Monday, December 2, 2024

Read Psalm 51

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Matthew 23:25-26

Years ago, on Christmas Eve morning, my father made his way out of his room and into our living room. He asked my brother and I, “Where’s the Christmas tree?” We hadn’t set one up. We told him we didn’t have one, nor did we have the money for one. He handed us some cash and told me to drive to the tree lot and pick one up.

Brad and I loaded into my 1982 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme and drove to the Christmas tree lot. Since it was Christmas Eve, there wasn’t much left. (Cue the Charlie Brown music). Thankfully we found one that was able to fit into the trunk of the car. With trunk barely latched, we drove back to the house to set the tree up.

While setting the tree into its base we discovered that we only had one screw to hold the tree in place. Necessity is the mother of invention. Dad’s words, “well, figure it out,” moved us to get some rope. We tied the rope around the tree and then attached the rope to the wall. Viola! A straight standing Christmas tree! We set to decorating the tree.

Later that evening when Becki and her sister stopped over to visit, they were both aghast that my brother and I only decorated the front of the tree. “You can’t do that!” they said. To which we replied, “Why not? No one will be walking around the tree. See, this rope is holding it up!” You can imagine the following conversation, but at that point my father walked out and asked why these young women were in our home decorating our rope-suspended-Christmas tree.

The tree looked wonderful when they were finished; even the rope was hardly visible. While this true story is of a wholly other kind in relation to our Lord’s words, there is overlap for us in this Advent season. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for only dealing with the external appearance of their dirty dishes. Let’s not be a people who only decorate the front of the tree but be those who clean the inside of the cup. Let’s make use of Advent to purify our hearts so that our Christmas Celebration is about truly clean hearts and wholly decorated trees.

Collect:  Lord Jesus, Master Carpenter of Nazareth, on the Cross through wood and nails you wrought our full salvation: Wield well your tools in this, your workshop, that we who come to you rough-hewn may be fashioned into a truer beauty by your hand; who with the Father and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God, world without end. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p 668)

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

Clean hearts, decorated trees, and friends whose encouragement helps us.

+Bishop Darryl

PRAYER FOCUS:  Pray for a true preparation for Christmas