December 14, 2025
• Rev. Dr. Rob Fuquay
St. Luke’s UMC
December 14, 2025
Advent Series(3)
Where Are You Christmas: The Message Behind the Songs
Where Are You Christmas?
Matthew 1: 18-25
25 years ago the movie version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas came out. Can you believe it’s been that long ago? My girls were 7, 5, and 3 at the time. One of the members of our church had been given a number of passes to a premier showing the week before the movie opened to the public. He offered five tickets to us. I had heard about this movie version of the Dr. Seuss story, that Jim Carey would portray the Grinch, and it had gotten good ratings. So Susan and I thought it would be a fun Saturday morning to take the girls to the movie, and besides we got free popcorn.
In the movie, Taylor Momsen, who played Cindy Lou Who, sang “Where Are You Christmas.” I remembered thinking that it was a cute song with some thought-provoking lyrics. Let’s listen to a portion of the song…
After that, of course, the movie went on with Jim Carey’s zany performance and silliness, and then came the end of the movie and the closing credits and Faith Hill’s voice singing “Where Are You Christmas?” And I didn’t want to rush out of the theater. I was halted by the power of her amazing voice singing those same lyrics. It was soul-grabbing. And after that day that song became an instant hit in my Christmas song list.
So imagine my shock a few years ago when I learned that Faith Hill was never meant to sing that song. In fact, the song was meant to be sung by the person who co-wrote the lyrics: Mariah Carey. No doubt she wrote it with the idea that she would sing it. So why didn’t she?
She was going through a divorce at the time with the CEO of Sony Music, Tommy Mottola. He was able to legally block Mariah from produce the song with a rival label company. You wonder if used his position and legal angle out of spite for the relational turmoil they were in. What we know for sure is that Mariah Carey never sang that hit song.
Boy, does that add meaning to the title, Where are you Christmas? Is there anything like relational turmoil that makes us question where Christmas went? And yet such turmoil is closer to the real Christmas story than we might think.
Have you ever considered the relational conflict the first Christmas brought? Upon learning that his fiancé was expecting, Joseph decided to quietly divorce Mary. Perhaps the whole story was too much for Joseph to believe, or maybe he couldn’t bear the judgment he would have to live with in a religiously devout community. And maybe it was a bit of both, but Christmas brought to Mary and Joseph tension and talk of divorce.
Even after Joseph was visited by an angel and he took Mary to be his wife, they end up in Bethlehem without a place to stay when Jesus was born. They were homeless. That couldn’t have been the most pleasant of circumstances. And then, they have to flee the country as immigrants and go to Egypt to escape Herod, while back in Bethlehem, all male babies under 2 years old were slaughtered.
So because of Christmas a marriage nearly dissolved, a family became homeless and had to immigrate, and other families experienced horrible tragedy.
If you ever feel like the holidays bring stress and tension into your household, and you find yourself wondering, “Where are you Christmas?” then know that your Christmas experience might be closer to the original than you think!
Why does Christmas bring so much challenge to joy?
You might not realize it but I just slipped one in on you. That question has a lot of judgment to it. It presumes that challenges are contrary to joy. That if the first Christmas brought so much challenge there must not have been joy. But we can’t really know that. Yes, the Bible clearly shows that Christmas was challenging, but it doesn’t say Jospeh or Mary were joyless. In fact, there’s not really any description of their feelings. And maybe there’s a reason for that. Perhaps we are to relate to what they went through and wonder ourselves, how would we feel? The way we answer says all kinds of things about us, about our personalities, about how we face setbacks, how we face life.
But what is clear in the Christmas story is that joy is a promise. In the center of it all is the announcement of the angels (picture), “I bring you good news of great JOY that to you is born this day a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” In all the hardship of Mary and Joseph, all the realities that Christmas brought, they also have with them a source of joy.
How do we hold onto joy amidst the hard realities of life? Let’s consider what Joseph has to teach us about finding joy in challenging times. One is this: Focus on the grace we can show, not the disgrace we’ve experienced. That’s a tall order isn’t it? But look at Joseph. He could have reacted out of his own hurt and angry and thought, “How can I get back at this woman who has crushed me?” He could have reacted out of the disgrace he thought he received. But he didn’t. He sought to show grace. He was to legally end the relationship but in a way that would not bring harm to Mary. What Joseph sought to do would make him look like the bad guy. Like he was the reason Mary was expecting and then he dumped her. Mary would have only had sympathy from people. He focused on the grace he could show whether he felt it was deserved or not. This has to be why the Bible said he was a righteous man.
You know, joy isn’t always something we control. We don’t control feeling joyful and experiencing things we would call joyful. But we do control showing grace. That is totally within our power. And when we remove whether someone deserves our grace, and whether our graciousness will be reciprocated, we often find that in showing grace it helps us build joy that isn’t contingent on circumstances.
Something else we learn from Joseph in this story: Be open to interruption.
God interrupted Joseph in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David…
(I will pause at Joseph, son of David) Just pause right there. Joseph is 13 generations removed from David. Why does God remind Joseph he is a son of David? I pointed out last week the prophecy from Isaiah that established the belief that the Messiah will come from the ancestry of David. With just the mention of his name, God is saying to Joseph, don’t forget who you are. You have a story. And its not just your story. Your life is not just something you’re trying to survive and get through. You are part of God’s story. So God says to him “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”
When Joseph woke up from his dream he didn’t say, “Well that was weird.” He didn’t discard it. The story says he did as the angel commanded and took Mary as his wife. Joseph was willing to be interrupted.
