Christmas Message

I had a lot of anxiety about giving this message because perhaps a lot of you have never really thought about the meaning of Christmas before or have any idea what this day is all about. In Japan, perhaps Christmas is a day when you go out and eat cake or Kentucky Fried Chicken. Or maybe Christmas is a day whenyou go out with your favorite people at see the lights at the Pageant of Starlight.

Christians have a different kind of Pageant of Starlight. In the weeks leading up to Christmas we light these 4 candles to represent our waiting and anticipation. And on Christmas day we light a fifth candle to celebrate His birth. We`ve just heard the Christmas story read by volunteers and we lit a candle for each portion of the story.

Each candle represents something that we think about during this time of the year. The first candle represents Hope. Hope comes first because unless we have hope we can`t be ready to receive all the good things that life has to offer.

The first reading we heard talked about the prediction of the birth of Jesus. Neither Mary of Joseph had any idea what this unexpected pregnancy meant for their lives or for the world. Joseph was planning to divorce Mary after the baby was born. But, their faith in God gave them hope and the will to continue with their plans despite whatever fears they had.

Maybe you can think of something in your life that scares you. Maybe you`re afraid you won`t graduate or that you won`t be able to find a job or a girlfriend. Whatever that thing is that scares you, if you don`t at least have hope that you might accomplish your goal then it becomes that much more impossible to succeed.

The second candle represents Peace. In the U.S., and perhaps other parts of the world as well, Christmas is one of the only times of year that families gather together. Growing up, I lived in Nor Ca with my mom and my dad worked in Los Angeles during theyear. And so Christmas would be the one time of year when my dad could get 2 weeks of vacation from work and we could spend the holidays together as a family. On Christmas Day we would go visit my father`s side of the family and have dinner together. My father`s family doesn`t live that far away but we never really get together during the year. There are old arguments and disagreements that were never resolved in my family, which I`m sure is true in others as well. Yet on this one day out of the year we all come from far away to share a meal together as a family.

In life there can be even greater differences that divide us. It could be the language that we speak or just the fact that we attend different universities. But this center is one of the few places where there are so many different people together in one place. Sometimes we have disagreements or differences in character but we can all pretty much agree that this is an amazing place or otherwise I don`t think you`d be here. If we didn`t all try to make an effort to be accepting of those differences then I don`t think this center could exist.

The third candle represents Joy. Christmas is a time of celebration when we eat large feasts and give one another presents. But it`s also a time when we can celebrate the things that we already have.

In our family we would take the artificial Christmas tree out of its storage space and put it up in our living room. Then, we decorate it with ornaments that we had collected over the years. Every year my mom and I would each go to the department store and choose an ornament that best represented something good that happened over the year. When Iwas in 5th grade, I played flute in the school band and so my ornament was a glass angel playing a flute. The year we bought a new car, we found a little ornament of Santa Claus driving a car. It was a chance for us to be grateful for the blessings we had received over the year.

Christians celebrate the gift that we received in the form of this little baby born to ordinary people in a tiny manger with the sheep. Shepherds and Kings from far away lands came to give gifts to this tiny baby and so every year we give Christmas presents so that we can celebrate the joy of this day. I received a Christmas present in the mail last week. The package arrived from the Women`s Fellowship of a church in Hawaii. I`ve never visited this church and I don`t know any of its members and yet they thought of me and found out my address so they could send a package halfway across the world. This reminded me of maybe the most important part of Christmas, the forth candle. It represents Love.

Of course, there are many different kinds of love but the love that we talk about at Christmas time is the love we have for people we`ve never even met. In the final passage from the Bible we hear. All of these people were coming from different places talking about this baby. What I like about this passage is that it talks about how Mary felt when she received these gifts. She knew that her baby was special but she couldn`t have possibly imagined the celebration that his birth would bring hope to so many people, or that wise men from distant lands would bring gifts to her small family in peace, or that there would be so much joy and celebration. Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.

At Christmas time I always like to think about all of the blessings that I`ve received over the year. It was a blessing to me that I had this chance to be in Japan with all of you. It is a blessing that I have a family who loves and cares about me even though I`m far away. I had no idea that I would have all of the wonderful experiences I`ve had over the past (almost) two years. Or that this opportunity would be provided by church members all over the U.S. who donate money to support my activities and the work of this student center.

And maybe that`s what Christmas is all about, not the gifts that you will receive but the ones you already have.

After the offering we`ll be singing a song called Magnificat which is Mary's song where she sings about her joy for this new blessing in her life. It's a song of joy and a song of thanksgiving.

And Mary said:
My soul glorifies the Lord
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For he has been mindful
Of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
For the Mighty One has done great
Things for me—Holy is His name.

December Sycamore Tree

Recently, I walked down to a dam near my house. I was told that there was salmon swimming upstream trying to cross the dam. So, me and a couple of my neighbors got together and woke up early before work to walk to the river. We must have sat there for over 30 minutes watching the fish as they writhed and jumped out of the water. Some of the salmon fell in their attempts but they continued to struggle against the current.

Later that week, I went back to the river by myself. There was a large group of young men in rubber suits and another older man explaining how on both sides of the river there were more gradual gradations that were constructed so that the fish could go around water that was falling quickly down the dam. I walked a little bit farther down to where the JR and shinkansen tracks cross the river and found there were fish in this part of the river as well, swimming up to where other fish were trying to cross the dam. Eventually, I began to get hungry and, inspired by images of fish in their own daily efforts to survive, I decided to go home and eat something vegetarian for breakfast.

I’ve seen similar images on television of salmon being stalked and eaten by grizzly bears in the rivers of Alaska but this was the first time I had ever seen this kind of event in nature so close to where I live. I started to think about all of the other miraculous things that are probably happening around us if we only get up early in the morning and go looking for them.