Christmas at The Movies: Christmas with the Kranks | Crossroads Church

Merry Christmas, Crossroads. It's great to be gathered here with you this weekend. My name is Allie Patterson. If you're joining us because you're visiting from out of town or you're new here, I'm one of the teaching pastors here at Crossroads. And I'm going to call it—it's official—today, the Christmas season has officially begun. Can we agree on that? Yes, I agree. Thank you. I actually put my tree up the day before Thanksgiving this year for the very first time ever. And I'm not going to lie, I kind of liked it. So we are going to do Christmas of the Movies again this year. And I want to say a quick word about why have we repeated this series for the last couple of years. Yes, eventually we will get to the end of great Christmas movies. I feel like we're approaching that this year. But we've been repeating it for a very specific reason. And it's really pretty simple. It's what we're doing at this time of year. It's literally what we are looking at. And who's already watched the movie? I watched The Grinch last night. I've watched The Family Stone, little known movie. If you have a messed up family, you may want to watch The Family Stone. I'm just saying. We're watching movies at this time of year. And believe it or not, this is a play right out of Jesus's playbook. He often took things in everyday life and explained truths of the kingdom of God straight through those things. And so, yeah, they had Sheep and we have Netflix, but we're doing the same thing. We're actually looking for what's the story of God that we might be able to catch a glimpse of in the things that we're already looking at. And I picked the movie this weekend because it's this weekend, because it's the beginning of the season. And we're going to look at like the attitudes and approaches

that we tend to take to the Christmas season. But let me pray before we start. Lord, be with us here and search us and know us and adjust how we approach this season so that we can see you in it and find you in it and experience Christmas this year. In Jesus name, amen. Well, whatever attitude you take toward the Christmas season, you probably got it on. You know, some of you drove in here with wreaths on your car. Some of you are listening with fully decorated houses already. And others of us are already scheming how can we get out of our extended family gatherings. Some of us are stressed about making lists, literally checking it twice. We're the stressed out list making holiday type. We all have these sort of attitudes that we put on about the entire Christmas season. And whether you know it or not, you have a Christmas season strategy. And that's why I picked Christmas with the Cranks as our movie today. Because I think you'll be able to see your own strategy or maybe some glimpses of ones that you've used in the past through this movie that offers us the three most common, I think, Christmas strategies. And also just a little glimpse at a better one. Now this movie, if you've never seen it, it stars Tim Allen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Dan Aykroyd. If you're anywhere near my age, you actually know who those people are. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's a great cast and a very mid movie. It really is. But it's okay. We have permission to watch bad Christmas movies at this time of year. This movie actually is helpful in seeing what I want us to look at at the outset of the season. So let me set the scene for you. In the movie, there's a couple, Luther and Nora Crank. That's why it's called Christmas with the Cranks. It's a family named the Cranks. And they have a big change to their holiday season that kind of gets forced on them.

And this couple goes about trying to deal with this big change to their season. And they keep running into their own feelings about it and how everyone else is reacting to this big change. And it shows us the attitudes that we have. And there's no doubt as the movie begins that you can see their historic Christmas season strategy. The one they've always used in the past. This is the one that I fall into myself sometimes because it can be lovely. And I call this strategy, make it magical. Make it magical. We're after the magic of the season. You know, we want to sip hot chocolate and walk through Christmas markets and ice skate with twinkling lights. And don't forget, you got to take pictures, of course, of all the seasonal magic. Because we want the shivers. We want the like, don't you, I just want to remember this for the next 10 years. Just this moment right here. We push our family into holiday attire. Tell everybody to smile, you know. We just are after the magic that seems to be in the season. We want to capture something that goes beyond the daily grind. We really do. And Christmas season tends to, you know, tempt us to believe that we can just reach in here and get it ourselves. And we want something good and beautiful and pure. And I think that's why we go after this strategy with kids a lot. Kids seem to have like a glint in their eye, you know, they're engaged in the season in a way that maybe our cold hearts, you know, aren't quite as we get to be grown-ups. But we go after Christmas magic a lot of times through our kids. Maybe you don't have kids, you don't have to have a five-year-old for this. You might have a mom and dad that are still trying to execute this strategy on you at 35. You know, our kids, we tend to put this make-it-magic strategy on them. And I'm just going to tell you from first-hand experience, four of my own kids,