It’s really worth pointing out that Joseph went to sleep before acting on his plan. That’s a great point in and of itself. Let’s go back and look at the sequence of events. “Joseph…planned to divorce (Mary) quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream…” (1:19-20)Joseph had made up his mind, but then he slept on before acting on it. He gave room to be interrupted.
There are things that happen to us sometimes that hurt us, offend us, and rob our joy, but our reactions to such moments can cause us to be insulated from joy even more. Allowing for pauses, sleeping on our feelings, being willing to be interrupted in our plans, can become a path that leads to joy again. Allowing our anger to be interrupted, allowing for our perspective to be interrupted, allowing for our actions to be interrupted. Joseph’s taking a night to sleep on his plans changed the rest of his life.
I had an interesting experience at one of the concerts last weekend. I was out helping the ushers when a group of older adults came in and were waiting to be seated. A few were in wheelchairs. Their leader came over very distraught. She explained that she had called ahead and they were supposed to have 14 seats reserved for them up front. By now the prelude has begun and there were not vacant seats in the front.
But I took this as a joy challenge. I said, “I am so sorry. I don’t know what went wrong, but we are going to find good seats for you.” One of the other ushers said, “I can get 6 down close to the front.” The person protested, “NO! I have to have everyone together. We were told…” And she went back through that again. I said, “I have another idea,” and I took her to the area on west side. I told her we will bring out chairs…” She immediately protested, “And have us sit behind columns?!” I said, “No, we will make sure…” She said, “That will never work!” I felt my joy starting to leak,” but I kept at it.
We got them all seated there. But by that point the whole group looked like they were ready to leave. It was already decided this whole experience was going to be bad. I hope that’s not how they remained.
But what I realized is that when we don’t even allow our disappointment to get interrupted with a possibility that things can be okay, we guarantee that joy will not show up. But when we can pause…well, I got an email that Monday from this person, apologizing for what happened, explaining how once she got seated, she and her whole group ended up having a great concert, how amazed they were by it, and how they decided they were in the best seats in the house.
Ah, I gotta come clean with you, that never happened. By I imagined it did, and it gave me a lot of joy. Sometimes joy requires imagination.
One more thing to consider in the story of Joseph. Joy is more about what we bring than what we find.Joseph would not find joy in the events that followed his decision to stay with Mary and the baby. Life would get harder. But as the angels promised the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy.” Jesus is a source of joy. So even in the hardships Joseph would face, he met with a source of joy.
True joy is about what we bring to the situations of our lives, not what we hope to find. Theres a story about William Styron, author of the book Darkness Visible, one of the first very real, stark descriptions of depression which Styron experienced. One time he traveled to Ireland with a good friend. He said there was a day that stands out as to why he loved traveling with this friend. It was rainy and stormy and they had to walk about 12 miles to the next village. They got soaked, slipped in mud, but all along the way, the friend found things to laugh about. He started finding humor in everything that was miserable about the day.
That night after they arrived at their next lodging point, and they got into dry clothes and were eating supper, Styron realized that he couldn’t remember a day in which he laughed as much.
Joy is what you bring.
John Ortberg writes, “One test of authentic joy is its compatibility with pain. Joy in this world is always joy ‘in spite of’ something. Joy is, as Karl Barth put it, a ‘defiant nevertheless’ set at a full stop against bitterness and resentment. If we don’t rejoice today, we will not rejoice at all.” (The Life You’ve Always Wanted, p73)
In my sermon on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, I showed a video of an autistic man who is an equipment manager for the Dodgers. When he was born his mother remembered a day she called “the Never Day,” when doctors told her all the things her son would never do. The next day I got this email from a man who worships with us in Mooresville. He said,
You struck a familiar (and sensitive) nerve with your video and comments regarding "Never Days" during this morning's sermon. When my wife Nancy was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia in February 2024 and committed to a memory care facility, I started keeping a list of things we'd never get to do together again.
After about my twelfth entry on the "never" list it occurred to me that I was keeping a list of negatives. But Nancy was still very much alive, and the list of things I could do with her was so much more exciting and enjoyable than the "couldn't do" items. I can (and do)........
· visit her often and regularly
· hold her hand and give her manicures (with polish)
· tell her funny stories
· join her for meals
· tell her how we met at college on a blind date
· entertain her with any number of stories of past events she cannot remember on her own
· at her request, agree to marry her (even though we are coming up on our 61st wedding anniversary)
· tell her how we fell in love
· repeatedly tell her how much I love her
· show her photos from our past
· kiss her
· stroke her cheeks
· comb her hair
· take her flowers
· bring her sweet treats (chocolates are probably her favorite)
· hug her (she gives wonderful hugs)
· repeatedly tell her she is my "favorite squeeze"
... and on and on!!
My "never again" list has been replaced and overwhelmed by "do it again" (list).and again! With tears in my eyes I realize a bit late how much I love and miss Nancy.
Several weeks ago a hospice nurse evaluated Nancy to see if she was qualified for "hospice care". The nurse had a series of exercises she relayed through me to Nancy, one of which was to give Nancy three words (horse - cow - chicken) for her to remember, go on with the evaluation and then come back to those three words. When I asked Nancy what were the three words I had said to her, she thought for a moment and then said with obvious pleasure, "I - love - you!"
Wow! How I love that woman!!