 1881, political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew on Moore’s poem to create the first likeness that matches our modern image of Santa Claus.

His cartoon, which appeared in Harper’s Weekly, depicted Santa as a rotund, cheerful man with a full, white beard, holding a sack laden with toys for lucky children.

It is Nast who gave Santa his bright red suit trimmed with white fur, North Pole workshop, elves and his wife, Mrs. Claus

What does Santa have to do with Jesus?

Everything and nothing!

Santa Claus is a fantasy for which Jesus is the reality.

Saint Nicholas was a real person and a follower of Jesus, but the stories about him became detached fro the historical reality and became about an idea.

Santa Claus then, is a parable, a metaphor, a symbol for which Jesus is the true meaning.

Gary Buck, speaking to the Hopewell pastors this week said that Santa is like junk food, but Jesus is true nourishment.

Santa can be useful if believing in Santa causes us to think, “there must be something more!”

Believe in the real Jesus.

There are many people who believe in Jesus, but he means little more to them than Santa Clause.

Jesus is like a mystical, mythical figure who sees everything and knows everything about you.

Some people look at Jesus and feel like He is judging them.

Some people feel like they need to grovel, acting small and pathetic and hope the Jesus will have pity on them.

Some people treat jesus like their genie - make a wish and hope that it comes true.

Some people look at Jesus a declare him to be fake, but isn’t it their ideas that are false?

We have lots of pictures of Jesus, most of them depict him as a White European.

In Africa they portray Jesus as black.

There are also Asian images of Jesus.

The oldest paintings have both an Asian and European look to them.

It makes sense that we would all think of Jesus as being like us.

The truth is that Jesus is a Middle-Eastern Jew. ( I like how The Chosen portrays Jesus and his disciples with broken English.)

But what is really important is that we recognize that we are made in His image.

You can go the other way too - get really intellectual about Jesus and He is portrayed in the Bible and totally miss the real Jesus and His heart for you.

The real Jesus loves you and wants to know you.

Yes.

He will judge the world, but if you learn to know Him now, you won’t be afraid to stand before Him.

He’s not just a persona - He’s a person and he wants a personal relationship with you.

Believe in the divinity of Jesus.

In this passage, Jesus is telling his followers, “you know me, but you don’t really know me!”

Obviously they saw Him as a great teacher, or they wouldn’t be following Him.

A few of them probably had a pretty good sense that Jesus was the promised Messiah.

- John’s declaration should have given it away.

I’m sure that those who were closest to Him realized that he was and extraordinary person, after all they saw the miracles that He did.

But did they know that He was God in the flesh?

Jesus is saying that he is the very substance of life.

We eat our food and our body breaks down the food into its nutrient components.

The substance of our food is absorbed into our blood and gets delivered throughout our body to our muscles and tissue which uses the nutrients as fuel and the building blocks to be able to grow and or repair our bodies.

Whatever we don’t need is stored for future use - some of us are well stocked for the future!

Hunger is what reminds us to eat so that we have energy to sustain life.

One of the things that John wants us to know is that not only is Jesus God, but that He invites us to live in two realms, the heavenly and the earthly.

Jesus analogy teaches us that what food is to our earthly bodies, He is to our heavenly sustenance.

He is our life, our substance, our source of energy and growth.

On one hand, it is clear that Jesus sacrifice for our sin makes the way for us to be able to live a heavenly life.

But spiritual life is more than just being saved and going to heaven when we die.

It is living life now with the reality of the perspective of heaven.

This is one of the things that we learned from our study of John - that Jesus is inviting us to live life in two realities.

Our physical reality has been affected by our spiritual reality.

The whole world had been in rebellion against God.

But we can have a relationship with God - that’s our new spiritual reality.

And the world is being renewed and restored.

- that’s the physical reality.

The story of Jesus is not just a story about God.

Jesus actually is God and connects us to God.

Our story them becomes part of His story.

Yes, this is not a bedtime story - it’s a waking up to a whole new way of living story!

Everything changes in light of what we now know - just like in the Christmas movies - it’s that magical Christmas spirit that transforms our mundane reality.

It’s the reality of Christ in us.

It’s the magical, miracle surprise that every Christmas story is really alluding to.

While we are dreaming of rewards for being good, God is dreaming of a transformed people who will fill the world with His goodness.

Believe in the mission of Jesus.

God is not the Grinch!

If you have imagined Jesus as judging you.

Orr if you have imagined God as just waiting for you to mess up so that He can condemn you to hell - that’s not God!