aAdvent 2 ~ December 9, 2007 ~ A sermon preached by The Rev’d Erl G. Purnell at Old St. Andrew’s Church, Bloomfield, CT

Isaiah 11.1-10; Psalm 72.1-7, 18-19; Romans 15.4-13; Matthew 3.1-12

Along the southern coast of present-day Turkey, lies the small town of Patara in Lycia. Patara was captured by Alexander the Great’s armies as they moved eastward in their conquests during the 3^rd century before Christ.

By the 2^nd century of the common era, Patara had emerged as a major seaport. Among the successful residents were a devout Christian couple who had a son. They taught the boy to love God and Christ. Sadly, the boy’s parents died in an epidemic that swept the area and left the child an orphan. His name? Nicholas.

Nicholas dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Nicholas used his substantial inheritance to support the poor and downtrodden in his congregation and community. Extraordinarily generous, Nicholas especially loved children. He also had a fascination with ships, sailors, and the sea. During his lifetime, Nicholas was revered by his people.

Nicholas, however, and many other Christians along with him, were despised by the Roman Emperor, Diocletian. An autocrat who rejuvenated the Roman Empire economically and militarily, Diocletian, beginning in 303, systematically persecuted and tortured Christians, sending as many as 3,500 to their deaths. He gave instructions for Christian scriptures and places of worship to be destroyed. He strictly forbade Christians to gather for worship. After a disastrous fire broke out in the royal palace and revolts occurred in Asia Minor, Diocletian arrested all priests and bishops. He ordered them to make sacrifices to pagan gods, which, of course, was apostasy to the faithful.

After Diocletian stepped down in 305, Galerius, in the Eastern Roman Empire, continued the persecutions until 311 when he had a change of heart and, from his deathbed, issued a general edict of toleration for Christians. Nicholas somehow survived these awful persecutions.

The ministry of the Church in those times included social, political, as well as religious concerns. The leadership of the bishop was critical to the welfare of the faithful. Nicholas’ popularity grew because of his devoted leadership, but also because of his generosity and care for his flock.

As a Christian bishop, however, Nicholas was quite intolerant of pagans. Tradition says that he destroyed the temple of Artemus in Myra. He was also intolerant of Christian Arians. Arians were those Christians who believed in a single godhead; that Jesus, although an exceptional person and inspired by God, was not himself divine and co-eternal. Although revisionist church history today might disagree, Arianism was actually orthodox theology at the time, while attributing divinity to Jesus was a heresy promulgated by Athanasius and other Trinitarians.

Concerned about the controversy surrounding the divinity of Jesus, Emperor Constantine invited all bishops to a council in Nicea (a part of present-day Turkey) to settle, once and for all, the nature of God, including the relationship of God to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. The outcome of that council in 325 is expressed in the Nicene Creed which some of us recite during worship. In it, God is understood as one in three persons. Nicholas was surely among those who voted for the Trinitarian position.

Nicholas is said to have died on December 6^th in the year 343. He was buried in the cathedral church at Myra. The anniversary of Nicholas’ death quickly became a time of remembrance and celebration.

For centuries stories about Nicholas’ concern for children and the poor were told, most probably apocryphal. There are stories of Nicholas calmly praying during a storm at sea on his way back from Jerusalem, saving his people from famine, and even bringing three murdered boys back to life. Nicholas continued to inspire for centuries after his death.

So, a question we might ask, is “How did this saintly character become the red-suited, roly-poly Santa Claus?” Curiously, Nicholas’ popularity in Europe was such that the Vikings named their Greenland cathedral in his honor and Columbus named a harbor in Haiti after him. The city of Jacksonville, Florida was first called St. Nicholas Ferry.

Nicholas’ good start in north America, however, did not last long. The Protestant and Puritan English would have little to do with him. Remember last week, when I said that Christmas wasn’t celebrated much by the Puritans until the mid-19^th century? Germans in Pennsylvania, however, brought their traditions with them, including St. Nicholas. This, in turn, spread to Philadelphia. Then, on December 6, 1810, the first St. Nicholas Day festival was held in New York. Quoting now from a website dedicated to St. Nicholas, “John Pintard commissioned artist Alexander Anderson to create the first American image of Nicholas for the occasion. Nicholas was shown in a gift-giving role with children’s treats in stockings hanging at a fireplace. Imagine that! The accompanying poem ends, ‘Saint Nicholas, my dear good friend! To serve you ever was my end, If you will, now, me something give, I'll serve you ever while I live.’”

Then, in 1823, tradition says, “A Visit From St. Nicholas” was penned by Clement Moore, a professor of biblical languages at the Episcopal General Theological Seminary in New York. “‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.” Several lines later, Moore describes St. Nicholas this way: “He had a broad face and a round little belly, that shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly. He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf…”

Better known now as “The Night Before Christmas”, the image of St. Nicholas began to change. By 1881 Thomas Nast had firmly established the plump elf-like character smoking a pipe and carrying an arm-load of toys. The American version of St. Nicholas continued evolving year by year—showing up on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post and as pitch-man for Coca-Cola—until today Santa Claus is a mere caricature of the saintly Nicholas, bishop of Myra.

What are we to make of this transformation of St. Nicholas into Santa Claus? What difference does it make? Who cares?

Most of you know that I’m not wildly excited about the commercialization of Christmas. There is such a dis-connect between celebrating the birth of Jesus and selling everything from iPods to Lincolns. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate the idea of associating Nicholas with generosity and gift-giving. It seems the guy was an incredibly wonderful person who really had his priorities in line. The problem is that we forget what Nicholas’ beneficence actually meant. It meant that people who were poor or destitute or hungry or orphaned were cared for by the church. It did not mean that the well-off piled more and more goodies into their coffers. It wasn’t about conspicuous consumption or one-upping the Jones. Nicholas was about Christian charity!

You won’t be surprised, however, that I think the excessive gift-giving at Christmas and the focus on commercialism relegates the notion of Jesus coming into the world—the face of God among us—as being a minor footnote to the holiday. Personally, the realization that God is present in the world—expressed by a child’s birth in a stable somewhere in Galilee 2,000 years ago—is actually a pretty big deal.

Oh that we might bring New Light to the world as that child did! That we might BE the Light of Christ everyday. That, in the small things—things like courtesy, generosity, kindness, and thoughtfulness—we might BE the spirit of Christ as Nicholas of Myra was in his day. You and I, we’re actually not much different than Nicholas, for, you see, he was a regular person and never officially made a saint by the church.

Amen.       

 http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=38
 http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=35
Wikipedia (St. Nicholas, Arianism, Constantine)

Copyright © 2007.  Erl G. Purnell
All rights reserved.