very unreliable source of Christmas magic, very, very unreliable. And so I fell prey to the make-it-magic strategy a couple years ago myself, and I got suckered in to buying matching PJs. That's right. Matching PJs, we're going to decorate the tree in our matching PJs. It's just going to be magical. And of course, I needed a picture, and I'm not going to lie, this is the best one I could get. A couple of people went rogue on the tops. I don't know what my one son is doing there, but if you're a make-it-magic person, this picture bothers you. It's not well-spaced. Everybody's not in the same thing. It's just, it's almost right, but it's not quite, you know, make-it-magic. People really don't like that. And foolish me, really, I actually wanted the cat in that picture. She was nowhere to be found, and then just to like poke at me, I walk in the living room the very next day, and I find the cat like this. Same fireplace, there's the cat, picture-worthy, ready to go. Now, would she have done that, you know, when I was trying to capture the picture? Of course not. That really is my real cat. Her name's Sugar. She's usually not that cooperative. And, you know, it's great when it works. Make-it-magic is great when it works. And you do, you remember those moments, and they're beautiful and magical and all the things, but there's a lot of disappointment. There's a lot of annoyance with this strategy and even some real sadness when the source of your magic is gone. And that is where we find the cranks as the movie begins. They have one daughter, and she's going off to the Peace Corps, and they are really struggling because the source of their magic is gone. That's where they are. This is where the movie starts. They just want to forget about it. It's weird. It's quiet. Did you catch a bunch of the decorations were still piled up in bins, and she's, you know, looking at Frosty the Salt Shaker, very upset. It's just not gonna be the same. We're looking for a glimpse of something. We're looking for something, I think, in this strategy where almost a chance for something eternal to break through, something heavenly to break through. And we call it Christmas magic. But I think if we were to be honest and we were to look back at the actual Christmas story, you can see that the first Christmas really was about this. I think this desire is actually something good.

It's just that we try to manufacture it. The Christmas story is a story of God breaking through over and over again. Angels show up to Mary and Joseph. There's promises that are made about the future, the goodness that they're going to experience. And they get glimpses of the glory of God in a way that breaks through. The shepherds on the night of Jesus's birth, they get to see quite a breakthrough of heaven. And I think this is the thing that we're yearning for with this strategy. And so we just try to, you know, we try to put it together ourselves. And I think it makes some kind of sense. It's really, really tempting to do this. But it doesn't always work. So the second strategy, the Kranks decide that's the one they're going to go with this year. Magic is gone. You know, Blair's in the Peace Corps. They don't have access to that one. So they're going to try another one. And I call this strategy Block It Out. They're actually just going to fade the whole season. They're going to just look at it in the rearview mirror. They're going to do something else this year. They're going to hold their breath until it's over. Just minimize or cut out the parts of the season that they really don't want to do. A lot of us do this, right? We have pieces of the season. Maybe you don't do this with the whole season, but you just do this with family or you just do this with work stuff or you just do this with, you know, holiday decorating or whatever. We have these little holdouts, these little pockets of the season where we're like, I'm not doing that one. You know, we have these weirdly strong convictions about what we're not going to do. And, you know, there's a whole spectrum of just people who like to keep a low profile during the season to full out, full on Scrooge. So Kranks decide this is the way they're going to go. If they can't do the one they've always done, they're going to do this one. They're just going to skip Christmas. And this is how they let everybody know. I've never done it with the whole season, but I have tried to minimize. part of it. I was, it was probably five or six years ago, I found myself sitting alone at the kitchen table putting the final icing on the final cutout cookie, and I've been sitting there for a couple of hours by myself

