Scholars who study such things are quick to tell anyone who will listen that Christmas is much overrated as a church festival. If you ask the average person (even the average churchgoer) what the most important Christian festivals are, they will probably answer "Christmas and Easter," and most likely in that order. But, the scholars will point out, they are not even close in theological significance, Easter, with its empty tomb, being the primary reason there is Christianity. There are a number of celebrations that should be higher on the totem pole than Christmas. How about the other two days of the Easter Triduum: Maundy Thursday and Good Friday? Are not the institution of the Eucharist and the commemoration of Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross of the utmost importance? How about Pentecost, the birthday of the church with the coming of the Holy Spirit? And we can go down the list, finally arriving at Christmas, a mere birthday, and not even on the right date at that.

So is our Christmas celebration merely an acquiescence to cultural norms? Were those churches that cancelled their Christmas celebrations a few years ago when December 25 fell on Sunday on the right track after all? The lesson from the short book of Titus summarizes, it seems to me, some of the profound theological reasons we are right to be here tonight. I would like to look together at these verses and then reflect on them in the light of what is probably the most popular secular Christmas tale in the English language.

One commentary indicated that this passage is "difficult and generally ignored," a statement that could not be farther from the truth. In fact, if you Google Titus 2:11-13, you will find thousands of references because these verses so often show up in statements of faith or purpose statements of local churches and Christian organizations. They are a succinct summary of some of the apostle Paul's most basic teaching. (The issue of whether or not this letter, along with 1 and 2 Timothy, is in fact from Paul's pen or from a later redactor is irrelevant for the purposes of this message.) It is fascinating that the text refers to the birth of Jesus as the "appearing" of the grace of God. When the Second Person of the Trinity became a human being, he made the loving-kindness of God an overarching theme of both testaments, visible in a way that could not be misinterpreted. To paraphrase one of William Barclay's memorable sayings, when we see Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, or forgiving the reprobate, we cannot help but think to ourselves, "So this is what God is like."

The birth of Jesus in a particular culture at a certain time in history makes the nature of God unmistakable. As 2 Timothy says, in the incarnation, what could be a remote and almost incomprehensible doctrine becomes concrete: "This grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus ..." (2 Timothy 1:9-10). Is this not the same as the poetic teaching of John 1:14: "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth"?

The word translated as "appeared" forms the root of our English term "epiphany," which we use to denote the season of the church year describing Christ's appearing to and recognition by the nations. It's a strong word that could be used to describe the sunrise, for example. So it carries the connotation — again suggested in John 1 — of the light shining in darkness, of something that reveals truth and makes clear. "Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light, and usher in the morning." And this image of the sunrise underscores the inclusivity of God's act in Jesus Christ, "bringing salvation to all ..." This echoes Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that our Father in heaven "makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous," just as he makes salvation available to all.

Our lesson begins with the connecting word "for," clearly indicating that this passage relates to what has preceded it in this little book. The book of Titus, in some ways similar to James and 1 John, puts emphasis on us as Christians incarnating the grace of God that became incarnate in Jesus. We need to practice what we believe. This theme is found over and over again both by way of terms like "godliness" (found two times), "good deeds" or "good works" (found four times), and by lists of moral qualities that characterize godly leadership and behavior (three times [cf Titus 1:1, 6-9, 16; 2:1-10, 14; 3:1-3, 8, 14]). For a book of three short chapters, this is a lot! So the grace of God is made known in Jesus Christ so that we can live godly and productive lives. And how are we to go about this? "... training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly...."

The aspect of training is one of Paul's themes, which tends to get overlooked in many Christian circles because it clearly carries with it overtones of work and discipline, which some of us rather like to ignore in favor of concepts of "pure grace" and "gifts without price." But we can't get around it. Two things are worth noting. First from whence does this training come? It comes from the grace of God that has appeared. So the pure, unmerited grace of God, given as a gift without price, is meant to accomplish something which requires training. And the term used here has its root in the term for "child" (paidia). It literally means to "train a child, to educate, to bring up." God's grace, on the one hand personified in the life and ministry of Jesus, is also manifested in the Spirit of Jesus in the process of spiritual growth. So the past appearing of God in Christ Jesus is also present in the enabling process of Christian maturation. Our celebration of Christmas should never have been a mere historical remembrance of the birth of a great religious teacher but is a recognition of the way that God works in our lives today.

Christmas is one of those seasons when we are aware of the perils of giving and receiving gifts. Most of us have held onto some gift because we know we should even though we never actually wanted it and have not used it. The wedding vase that is brought out of storage only when Aunt Clara visits; the tie worn only under duress since it was a Father's Day gift. And most of us have dealt with the obvious lie of, "It's just what I wanted," as our clearly unwelcome gift is unwrapped. Titus reminds us that the gift of God's grace carries with it positive and negative aspects, and when we are honest with ourselves we may acknowledge that some aspects are more wanted than others.

