First Presbyterian Church                                                              Pastor Sue Nageotte

Salt Lake City, Utah                                                                        Nov. 19, 2006

“Let the Holiday Stress Begin!”

Psalm 107 (selected verses); Mark 13:1-8

I.    Introduction:    Mixed Emotions in the Holidays

Welcome to the Sunday before Thanksgiving!    Get ready, get set:   if you haven’t felt it already, the annual season of holiday stress is right around the corner and coming at us like a freight train!

On the one hand:   people look forward to spending time with their families, sharing laughter, warmth, caring, and good food.  The Thanksgiving holiday in America has traditionally been a time set aside for reflecting on and rejoicing in the many blessings that God has so graciously provided.   It’s a time for renewing relationships, for gratitude, for renewing relationships in the warm relaxed feeling brought about by stomachs that have been stretched too full of turkey, stuffing and pie. 

And for a great many people, Thanksgiving marks the beginning of a wonderful, special season. one of our family traditions when I was very young was that on the Sunday after Thanksgiving Mom gave each of us a little Advent calendar – you know, those little charts with flaps you lift up, that serve as a count-down to Christmas – and even though we weren’t supposed to start using them until the first of December, we had them and were already looking forward to the excitement of Christmas.   

But on the other hand, few seasons in the year can raise so many anxieties.  It isn’t hard to understand why.  

Money is a big factor:    The advertising industry wants us to think that all we need to do is spend money and we will enjoy life to the full.   And we do want to enjoy the season, and to give nice presents to the people we love . . . and so, many people will pay for these pleasures by means of MasterCard, Visa and Discover, and will still be paying for Christmas next summer, making monthly payments at 17 or 19 or 23 percent interest.

Relationships can be strained; couples often have differing expectations, differing traditions.   I still remember in the early days of our marriage, proudly making sweet potatoes just the way my mother did only to hear my husband asking wistfully,  “where’s the melted marshmallow topping?”   More serious are competing expectations of whether we will spend the holidays with this set of in-laws or that one, or giving ‘equal time’ where there has been a divorce, or trying to figure out a way to visit everybody so that nobody’s feelings get hurt. 

Sometimes these are expectations we place on ourselves.  For women especially, we feel responsible for ensuring that our families truly do have wonderful, memorable holidays. So we push ourselves to not only maintain our regular work schedules and household and parenting responsibilities, but decorating and entertaining, cooking and cleaning far over and above the norm. 

& for many, the holidays are filled with painful memories, sorrow and regret . . . people we have hurt badly or who have hurt us . . . loved ones who are far away, perhaps serving in dangerous places . . . friends and family who won’t be present at our holiday table because of grave illness or the effects of aging . . . or we are anxious about unresolved conflicts between husband and wife, parent and child, that can erupt in cutting words and icy glares around something as small as who got the bigger slice of pumpkin pie.

II.    Trouble comes to everyone; Psalm 107

Of course people have these kinds of  troubles all through the year, but it can be particularly distressing during the holidays.    We want to get along wonderfully with our families; we want to be generous and to feel grateful.  But what if our life experience isn’t matching up to the sentimental ideal that is given to us by the advertising industry . . . or, let’s be honest, the ideal so often held up to us by Christian writers?

Let’s listen to wisdom from Scripture, in Psalm 107.   (Read the selection)

“Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.   Let the redeemed of the Lord tell their story - those he redeemed from the hand of the foe.” The large context here  - the big topic of the Psalm - is God’s redeeming love, saving the nation of Israel.   Psalm 107 acknowledges that trouble comes to all people - no “glossing over” or denying that –  but over and beyond the trouble, we see the larger story of God:  God who cares, God who waits, God who cares.  

If we were to read the entire Psalm, we would see that it describes four specific situations, all of them life-threatening.  Let’s look at them briefly.

Verse 4:   Some wandered in the desert places, finding no way to a city where they could settle.  They were hungry and thirsty and their lives ebbed away.    We might call these the restless ones, ones who cannot settle down.  There are many like this today,  wandering from place to place, from job to job, from relationship to relationship, from church to church, always looking but never finding something that will truly satisfy their deepest needs. 

Verse 10: Some sat in darkness, in utter darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains.

These have been hostile to God - rebellious - ignorant and disobedient.  So they are enslaved in sin, in bondage, in spiritual darkness and unaware of why they suffer. 

Verse 17 – this was not in the reading today – says that some suffered from terrible afflictions and were sick in body and sick in spirit, sick to the point that they did not even want to eat and were wasting away.

Verse 23 tells us that not even the most adventuresome and ambitious risk-takers, those who seek to make their own fortune, are immune from trouble.  They went on the sea in ships; they were merchants on the mighty waters.    They were the movers and shakers and adventuresome ones . . . but trouble came to them, too, as the storm came and the great waves tossed their ships about like straw.  And in their peril, their courage melted away.

Four kinds of danger.  Four kinds of people.  But in every case, the psalmist tells us “They cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress.  Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love, and his wonderful deeds for humankind.”

III.      An Opportunity to Remember Our True Condition

Troubles and stresses are occasions for us to remember our true relationship to God.  We have been given many gifts and abilities; we have been given a certain freedom of choice.  But when all is said and done, we are always and only dependent creatures.    We are not all-powerful, all-knowing, all capable.   All too often, we go through life hardly thinking of God at all.   When things go smoothly, we have a tendency to take God’s blessings lightly, wanting more and more and more.  We are much like the little boy who was given an orange by a vendor in a fresh air market. The boy’s mother asked, “What do you say to the nice man?”  The little boy thought a moment and handed the orange back, saying “Now peel it for me.”

But when the storms of life come – as indeed, they will come – then, in our trouble, we remember that we are needy, weak, and frail.  Whatever our circumstances, God hears us and is ready to restore us.   And more than just hearing us, God meets us in the very midst of our trouble, knowing our pain, lifting our burdens.  This is the good news of the incarnation:  God in Jesus Christ came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves:   to break the ultimate bonds of sin and death.   What can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus?  Nothing whatever.   We know this, and hold fast to this promise.

IV.    Conclusion:   We must bear witness to God’s faithfulness.

But – what about those who do not know?   What about those who are still wandering, still questioning, still burdened and confused and fearful and trying to do everything they can possibly do to find safety and security?    How will they know of God’s loving kindness, unless we speak?    

Harriet was an atheist. One morning she & a Christian lady-friend stepped out into the glories of a beautiful fall morning. As Harriet saw the brilliant sun peaking through the haze, & the frost on the meadow, & the brightly colored leaves making their way lazily to the ground, she was filled with the beauty & said, "I am so thankful. I’m just so grateful for it all."  And her believing friend asked quietly, "Grateful to whom, my dear?"  

At that instant Harriet changed from an atheist  to an agnostic.   She went from being certain that there was no divine Creator, to being unsure and open to learning more from her friend.   So let the redeemed of the Lord say so – talk about it!  Let us give thanks to the Lord for his wonderful deeds - talk about it! 

The holiday season is just ahead - oh yes!    Bringing many opportunities to connect with neighbors, to re-connect with family.     Whatever your holiday season brings - whether it is wonderful, warm, refreshing, tense or exhausting or all of the above - all these are opportunities to remember and praise God.  When things are stressful, call upon the Lord in your distress.  When things are delightful, rejoice in the Lord.   But in all things . . .  Take the opportunity to tell others about God’s unfailing love, shown most especially in the love of Jesus.

So let the holiday stress begin!