The Real Story of Christmas

This is the story of how we have come to celebrate Christmas today. The story starts with the birth of Jesus of Nazareth either in the year 6 BC or 6 AD. Both dates have pros and cons. The earlier one would have the baby Jesus born during King Herod’s lifetime (Matt. 2:1), before the King’s death in 3 BC. Jesus would also be in his thirties (Lk 3:23) during the time Pontius Pilate was procurator of Judea, from 26 AD to 36 AD. In 6 BC there was a conjunction of planets that could have been what the Magi saw (Matt. 2:1 - 2). However, there was no census (Lk 2:1) that we know of taken in Palestine in 6 BC. We do know that there was a census taken in 6 AD while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Lk 2:1). However if Jesus were born in 6 AD he would not have begun his ministry in his thirties and still face Pilate at a trial. Another date to consider would be 3 BC, but this date has problems too. All we really know is that Jesus didn’t say what year he was born in or what day. In fact, Jesus probably didn’t want anyone to make a fuss, and so he kept quiet about it. And this silence left the door wide open for people to make Christmas into whatever they wanted.

The earliest celebration of the birth of Jesus was called the Theophany or manifestation of God. Today we call it Epiphany and it is celebrated on January 6^th, which was the beginning of the year in the days of the early church. The celebration included more than Jesus’ birth, it included the concept of God being with us always. This celebration was split into two holidays in the 4^th century AD. At that time the Christmas celebration competed with the pagan celebration of the birth of the Unconquered Son which was placed on the winter solstice (the calendar in those days was off by four days). When the Roman Empire became Christian, December 25^th became Jesus’ birthday. Epiphany was then considered the day Jesus was baptized and the Holy Spirit became manifest to all (Matt. 3:16). And Advent came about as a civil law that required all citizens to be in church for forty days before Epiphany! For over a thousand years Christmas was a midwinter religious celebration. But it changes dramatically in the last several hundred years.

Our modern celebration begins in the fourth century AD in the Turkish town of Myra. Bishop Nicholas was known for his generosity and kindness to children and after his death was canonized as Saint Nicholas. The day of his death, December 6^th became a major holiday around Europe and people celebrated it by exchanging gifts. Protestants in the 16^th century banned the celebration of saint’s days and so people moved the day of celebration to Christmas. German traditions have Nicholas giving gifts to children and a ghost-like Christ child hovering around him called Christkindl (Kris Kringle). Dutch settlers in New York brought with them the story of Sinter Klaas (Santa Claus) who was plump and smoked a pipe. And in the early eighteen hundreds in America Clement Clarke Moore wrote the words, “‘Twas the night before Christmas…” which cemented the story of Santa in the minds of every American. In his story St. Nick rides a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer, is a jolly old elf and delivers toys to children through the chimney. Our modern Santa is dressed in red and white because in the 1930’s Coca-Cola used him to sell soda in the winter. And so there you have it - the story of how the birth of our savior and a kindly saint became tied up with gift giving and soda pop!

Isn’t this an amazing story! Isn’t it astonishing how St. Nick became Santa and was thrust into the Christmas story? I hope you can see that many of our Christmas traditions have very little to do with Jesus of Nazareth. Fortunately the core message of the religious celebration still survives in our churches today. And that is the message of God becoming manifest to people in a very real way. God came to our world, as a real living person to show us how much He loves us. And He lived His life as an example of how to serve our Father in Heaven as well as serve other people. This is the real message of Christmas. And the message is more important than all of the gifts and all of the celebrating in the entire world. It is my hope that as we are opening presents and drinking soda, we keep in mind a child in a manger who came to give us the gift of light and life.

Have a blessed Christmas.

Pastor Bill

I Can Do Anything

The Harry Potter Movie is out. I want to do anything by waving a stick and saying the magic words. However, it doesn't work like that. Instead, God can do anything without all of the sillyness.

Smashing Statues in the Woods

 
 

I was hiking on a mountain that overlooks the valley where I live. A friend and I went up there to see if we could view our houses from there. At the top of the mountain there are a series of communication towers. There is one big microwave tower that stands out from the rest. It has large white oval shaped cones facing in different directions. My friend and I noticed that the white faces had little dark marks on them. After a few minutes we realized that the marks were bullet holes. People had been using the tower as target practice. Other signs of destruction were also seen up in that quiet place. A wire fence was torn down and windows of the attached buildings were smashed. There was an old marble statue that had been erected many years ago. It seems to have been a saint who was blessing the people in the valley below. But the only thing left of the statue was the legs and the stand. Vandals had smashed the rest. Maybe the people who did this didn’t like the idea of being blessed.