The positive aspect is that we are enabled — if we stay with the training regimen — to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, characteristics that even the greatest reprobate would admire. But arriving at these characteristics (like arriving at my ideal weight) takes some effort, and this could be considered the negative part of this message: "training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions...." Impiety, a disregard for God and God's will for our lives, is easier than it sounds in our world. Those of us who struggle every year with the proper way to celebrate Christmas — how much of what is too much, when does Christ really get squeezed out, and so on — know that being impious is not always a conscious choice. The title of Stephen Carter's prescient 1994 book says at lot in this regard: Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion. So impiety is not limited to the village atheist; it is a very real possibility that dogs us all. And what about the worldly passions business?

Is Paul suggesting here that we strip off all our jewelry, have women put their hair in buns, and have men adopt plain clothes? By one understanding of "worldly," that of the Amish for example, that makes sense. But Paul's word here is both less particular and more global. A more literal translation than "worldly" would be "cosmic," meaning that vast system of human affairs that represents "the way things are," the "conventional wisdom of the world," about the ways lives are lived, compromises that need to be made and that which is really of ultimate value outside of Sunday school. It is spelled out in Ephesians 6:10-12: "Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places."

This is the great theme of the book of Revelation when it is not clouded with fantastic science fiction and Left Behind series' overlays: that in this present age, while the ultimate victory of God is assured by the death of Christ, this world is still locked in a struggle between those who are faithful to God and those who are seduced by Satan who seems to be the ruler of this world. (See for example John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; 17:15-17; 2 Corinthians 4:4.) There is that marvelous scene in Revelation 18 where, at the consummation of history, not everyone is happy. The scene describes political leaders and economic magnates mourning the downfall of the Whore of Babylon. The merchants of earth weep over their loss of trade, and there is a very revealing bill of lading found in verses 11-13 showing their sorely misdirected priorities. First on the list are gold, silver, jewels, and pearls, and it continues with costly decor, spices, and food products. Bringing up the rear — dead last in fact — are "human lives."

The Whore of Babylon, the cosmic powers of this present age had gotten it exactly wrong. Their priorities were the mirror image of God's priorities where human life and welfare are of the ultimate value. (If anyone doubts that this is a contemporary issue, they might want to reread Harvey Cox's article, "The Market as God," in The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 283, Number 3, March, 1999, pp. 18-23.) This is what Paul means by "worldly." And in Titus, as in Revelation, it is this knowledge of God's desire and the assurance that God's will prevails in the end that provides our motivation: "... training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

A couple of weeks ago (Advent 2), we noted that one of the traditional themes of Advent is tying together the past, present, and future dimensions of Christ's appearing (advent) in the world. The lesson from Titus reinforces that message in the life of the believer: God's grace has been given in the past birth of Jesus; the work of God in "tutoring" us in Christian growth in the present is motivated by our assurance that in the end God's purposes will prevail. This knowledge can make us "zealous for good deeds" (Titus 2:14).

I am not so out of touch to be unaware that when one mentions past, present, and future on Christmas Eve, the first thing that will flash into many people's minds is not the theological trajectory of the Advent season, but the Ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future in Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol. It is conventional for preachers to point out that while he attended the Anglican Church, Dickens' personal beliefs seemed more of the Unitarian variety and that one should not expect too much real theology in this work, often dismissed as an idealization of Victorian Christmases. But why then its enormous popularity, even among Christians? I would suggest it is because in its own somewhat (but not totally) secularized version of things, it is in synch with the gospel summary in this epistle lesson.

Ebenezer Scrooge was certainly an individual who needed a change of heart:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

It was an act of grace that motivated the nighttime visit of Marley's ghost to Scrooge. I am not suggesting Dickens necessarily had God's grace in mind, but he could have — for Marley's ghost came to warn Scrooge of the fate that waited for him if he did not change his ways. When Scrooge tried to compliment him for being good at business, the spirit let him know in no uncertain terms that his priorities had been all wrong:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. "At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?" Business! cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.

Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business! It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. At this time of the rolling year, the spectre said, I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?

Is he not confessing in Pauline language that he had been seduced by the "cosmic powers of this present darkness" which got everything wrong? Can we not hear echoes of Revelation 18 and Ephesians 6? And, of course, the desired effect of the various nocturnal visitors was accomplished. After promising Bob Cratchit an increased salary and help for his struggling family, Dickens wrote:

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him. Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

Dickens knew that in this "present age" people who are transformed from bad to good (if not to self-controlled, upright, and godly) will be the butt of jokes, but that it won't matter. After the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Future, with the specter of his own miserable death, Scrooge resolved, "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach." As people of the book, we do not need ghostly visitors to show us a glimpse of the future because, "We wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

As we celebrate the magnificent appearing of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, beginning with the startling appearance of a star over Bethlehem but blossoming into a glorious sunrise enlightening the whole world, we see there is indeed a lot of theology at Christmas. And by resonating with those themes, Dickens' A Christmas Carol has made this theology accessible to those who would never open a Bible on their own. Because of what God has done in the past, and since we know the ultimate shape of the future, these texts call us to live transformed and generous lives in the present. Amen.