Christmas burnout?

(Preached on Jan 2, 2010)

Are you feeling a touch of post-Christmas burnout?

If you are in school, it is the feeling that you’ll have this evening,

when someone says,

“Do you have everything ready for school tomorrow?”

And you think to yourself, “Oh, no, not school again!?!”

If you are a teacher, it is the feeling you’ll have tonight when you think,

“OK, do I have everything ready for class tomorrow?”

Of course, many of us have been back at the office, or on the jobsite for several days already.

Maybe, you hardly had any time off for Christmas.

But regardless of how much vacation you had,

just about all of us get a touch of post-Christmas burnout.

You look around the house, and think about taking down the tree down.

Or maybe you’re still trying to get all of the cardboard boxes into the recycling.

Somewhere, deep down, even as we kept singing, “Christ is born.”

It’s easy to feel of weary, and exhausted right after Christmas.

All of that work, all of that preparation, all of that food, all of that cleaning.

And now what?

Back to the grind?

Back to the same old thing…again?

That’s the worst part about Christmas burnout.

It is that sense that after all of that excitement and celebration and work,

That somehow we return to being stuck in the same old thing,

where life is just one darn thing after another.

This is such a deadly trap, yet so easy to fall into.

It is where life seems like a long endless series of chores

and somehow you are expected to do them all.

But who likes to do chores?

I sure don’t!

When I was a kid, we lived in the mountains, and we heated our house with fire wood.

I don’t know how much wood we actually burned in a winter,

but it was a lot.

Every weekend, we’d go out into the hills behind our house cut down the trees,

chop off all the limbs,

and carve the trunks into firewood size chunks.

But that was just the beginning,

because all those hundreds of pieces of firewood,

had to be schlepped back down the hill,

and stacked in the woodshed.

I remember, looking at a big pile of firewood, freshly cut, and piled up at the head of the trail that led back to our house,

and I’d think to myself, “How in the world are we ever going to get all of this wood into the woodshed! It is going to take forever!!!”

And in that moment a wave of despair would fall down on me, like a cold, wet blanket.

Now, maybe you don’t heat your house with wood,

but have you ever had that experience of feeling deflated, and hopeless about the work that stands before you?

It is depressing, and somehow, the days after Christmas can seem particularly deflating.

After all of the expectation, and preparation, and celebration…and now…blah.

Well, maybe the apostle Timothy was feeling a bit like this when St. Paul wrote to him and said,

“Preach the word, be ready when it is convenient and when it is not convenient…

always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist,

fulfill your calling.”

St. Paul’s’ letter to Timothy is a basically a first century Christian pep-talk.

You see, St. Paul was Timothy’s teacher, mentor, and father in Christ,

and Paul had recently been thrown into prison.

So things were looking pretty bleak for St. Paul,

and by extension, they were looking pretty bleak for Timothy as well.

There were scandals, and divisions, in the Churches that St. Paul had established.

There was treachery, and betrayal, and there were probably at least a million reasons for Timothy to be depressed and downhearted.

In other words Timothy had plenty of good reasons to feel burned out.

But St. Paul says to Timothy,

and he says to all of us,

“rekindle the gift of God that is within you…for God did not give us a spirit of cowards

but a spirit of power and love and self-control.”

St. Paul says to rekindle the Gift of God that is within us.

And that gift is Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the gift that God gives to us on Christmas,

the Only Begotten Son of God the Father comes into our world,

comes into our lives,

comes to us right now as a gift.

Yet, as wonderful as Christmas is, that is not the end of the story.

Jesus Christ doesn’t merely come to us as a beautiful infant, lying away in the manger.

Yes, Christ comes into this world on His glorious nativity.

And that is a tremendous gift.

But Christ is God’s gift that keeps on giving.

Even the best gifts that we gave and received a week ago,

can grow old and stale, be used up, or simply lose their relevance.

You get a fancy box of European chocolates,

the kind where each one is wrapped up in pretty foil,

and they are filled with all of these creamy, crunchy bits.

But, soon, you eat them and they are gone.

Or, maybe you get the coolest smart-phone on the market,

and it does all of these amazing things.

But in six months or a year, something else will come out and your phone won’t be special anymore.

