What is Christmas all about?
December 14, 2021
I love the Christmas special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas!” It has so many good lessons! My favorite part of the show is when Charlie Brown and Linus go out to purchase a Christmas tree. They have been instructed to get a great, big, shiny, aluminum Christmas tree. Charlie Brown, however, chooses the little wooden tree, about which Linus is surprised that “they still make wooden Christmas trees.” The needles are falling off. There are just a few small branches, yet Charlie Brown is convinced that this is the right tree. He says this tree needs him. He takes the tree back and, without fail, gets ridiculed for having purchased the wrong kind of tree.
Charlie Brown decides he does not really know the reason for Christmas and asks that famous question, which is still pertinent today. “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?” Linus replies that he does and proceeds to tell the story of Jesus’ birth. Afterward, Charlie Brown leaves with his seemingly poor Christmas tree selection. Eventually, everyone follows him and they come to the decision that the tree is not so bad after all. It just needs a bit of love and attention. When they take care of it and decorate the tree, it becomes the most magnificent little tree!
Luke 10:27 contains what are known as the great and second great commands. In Matthew, it is Jesus giving the proclamation. Here in Luke, they are spoken by a lawyer. In this case, the lawyer is trying to figure out the easiest way to get into heaven. Yet, Jesus follows his proclamation (and the subsequent question of “who is my neighbor?”) with the story of the Good Samaritan.
Samaritans and Jews did not get along with each other during Jesus’ day. They hated one another. Yet in the story, as Jesus (a Jew) is telling it, he makes the Samaritan a hero. The priest and Levite, the robbed man’s own countrymen, leave him by the side of the road. Whereas, the man who was hated by all three is the one who comes and gets the injured man and nurses him back to health. The Samaritan even pays for the injured man’s care after he leaves. However, it all began by the Samaritan seeing the value in the humanity of the one left by the side of the road for dead.
Often in our world, there are many who are like the Charlie Brown Christmas tree or the man left on the side of the road. Others see no value in the individual right before their eyes. They are outcasts. Yet, if one person will take the time to choose that one person who has been cast aside and put some effort into showing that individual’s worth in bearing God’s image, it may change the opinion of others as well. Will you be that person?
