Christmas is such a special time of the year. The holiday season carries with it great symbolism for many cultures and religions. For me it is a reminder that my birthday is a month away and that I will soon be one more year older. Tragically I am rapidly approaching my “middle-age” years. I can remember thinking, “When I turn thirty, I’m dead. No one will want to hire an over thirty year old youth pastor. Certainly no students will want hang out with some pot-belled, middle-aged, weirdo for Jesus.” But now many years after thirty, I personally feel like a bottle of wine, I have only gotten better with age. Sure there are some things that are harder for me like, trying to maintain cultural relevance with teenagers (there is only so much MTV I can take anymore.) Overall though I feel like with every passing year of service in ministry I become better equipped to not only handle the needs of students, but I am capable of dealing with the needs of their parents and those of the congregation members as well.
Even with growing confidence and self-esteem, as I age there are still those moments and situations that make me say, “Dang, I’m old!” It’s the little things that can irk me the most. To the students I work with, the Atari 2600 is an antique, they have never bought their favorite album on vinyl and they cannot remember a time when Blockbuster didn’t rent DVD’s. There are many things in the world that have changed since I was a child. Christmas shopping for my own children is a huge reminder of how things are so different, even from thirty years ago. Technologies are different, entertainment is different and even clothing styles are different (they say leg warmers are coming back, but I can’t see Old Navy promoting them next Christmas season.)
For all the changes however, many things stay the same. Some for the good and some for the bad. I received a reminder of this today as I was downloading Christmas songs off the Internet. At this time of the year I love to listen to music that reminds me what this season is all about. As I was browsing through a list of songs I became somewhat nostalgic of my Junior High School years. There in the play list was the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, sung by a group of British new wave pop stars called Band-Aid. Besides Bono of U2 fame, most of these artist’s are nothing more then a track on a “Best of the 80’s” CD or regaining nominal fame by staring on the VH1 show “Bands Reunited”. During the mid-eighties however, these bands and singers where huge icons in my album collection. So when they sang about World famine, this mid-west white boy stood up and took notice. Here are the lyrics that had such an impact on me 20 years ago.
It’s Christmas time; there’s no need to be afraid
At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade
And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy
Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime
But say a prayer to pray for the other ones
At Christmastime
It’s hard, but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
Are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Oh, where nothing ever grows, no rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?
Here’s to you, raise a glass for everyone
Here’s to them, underneath that burning sun
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?
Feed the world
Feed the world
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again
Listening to the song again raised the memories of nightly newscasts describing the incredibly gruesome famine, taking place in Ethiopia. I remember being a fourteen-year old Christian asking myself, “What am I doing so that those people know that it is Christmastime?” The answer was a disappointing, “Nothing.” Sadly, twenty-years later things haven’t changed much, in my life and the world.
I unknowingly downloaded the “extended” version of the song. In this version the performers gave holidays greetings during an instrumental section. The words that hit me hardest came from eclectic rock superstar David Bowie when he said, “It’s Christmas 1984 and there are more starving folk on the planet then ever before.” After hearing this I asked myself, “Had the world changed any in the past twenty years? I realized starvation and hunger still existed in the world. But it had gotten better, hadn’t it?” In 1984 hunger had reached close to 500 million people in a world population of 4.8 billion people (11%). Today, this very day, there is an estimated 850 million people living with hunger. With a world population of over 6.9 billion people, an estimated 12% of the world’s population goes hungry each day. In the past twenty years of technological advancements one would think the world community could have at least lessened the percentage of people that go to bed hungry each day.
Here are some of the things we have done in the past 20 years:
We have launched the Space Shuttles 113 times at a cost of $470 million dollars a shot.
We have bought 84 million DVD players here in the United States.
We (globally) spent $18.5 billion dollars on video games in 2003.
From Budapest to Bloomington we snarfed down $17.5 billion dollars of “BigMac’s” last year alone.
Retail sales during this holiday season alone are being estimated at $220 billion dollars in the US.
Bono from the band U2 was once quoted as saying; “Christ's example is being demeaned by the church if they ignore the new leprosy, which is AIDS. The church is the sleeping giant here. If it wakes up to what's really going on in the rest of the world, it has a real role to play. If it doesn't, it will be irrelevant." The same can be said about the churches response to world hunger and most social justice issues. It is a shame that the church doesn’t do a better job of showing the world that Jesus is it’s light; during the time we celebrate his birth. If 70% of this country claims to be Christian (this percentage has been on a yearly decline for over 10 years), then the church can claim around $154 billion dollars spent on Christmas presents this season. It seems for all our attempts to “Remember the reason for the season” we have been failing at getting out the message of why God sent his Son to us in the first place. If Jesus had delivered, in today’s context, the section of the Sermon on the Mount found in chapter seven of the book of
The same painful lament by Jesus can be found in Matthew 25:41-46:
"Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, `Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the Devil and his demons! For I was hungry, and you didn't feed me. I was thirsty, and you didn't give me anything to drink. I was a stranger, and you didn't invite me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me no clothing. I was sick and in prison, and you didn't visit me.'
"Then they will reply, `Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?' And he will answer, `I assure you, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.' And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous will go into eternal life."
We got off course from where God wants us to be. How we got there? I don’t know. How do we get back on course? I think that is up to each person that reads this. I know for all the Christmas seasons to come our family has made a pledge to not buy any more retail gifts. From now on we are going to work with one of the many hunger relief organizations that allows one to purchase livestock to be sent to those that have great need. We will be purchasing, in the names of our family and friends, livestock to be distributed to the hungry. You may want to join us by giving in this way also, or you may want to donate food to your local food pantry, or you may want to provide and serve a meal in your local mission. The key is we all have to do something different then the little we are doing now.
Our greatest failure as the Church, the living embodiment of Christ Jesus, will be if we allow another twenty years to go by and we do not feed the hungry, help strangers in need, comfort those afflicted with AIDS and visit hurting people in jails. After all when Jesus sent out his disciples to do his work his instructions to them were, “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:7 & 8, NLT) The Kingdom of Heaven is here. What will you do this holiday season to prove Jesus’ love to someone that may not know his love is true and for all people?
