Christmas Warmth

No one will ever convince me, ever, not ever, that you can go to a building each week, sit as a spectator for one hour, never be introduced to another person, and then claim you were in church. Being with the church is about being in a meaningful group, surrounded by people you can join in fellowship, love and service together, and be warmed by the family of faith. Being with the church is not about being a consumer; it's about investing your entire life into other people.

In Ecclesiastes 4:7-11, the great King Solomon is reflecting on his life, which he largely lived apart from God. He's lamenting in this look back, and he's offering wise counsel for all of us: "Don't live like me." In these verses, Solomon equates going at life "alone" as meaningless. His words also remind us that:

• We should avoid working so hard and long that relationships are compromised.
• Two people working together can get twice the work accomplished.
• When trouble comes, one can help the other.
• In the coldness of the night, two can keep each other warm.
• Two - and even more - can protect one another from harm.

The reason we have Christmas parties is to celebrate the value of relationship that Solomon writes about. And, when those parties and celebrations are framed in faith - by families of faith (churches, Sunday School classes and small groups) - we are reminded of the warmth that comes from being a part of a family of faith. Christmas gives us that gift.

My dad was very involved in our community’s Empty Stocking drive at Christmas each year. The community came together, donating toys and coats and food items, packaged it all together in church basements.and warehouses. Families would join together to sort and package the items from lists provided by the community's social services. And, then on Christmas Eve, men - mostly through the community's Jaycee organization - would take the lists and deliver the toys, clothing and food.

Late one Christmas Eve, my dad had one final delivery. He took me with him because we were headed home to a family Christmas celebration afterward. The delivery was to a “neighborhood” of dilapidated mobile homes arranged in a neighborhood along a red clay hill with a ragged dirt road connecting the housing units. By the time we got to this small, shabby community, it was almost dusk. My dad parked his panel van and went house-to-house delivering boxes. I won’t ever get over the images of that evening. I was surrounded by poverty.

Poverty is ugly because it reveals the hardest reality of life. In describing the poverty (my word) of life, Dickens wrote in A Christmas Carol, about man's condition at the crossroads of "Ignorance and Want." Poverty, for me, is that place where people want xyz, but don't care enough about themselves or others to even try and achieve it. It's a horror. And, that's what my boyish eyes saw that evening delivering toys to the neighborhood. I saw a generational cycle of poverty - "wanting" but no desire to improve.

Before you and I thumb our collective nose at those living in cycles of economic poverty, let me add a dimension to it. As King Solomon reminds us - we need each other. We need each other for warmth, security, defense and support. Going at life alone is foolish. Going at life alone is another form of poverty - the absence of the warmth of other believers is a horrible place of poverty. Human Nature craves relationships - poverty is not caring about or ignoring that impulse. The Holy Spirit, I believe, craves relationships with other believers - poverty is not caring about or ignoring that conviction.

I know a lot of affluent people living in poverty. They are surrounded by friends, and yet don't have a single friend in faith. They don't have one person in whom they can confess life's pain for fear their social friends will quickly turn to whisperers. They don't have one person who will hold their hand and pray over them; not a flippant "I will pray for you" that never results in prayer. They don't have one person who will "drop everything" and come running to provide Christian warmth in this cold world.

This is a form of poverty: Being surrounded by "friends" and yet not having a single one in faith.

On occasion, my church youth group would have bonfires. We would gather for food, music, devotion and, yes, flirting. Just before one of those bonfires, our beloved youth director, Ron McClure, called a few of us together for an object lesson. On a blackboard, he drew a bonfire with several rings around it. The fire represented the faith family with its light and its warmth. Each circle around the fire represented where people stood in relationship to the fire. The further people stood from the fire the more they stood in the cold and dark. He told us to be attentive to where people stood at the upcoming bonfire. Who would be nearest the fire, fully enjoying the bonfire? Who would be standing further removed? Who would be standing in the shadows? Who would not even be there? He reminded us:

• Believers will always want to be as close to the fire as possible, but many don't know how to break through the crowd to get there. How can we keep the inner circle open?
• Sometimes the fire can be too hot for people, and we have to let them be content to stand a few steps behind, but always inviting them to be closer.
• Many in the shadows choose to be there because, sadly, it's gotten comfortable to be in the dark and the cold. There's no risk in the shadows, it's easy to be invisible, and it's easy to walk away. But, these good people will never fully know the joy, peace, love and hope that comes from the warmth of being arm-in-arm with other believers. Friends, I've been there. Scott Vaughan has been in the shadows while being at the church property every single Sunday.
• How do we invite more people to the bonfire? We are surrounded by people who want to be with us, who need to be with us, but don't know it's available or the benefits of it. Keep in mind, some of these are regularly sitting in worship services - never fully experiencing the benefits of faith community.

Where are you? Are you as close to the fire of faith as possible? Are you out there in the shadows, engaged in the exercise of casual faith? Are you showing up here and there, sitting back, perhaps waiting on your spouse to endorse taking faith to the next level, wanting to get more involved in the exercise of faith but just not able to pull the trigger . . . afraid of what they might expect or ask you to do?

If you are warm and cozy beside the fire, are you turning around and making room for others to join you at the fire? Or, have you slipped into ugly "faithful sin" - claiming the warmth and forgetting about those not at the fire? I'm guilty. So are you.

Solomon reminds us that there is power, protection, service, love, warmth, and defense when we are joined with one another in the family of faith. It's time for some of us to step up to the fire, and for others to make room. Jesus came for such a reason as this one - that the gospel comes alive through the warmth of faith relationships.