I hike quite a bit, and so in the woods I have often found the remains of unbelievable human behavior. The skeletal remains of cars, stripped of everything including the engines, left to rot miles from the nearest road. Junk tires, foam insulation, plastic sheets, dumped deep in the evergreens. The remains of buildings, most likely ghost towns, spray painted or just smashed to bits. This behavior has caused me to wonder why people do crazy things in the woods. Why go to all of the trouble of traveling miles from home just to get drunk around a camp fire and smash beer bottles on the ground? The answer that I have come up with is that people feel free in the woods. With no one else around they feel released from the restrictions that society places on them and they think that they can do anything. And by anything that includes destroying property that doesn’t belong to them and/or permanently damaging natural habitat that belongs in the public trust. And so my question to you is; is this what freedom looks like?
I certainly hope not. If freedom means that I can do anything that I want to do, including hurting others, then the free life is not a life worth living. So if I reject this common notion of freedom, then what is the alternative? There must be limits that we place on our behavior. If not then we take away the freedom of others. We must restrict our actions in order to live together in a supportive way.

Society must have rules. There must be a code of conduct by which we operate. But the limits of our rules are being pushed by our individualistic society. The Internet is an amazing creation that gives all of us many ways to express ourselves. I looked for advice on building a telescope. And I was pleased to find many people who build telescopes as a hobby. And they are happy to publish instructions on how to do this. This is a great example of the positive impact the Internet has had. But the Internet also can have a destructive impact. I remember the story of a local politician whose home phone number was placed on the Internet as an ad for sex. It was like saying, for a good time call… This man and his family were harassed day and night until they changed their phone number. The story expresses the need for some restrictions on self-expression. Unrestrained expression means that innocent people are going to get hurt.

There are issues here that affect our greater society. Did you know that anyone could learn to make a bomb on the Internet? This type of information has been available for a long time in obscure books. But those books were hard to come by. Now this information is easy to obtain. Many people can learn to make bombs out of materials purchased at hardware stores. I’m not sure whether the second amendment protects the publication of this material or not, but surely there must be a way for our society to protect itself against people who spread information for the purpose of hurting others.

Ethical living requires limits on our actions. The unrestricted exercising of rights can take away rights from others. For example, I have seen some ugly fences in beautiful neighborhoods. If you live in a lovely neighborhood with open yards and someone puts up a cyclone fence that doesn’t fit the area, do you have a right to complain? In the Sonoma, California there are many housing developments with strong homeowners associations. They tell the owners what type of fence to put up, what colors to paint them, and what plants can be placed in front of the fences. This makes the development orderly and beautiful. But doesn’t this take basic rights from the individuals who live there? Yet people see the wisdom of giving up some personal freedoms in order to receive something they value in return.

Our right to buy and discard things creates massive landfills that pollute land and water. Our right to go to work for industry also pollutes the environment and causes many to develop health problems. Our right to drive cars that pollute the air causes some people to live indoors because they can’t breath. How does the old saying go? One hand giveth the other taketh away.

We are not free to do whatever we want in the world. I am not free to kill someone just because I feel like it. I am not free to take someone else’s rights away from them.

There must be limits placed on our actions. In order for a fair and just system to exist on our world, some of our personal freedoms must be limited. Our purpose for living is not to impose our selfish wishes onto others and therefore deprive them of important freedoms. We were not placed here on this earth to grab all we can and leave nothing left for others. We were created to care for and love other people as well as ourselves. No one can live in a vacuum. We need each other, and therefore we must learn to limit our actions.

God Bless You,

Pastor Bill

Conflict In Conflict Out

People say that if we have a conflict inside of us that we should let all hang out. I don’t really like this advice. Sure if you have a problem with someone you should talk to them about it. But too often this advice is taken to mean – let them have it. Too often people use this as an excuse to attack someone verbally. Expressing our feelings is one thing, but expressing angry feelings can wreck relationships, especially if the anger we feel inside is released over and over again. If we are always mouthing off and criticizing the people around us, for the sake of letting these feelings off our chest, then we won’t have any friends anymore. Often by expressing something negative we create more problems than we solve.

I didn’t like the Lord Mayor of our fair city. He was a nice person and all but I didn’t think he had the skills necessary to turn the city around. So I did what any citizen of these United States has the God given right to do, I voted for another candidate at election time. And before the election I did what any citizen of our wonderful nation also has the right to do, I expressed my negative feelings about our Mayor publicly. Bad move for this clergyman, as you will soon see.

We had a fundraiser at the church. It was to support MS and was being organized by our young people. We were having spaghetti and meatballs, salad, etc… Lots of people came out to support this cause. One of the people who came out was a surprise, the Mayor and his wife. They came in to buy take-out. When I saw him I thought of one thing. He’s trolling for votes. The election is coming up and this guy is getting his face into as many places as possible. My sarcastic mind started to race through the possibilities and I came up with a way to take a verbal jab at the Mayor.

I remembered a cartoon character from a Saturday morning show my kids watch. Mayor White, always dressed in white with white hair (must be a cousin of mine). He goes around the cartoon town with a button on his vest that says, Vote for Me. Whenever he finishes talking he says, Vote for Me. Whenever he speaks in pubic there are signs that say, Vote for Me. You get the picture. This image popped into my head and I just couldn’t hold back.

“Vote for Me”, I said over and over at the dinner table. Lots of people heard me and they all knew just what I meant. “Vote for Me”, I said waving the Nixon v for victory sign. “Vote for Me”, I said a little too often and a little too loudly. I felt like the life of the party, a real class cutup. I was having a good old time, until the party was over.

