Viewing Christmas With Herod eyes ...

This past Sunday, I spun off of Len Sweet's sermon, "With Christmas Eyes." I was intrigued by the different eyes with which the coming of the Christ child was viewed.

As is sometimes my practice, I "promoed" the sermon on my congregational e-mail list and received this from the Rev. James R. Green. Jim and his wife, Carol, are a part of the faith community at The Meadow.

Jim wrote back:

"The fact is the only one who really understood Christmas was Herod. The threat to our thrones has never gone away and so we love the baby but avoid the man. The curious thing is we avoid the man by extolling the baby.

"All of the merchants ring out the chorus, 'What a friend we have in Jesus.' What I think that we really need to do is put Christmas back into Christ."

Wow.

"The threat to our thrones has never gone away and so we love the baby but avoid the man."

That thought continued to roll around in my head. It wasn't long before it took form in this manner:

• The Baby Jesus is easy to get excited about, because there are few, if any, demands.
• The God-Man Jesus brings with Him all of the baggage that sacrifice demands.
• The greatest throne we set up is the throne of Self, and so we serve the God-Man at our leisure -- we worship at our leisure, we pray at our leisure, we serve others at our leisure and we give at our leisure.

Yes, Herod saw the ultimate threat of the Manger Messiah to his throne, and so he sought to kill him. Do we "kill" the God-Man, who threatens our throne of Self, by focusing on the Baby Jesus and all of the glitz and glimmer of the consumer-religious holiday of Christmas?

Grace and peace ...