First
Presbyterian Church of Watertown
“Charlie Brown”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
December 24th, 2006
One of my favorite parts of Advent
is the daily delivery of Christmas cards.
I read them all, gaze at the collage of photos and read the letters that
now accompany most of the cards. This
year though we had some intriguing ones.
The first was a revelation: the children of our friends and family have
grown up and the people we went to school and seminary with look old. For just a moment I wanted to cull our photo
albums and send some pictures from ten years ago- inserting new stories with
old photos. Vanity strikes when you
least expect it.
The second was a zinger. The zinger was a one liner meant to sum up
the season. The friend wrote, “Well,
it’s that time of year again when we sit in front of a dead tree and eat candy
from an old sock.” Being a fan of
minimalism I appreciated this lowest of all common denominator views of
Christmas. It made me want to ask for a
definition of Thanksgiving and Easter.
Yet the greatest of the cards this
year was the most basic and yet profound card I have ever received. On the inside there was no note, no letter,
no annual review of travel and accomplishments, just a standard holiday
greeting with a signature. And the
cover, at first glance, was nothing out of the ordinary. It was a photo of three children. My cousin Laurie often does this same thing
each year. Her children are often
poised amongst drift wood on a beach at sunset and they just happen to be
wandering the shore in matching clothes.
This photo, this card, though, was something different.
The card we received this year of a
friend’s children was of three teenagers all in a row in some downtown photo
spot. They weren’t dressed for a holiday
but a day out, and yet they embodied the spirit of the season like no other
photo I’ve ever seen. Let’s start by
saying if looks could kill the envelope containing the card should have been
stamped with the word “danger” and with skulls and crossbones. These three had the look. Each one was a different nuance of the look,
but there it was: I am going to stand here until you press the button. Go ahead tell me to smile, I dare you.
Nothing embodies the holiday spirit more
than a family photo op revolt. I can
remember as a young boy my mother ventured down this path. She asked our neighbor Judy June to come
take a photo. Judy kept trying not to
laugh as she focused on our sorry lot of holiday cheer, but by the time she
brought her camera over World War III had broken out. My folks weren’t speaking, my brother was in a tantrum and I was
certain some sort of insanity must befall all parents. Finally Judy couldn’t keep back the laughter
anymore and so she just started taking pictures and laughed until she cried.
When the photo of the three teens
came I laughed until I cried, but then I stopped short. I wondered if maybe I was finding humor at
someone else’s expense, what if this was a serious attempt to say, hey these
are my kids. Just then Kathy walked
into the room and saw the photo in my hand and before she could say anything
she just started laughing uncontrollably, until she said, it is the best
Christmas card of all time.
Family photos can be a real
challenge and Christmas can up the ante a fair amount. Christmas seems to up the ante on a lot of
things. Any moment where you become
convinced that everyone can experience profound joy at the same moment and in the
same way is a whole lot of pressure.
And if the truth be told it is a bit unfair. Joy is not a set of met expectations, but the surprise of God’s
mercy.
The shepherds out in the field were
not bidding their time hoping angels would fill the sky so they could tramp
down to Bethlehem and visit some peasants in a cave. When they left their hovels earlier in the day this was not their
expectation. And in the moments after
giving birth, Mary wasn’t thinking boy wouldn’t it be lovely if a band of
unschooled ruffians dirty from the field came for a visit and stayed to tell
stories. No it was a surprise and from
the surprise came the joy.
No Christmas story embodies this surprise
more than Charlie Brown. Our youngest
brought me this book to read before bedtime a week ago. As I read the story I couldn’t help but see
Charlie Brown in a new way. For the
first time I was not looking at him as the hapless friend who always seems to
get the short stick, but a kid who has everything but happiness, I read the
Christmas story and I saw his joylessness.
Charlie Brown is the king of glum; he’s
a blue kid. It doesn’t help that Lucy
always pulls the ball away, his dog is far more popular than he is, and his
unrequited love for the red headed girl causes his heart to ache. Yet, in the bigger scheme of things he is
the poster child of the tragic pose so clear in the greatest Christmas card of
all time. Go ahead, do what you are
going to do, let it be Christmas, I am sure it will all be disappointing.
I will never forget Charlie Jesmer,
a member and friend we lost this year, calling on the phone and asking if he
could read this story to the children during Advent. My first response was to say no.
Reading a book to children in worship almost never goes well and this is
a rather long book to boot. And then I
tried to remember the story and we chatted.
And what I came to find out is that Charlie didn’t want to read the
whole story per se, he just wanted the kids to hear, really hear Linus recount
the story of Jesus’ birth from Luke.
So that’s what we did. I summarized
how Charlie Brown tried to lead a Christmas play and buy a tree, but everything
fell apart and then he started to read what Linus recounted. As I watched Charlie read it struck me what
he was hoping for: he was hoping the children would hear the Gospel message and
be surprised, find joy in it, be delighted like Charlie Brown was.
Now it would have helped if we had a
miracle Christmas tree that somehow grew from a scrawny, spindly pine to a
noble and full fir tree. Such visual
aids would have helped our kids just as it did the cast of Peanuts. But we didn’t have that.
When our youngest, Dave, brought me
the book of Charlie Brown’s Christmas for a bedtime story a week ago, I
encountered the joy Charlie Jesmer was hoping to convey. Sitting with Dave reading the story through
his eyes I could see a little boy lost in the shuffle, simply trying to see a
bonanza of presents and as much candy as possible, but mostly I saw the hope of
surprise, the joy of what is not seen or expected. Something wonderful is going to happen- that was what he saw and
heard.
Reading the story with David, I was
mindful of what Charlie Brown’s tree had come to mean to me and the memory it
brought was joy. When Kathy and I were
first married and Joshua was almost two we were both in college and had no money,
but we had a tree. It was a scrawny,
spindly pine whose branches buckled beneath the weight of even the slightest
bulb. It was a Charlie Brown tree. This was fine and mildly pathetic until
Joshua tried to climb it. He scrambled
halfway up the tree before physics took over.
Even at 22 months he weighed more than the tree so over they both came
with a crash.
No one was hurt the first time, or
the second time, or the third time. But
what was really surprising was the joy.
The joy we found in this little toe headed footed pajama boy squirming
beneath our Christmas tree with bulbs rolling all about.
We have had some magnificent tree
since. Big trees, expensive trees,
theme tree, but none will ever match the joy of Joshua flopping about under the
Charlie Brown tree not once, but thrice.
None will ever match because we were given the surprise of the great
joy.
As you go home tonight and get ready
for the morning, remember joy never comes from expectations met, but the
surprising event of God’s blessing. You
are so blessed, so beloved for not only do you know of his birth, but of his
life when the child became a man and said, I have come to make your joy
complete. May you find a moment of
surprise and wonder this Christmas that leads to joy. Amen.