The Mayor heard me, his wife heard me, many of the leaders of my church heard me and some of them were embarrassed and ashamed. My people approached me afterwards and took me to task. They said that I should be setting an example of Christian love and hospitality and not taking a shot at anyone for any reason. Now, some people defended my actions and said that I was just expressing what everyone felt. But my detractors are right. As a minister I should be setting an example. And I shouldn’t be taking pot shots at anyone. It was a disgraceful episode that I should not have allowed to happen.

Because of this and other experiences, I no longer buy into the idea that expressing our feelings is an excuse for launching verbal assaults at another person. Expressing feelings has become the defense we use to explain why we hurt others. We now have an entire industry on cable TV devoted to expressing feelings. What it is really devoted to is making money through the verbal abuse. We all shake our heads at it, but we keep watching. Very sad.

It’s been my experience that the negative thoughts and feelings that bounce around inside my head eventually come out. Like I said previously, most councilors tell us that we should express ourselves. But if I constantly let my wife hear every negative thought that enters my brain, our relationship will be damaged and possibly destroyed. There is a difference between expressing our feelings and smashing someone over the head with them over and over again. There must be a better way.

If I want to prevent conflict with the people I love, I have to take care of the conflicts inside of me first. Then I can express my feelings with understanding and love, the way the Master taught us to.

Peace,

Pastor Bill

Pastor Bill Whitehead explains the Trinity

Something that will Live with Him Forever

By PASTOR BILL WHITEHEAD

My wife works with autistic children. She is part of a wraparound program, in which an autistic child receives help from an adult at school and at home. Betsy helps Tommy keep focused on his work in the classroom. There are eight children and five adults in this particular class. One of the adults is the teacher and there is a teacher’s aid. The others are like Betsy, adults who help a specific child. Little Tommy is nine years old and weighs in at 60 pounds. His size makes him difficult to handle when he wants to cause trouble. He is very smart and is progressing in reading and math. But he communicates only in nonverbal ways. He grunts or points when he wants something. And he screams like all kids when he doesn’t get what he wants. He is easily provoked to anger by the other kids in the class. Breaking up fights is a daily activity for the adults in this classroom. These kids challenge Betsy and the other adults, and yet Betsy loves it.

I can’t help but wonder why she can’t wait to get back into the classroom with Tommy. When he wants to cause trouble he can be very difficult. Betsy has been head butted in the chest, bitten on the hands and arms and had her hair pulled. She came home one night with five bruises on her arms and legs from bites. He has tried several times to grab her breasts, but luckily she has avoided any painful problems in this area. Sometimes Betsy comes home from a rough day and says she feels beaten up. When I see the bruises I can understand why she says that.

I still can’t believe that she stuck with this program after the rough start that she had. Her first child had severe emotional problems. The school district placed him in a regular classroom with Betsy to help keep him under control. He was a sizeable kid at 70 pounds. And he was violent. One day he lost control at the end of the school day and he was under his desk and wouldn’t move. Betsy, the teacher and his guardian tried to pull him out but he attacked them. It took the three of them to wrestle him to the floor and restrain him until he calmed down. After she told me about that episode I was convinced that she would give up. How can anyone handle such a violent kid? And then when she started working with Tommy and I heard some of the stories, I couldn’t believe she was hanging in. And yet she has kept up with the program and now is helping Tommy get through school. Why do Betsy and the other teachers work with these troubled kids?

This is a difficult question to answer. They are getting paid for the work that they do, but there are certainly easier ways to make a living. Many people all around the world work jobs that are equally challenging. And there are even more people who volunteer to do work like this. Some people do this kind of work for nothing! Can you believe it? A Red Cross volunteer has told me that she feels it is a privilege to help people. A privilege! What an incredible thing to say. There is something really important happening here. Something that is motivating individuals to do things which do not have an obvious return on their investment. When someone says that they are engaged in an enterprise that is a privilege and receive no apparent reward, then there is a question that needs to be answered.

I believe that the answer lies inside of us. We possess a desire from within that prompts us to reach out when we see someone in need. My experience has been that we respond out of deep-seated emotions that fill us with good feelings even when it is struggle to help. Can it be explained? Feelings of personal satisfaction are difficult to verbalize. Maybe these feelings come from complicated psychological developmental processes. Maybe they come from God. Does it matter if we can explain our feelings? What counts is that they are very real. People receive something powerful when they respond to the needs of others

What kind of power is that? The power of love. The power of friendship. The power of never being alone. When we help someone we become more than we are. We become partners in life with another. Tommy has received something from my wife. Something that will live with him forever.

The Rev. William "Bill" Whitehead is pastor of the First Baptist Church of Rahway, in Rahway, NJ and a graduate of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary. He is ordained within American Baptist Churches. For more about Rev. Whitehead, see his channel on YouTube by search "Pastor Bill Whitehead."

Pastor Bill: God is Among Us

Pastor Bill Whitehead is the spiritual leader of First Baptist Church of Rahway. He is a graduate of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, and an ordained minister in American Baptist Churches.