Last night I watched a Christmas special with Aubrey.

It’s one I hadn’t seen since I was a kid, called “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”. TV and movies have a way of making it look so easy to overcome monsters and evil. They work really hard to get you scared about some awful thing, and then I’m always a little surprised at how easy it is for the hero to escape the horrible creature.

This one had a particularly ridiculous transformation. Watch how easily Kris Kringle, the young Santa Clause, gets out of trouble here… (And just so you know, I am not advocating Santa Clause OR this “Winter Warlock” guy…I just want to make a point.) [CLICK]

Oh, if only this was what the real world was like!

We could open a Toys ‘R Us wherever terrorists lived and the world would be a happy place.

But the truth is, the world we live in has real evil. And while perhaps our Christmas stories and specials and fables dance around true evil in the world, while we may look at Christmas through snow-tinted hallmark eyes…the bible does not.

The bible shows the world as it is: a world where corrupt power zealously guards its own position, and seeks to suppress or kill any threat to its domination.

The world Jesus was born into was ruled by a man with an iron grip on power. Herod was not the kind of man who would melt and change just from getting a toy choo-choo. [READ Matt. 2: 1-18]

This isn’t a part of the story we often tell in our warm Christmas moments.

But it is part of the story…because Jesus wasn’t born into some fairy tale world where evil is easily overcome. Jesus was born into this world, into our world.

Matthew 2 reminds us that there are two kingdoms at war. One is the kingdom of Herod and corrupt power. The other is the kingdom of God, choosing to break into our world in poverty and humility.

What Matthew tells us about Herod matches well with what we know about him from other sources outside the bible.

He was ruthless, killing a wife and sons in order to keep his hold on the throne. He was shrewd, rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem to please the Jews. Like most kings, he lived a life of luxury and wealth.

To a world of power and wealth, even the meek coming of Jesus as a baby is a threat that must be slaughtered. Herod is a vivid demonstration of that.

I looked this week at some of the classical paintings depicting the slaughter of the innocents. It makes your stomach ache to think of the horrific thing Herod did, killing innocent babies in his attempt to keep his throne.

We should make no mistake about the ruthlessness of the kingdom of the world we live in. Herod really is just one example of what we are up against.

Christmas isn’t just a good, heart-warming story. God is breaking into our world, confronting the powers of evil that want to own us.

Matthew shows us that God can overcome the worst that the kingdom of the world can throw at us.

Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father, listens to God’s direction through a dream, and Herod is defeated.

Herods appear in our world today, and they take on all kinds of appearances. This journey of Advent Conspiracy reminds us of one way Herod-like evil appears in our world.

Consumerism is no less ruthless than Herod, and wants nothing less than all of us. Today’s theme, “Spend Less”, is a way for us to follow Jesus’ example. Choosing, as Jesus did, to live by different rules than the kingdom of this world, choosing to reject wealth and power, is the way to live in God’s kingdom.

“Spend Less” is not an easy theme to tackle.

One of the things I’m trying to do is not create a sense of “holier than thou” guilt. At times, I’m as sucked in as anybody for wanting more and thinking that things will make my life more complete.

When Elaine and I graduated from college and got married, we moved all our possessions from here to southern California in her dad’s pickup truck. Three years later, we moved back to Newberg with that same truck…and a 12 foot trailer.

Six years later, we left Newberg for Boise with all our possessions in…a 24 foot moving truck.

Then came the move from Boise back to here. I remember distinctly calling Steve Fawver as I was driving our stuff over here, and saying to him, “Don’t let me preach on simplicity any time soon…” because I was driving a 26 foot moving van, pulling a 10 foot trailer, and I still hadn’t gotten everything in.

That was a little bit of a wake up call for us.

And, since that point, we have done a lot of work to pare down what we have. Because the reality is all that stuff we have, or want, or think we need– all that stuff we crave, or want to give or buy so that we can have significance or prestige or respect…the reality is, all of this stuff is trying to own us.

I often have noticed the contrast between how our world talks about money and things, and how the bible talks about them. We often think of money and the things it buys as neutral. It can be used for good things, and it can be used for bad things.

For me, Richard Foster’s book “Money, Sex, and Power” is what most powerfully challenged that idea of money as neutral.

Jesus, Foster’s book said, always spoke of money not as neutral, but as a power…a power that can work for God’s kingdom, or a demonic power that wants our allegiance.

And that’s what this theme of the Advent Conspiracy is striking against!

We are not giving our allegiance to gifts, to money, or to things! We will worship fully our Lord Jesus Christ. And one way we will do it is to spend less at Christmas than the kingdom of the world expects. Here’s how Foster says it:

Giving with glad and generous hearts has a way of routing out the tough old miser within us. Even the poor need to know that they can give. Just the very act of letting go of money, or some other treasure, does something within us. It destroys the demon greed.

Christmas commercials and ads don’t usually appear demonic, do they? But sometimes there are signs that point out that something deeper is going on. Again this year, an employee was trampled to death at a Wal-Mart trying to open the doors for the sale the day after Thanksgiving.

Shane Claiborne, reflecting on this, is another voice trying to shine the light on what is going on:

We are fighting a battle not simply of flesh and blood. It is a battle of principalities and powers that possess us to do things we would not do in our own flesh -– like kill enemies we don’t know and step on workers we don’t see. We are up against Mammon (the demonic personification of money that Jesus gives a name to). And Mammon has many faces and disguises as we see possessions possess us with the obsession of heroin addiction and occupy us with the fanaticism of demonic occupation.

The reason we spend less is to break the hold that consumerism can have on us.

We are not trying to take the joy out of giving, though. We are not trying to bring about joyless, sterile, guilt-induced “bah, humbug” Christmas!

Next week, our theme will be give more. And this week’s theme is not “Spend nothing.” Buying a good present for a loved one, spending money at the do-it-yourself workshop yesterday to make a relational present…these things are not demonic.

I always struggle with the challenge of speaking to a group of people, because each one is in such a different place. Not all spending is bad, not all gift buying is bad.

But today, for this one week, I do want to join Richard Foster, Shane Claiborne, and Jesus himself to say that we cannot be naïve. We cannot live in a “Christmas TV special” world that denies the presence of real evil.

The kingdom of this world has many different ways to fight against what God is doing, many different ways to gain our allegiance. And there is no denying that in America, the power of marketing and retail and consumerism are at work, as ruthlessly as Herod, to demand our attention and our allegiance.

And we want to fight back.

Not with weapons or swords, but in a quiet way, sort of like Mary and Joseph and Jesus sneaking off to Egypt in the dead of night.

We want to fight back by just leaving and going another way. To not get sucked into the lie that buying more for others will make them happier or make them love us more.

As I said last week, first and foremost, we want to worship fully. Jesus is the one who deserves our love, attention, allegiance, and thanks.

Worship Fully! And as an act of worship, come against the kingdom of this world and spend less, as we also find ways to give more.

Toy choo-choo’s don’t change the world; Jesus did! Worship him, and remind ourselves that gifts aren’t what change people; Christ is.

Open Worship

Closing

Let me not wrap, stack, box, bag, tie, tag, bundle, seal, keep Christmas.

Christmas kept is liable to mold.

Let me give Christmas away, unwrapped, by exuberant armfuls.

Let me share, dance, live Christmas unpretentiously, merrily, responsibly with overflowing hands, tireless steps and sparkling eyes.

Christmas given away will stay fresh—even until it comes again."

-- Let Me Not Keep Christmas . . . . . . . . Linda Felver

A Book of Christmas, Nashville: Upper Rooms, 1988, p. 48