Or, maybe you get a stack of books.

And then you dive into them, and they are really interesting, and great to read,

but sooner or later, they have all been read.

But the gift of Jesus Christ is never used up,

Christ never becomes dated or irrelevant.

Jesus Christ has come into this world as an infant, born to the Virgin Mary,

and He is coming to us as a man, teaching and preaching the good news of our salvation.

And we look forward to that celebration in a few short days on the glorious feast of Theophany.

For Christ is always with us,

always increasing His presence in our lives,

always surprising us with new gifts of mercy and love and truth.

This is why St. Paul talks about rekindling the gift of God.

If you have ever heated your house with firewood, you are intimately familiar with re-kindling a fire.

The night before, the fire was good and hot,

a blazing hearth that warmed the whole house.

But through the course of the night, that fire burns down,

and when you wake up the house is cold, and you are cold.

And you look at the remains of the fire, and mostly it is just cold, gray ashes.

But then, as fish around in the ashes with the fire poker,

you discover that the fire has not burned out,

deep down under the ashes, there are a few hot coals.

So, you carefully scrape them together, and gently blow on them.

And as you do, the edges start to glow, and with a few more gentle breaths, they start to get hot.

And then you put a few small pieces of kindling over those coals,

and with a bit more coaxing, the kindling smokes and then bursts into flame,

and your fire has come back to life.

And it gives you heat, and light and all the goodness of being warm on a cold winter day.

Rekindle the gift of God within us.

It might seem like we are burned out, but we are not!

The gift of God, Jesus Christ, is still within us.

The fire may have burned down, but it has not burned out.

Today we remember the great St. Seraphim of Sarov,

a man who was on fire with the love of God in Jesus Christ.

and perhaps the most beloved saint of the Russian Church.

But the amazing thing about his life is that it was so simple.

He was a monk, who went out to live in the forest as a hermit,

and every day of this life, he put all his focus on the gift of Jesus Christ,

the gift that God had given him.

He carried the scriptures with him wherever he went,

and he would read the entire new Testament every week.

And at the heart of everything that he did, and all the wonders that surround his life,

was the Gift of God, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

But St. Seraphim’s life wasn’t just all gold and incense, and shining with the uncreated light.

He had immense struggles, and faced constant temptation.

But St. Seraphim led a life of continuously rekindling the fire of the love of God in his heart.

So, if you find yourself feeling a little burned out,

close your eyes for a minute, and think back to Christmas.

Think of one truly wonderful moment in the course of all that celebration.

Was it the joy of giving a gift to someone that made them happy?

Was it the joy and excitement of looking forward to a new gift?

Was it the warmth and hope of having your family sit down together at the table?

Maybe it wasn’t even this year.

Maybe it was something you remember from ten years ago.

Picture it in your mind, and then focus on Jesus Christ.

For Christ is the gift and Christ is the source of that joy,

and ask Him to help you rekindle that fire of divine love.

If you were thinking about the joy of giving someone else a gift,

then go out and give someone a gift.

It doesn’t have to be big, and it certainly doesn’t have to be Christmas.

Just go out and give something to someone.

If you were thinking about the joy and excitement of looking forward to opening a present,

then begin each day with that same sense of expectation.

For each day Christ is giving us something, new, something wonderful,

something beyond our expectations.

If you were thinking about the joy of sitting around the table with family,

then invite people over for a meal.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal, serve them a big bowl of hot soup, and a piece of bread,

and share the love of Christ with everyone in your home.

Rekindle the love of God in your heart.

With a regular fire that you use for heat or for cooking,

you constantly rekindle it,

day after day, after day.

And it is always basically the same.

But the amazing thing about the love of God,

is that every time it is rekindled, it burns hotter and brighter than before.

So today if you feel a little cold, a little weary, a little lifeless,

remember that the fire may have burned down,

but it has not burned out.

For the gift of God is still within each one of us.

Jesus Christ is still within each one of us.

Rekindle the gift that is within you.

Rekindle your love for God.

Rekindle your love for Jesus Christ.

And as you do, the warming, hopeful, joyful fire of God’s love,

will burn ever more brightly in your heart.

Amen.