finishing like six dozen cookies when everybody else started with me, and I had what my kids affectionately refer to as like the cookie crash out of like 2018 or whatever. You know, and I just went, I'm not doing this anymore! We, I thought this was supposed to be fun. We started this whole thing together. What happened to everybody? You just licked some stuff, and you ran away, and I'm sitting here like a chump finishing the whole thing alone. I'm not doing it. So I have this like, you know, mini meltdown over the sugar cookie process, and I tell them, no, we're finished. I'm buying them at Kroger like everybody else next year. We are not doing it. Have you ever had a moment like this? Yeah, because why? There's dissonance. There's a gap, and we feel the gap in moments like this, like this was supposed to be something, and it didn't turn out to be that, and so we, we, we try to solve this gap by just blocking out those parts. I think in part, this is self-preservation. We, we know, you know, I'm made for a life where what I do matters, and if this thing isn't going to matter the way that it's supposed to, I am done, and some of us are really prone to this kind of strategy about the holidays because we have a lot of gaps between what it should be and what the reality actually is. I think we choose this, this when the season feels empty in some ways, and we, we sense, even if we don't know exactly these words, we sense that it should be something else. We actually have a God that says things in his word like this, I knit you together in your mother's womb. You've been called according to my purpose. I created you in Christ Jesus for good works that I have prepared in advance for you to walk in. We have a sense that the way we spend our time, the activities we choose to do in our life, we want the conviction that they matter, and when they don't, we, some of us are just out. By the way, the, um, the cookie meltdown I had the next year rolled around, and they discovered I was absolutely serious. Did not buy a thing to do the sugar cookies, and so they're like, whoa, whoa, wait a second. So they promised me, promised me they were in from beginning to end, and we actually had a new tradition that was born called the Patterson Annual Cookie Day. That's right. Patterson Annual Cookie Day now happens every year, and if you're in, you're all the way in. Two feet in, no one's leaving this fun old-fashioned family Christmas.

You know, we're in this together. So every year we decorate cookies, and if you want to follow me on Instagram, you can vote on our cookies, because we post. Everybody picks the best one they decorated, and you can pick the winner. Top left, which one of those do you think won last year? How did you know? It was the pizza. I'm not even kidding. We were pressed about this, because this was like the blob at the end of the cookie dough. You know, the one that didn't even really get cut out, and one of my sons grabbed it, decorated it, and posted this as his cookie. You liked it. It's a pizza. It's not even a Christmas cookie. The rest of us were very annoyed that this won last year. Super annoyed. Anyway, we'll see. Now I get it. I get it. If you all are voting, it doesn't even have to be a Christmas cookie, apparently. We do Patterson Annual Cookie Day because of my little meltdown, and we have a lot of fun with it, but the Kranks try the block-it-out strategy, but they keep running into the third strategy of the people all around them. Things get really messy, because a lot of people in their life do the third strategy that a lot of us do. I call this one lock it in. It's Christmas tradition above everything else. This is it. Christmas isn't Christmas unless we fill in the blank, you know. Whatever the tradition is that you have to do, and it's yours, and you're gonna do it the same way every single year, and it really doesn't matter what's happening. I have someone in my life like this. Same gifts to the neighbors, wears the same earrings on Christmas Eve, goes to the same Christmas service, has the same menu for Christmas dinner, takes the same picture of her kids in the same place on the stairs. Every single year, Nora has a vest that appears in the movie that cracks me up. She has her Christmas vest. That's one of her traditions, and they start to upset people all over town, because they start skipping Christmas, and as they do it, they run into people's traditions, and they're really bothering them. Let's see, I made a list. There were no annual Christmas Eve party, no Christmas cards, no Boy Scout Christmas tree, no police department. apartment calendar they always buy, none of their regular stuff that they always do, and the people around them are really annoyed, and things get really real when they refuse to put up Frosty for the annual neighborhood decorating tradition. Okay, this is the part of the movie that loses me. These neighbors are totally out of control.

I've got a lot of don't control me energy, and I get real upset when this goes down because they are acting crazy, but some of us who are like super tradition people, we don't understand that maybe something close to that is how people in your life think of you. A little bit rigid, a little bit crazy, when the traditions that you really want to happen can't happen exactly the way that you want it to happen, we go a little nuts like Nora did when she wanted the ham. Now her daughter calls from the Peace Corps, and she says, I'm coming home after all, surprise, and Nora tries to put all the traditions back together real fast, and most of all she wants the all-important honey hickory ham. There's really nothing like ham in a can, is there? I mean, if you've got to have it, you've got to have it, that's all I'm saying. She wanted that ham. It was what they always had. That's what her daughter would expect, and that's what she wanted to give her. I think we're looking for something, though. When we go after these traditions, we're not crazy. I mean, that's a little crazy, but we are not crazy. We're looking for something, and I think what we're looking for, I thought a lot about this, and I think it comes down to one word. I think what we're looking for is comfort. I think the traditions that we hold and keep that are really dear to us that we don't want other people to mess with is because they comfort us, they reassure us that, yes, another year has passed, and I'm still okay. I think we're reaching for something that actually the nature and the character of God provide for us. God himself is called the Comforter, and His Spirit is called the Comforter, and He is called the God of all comfort. I think when we execute our traditions, we're looking for comfort in a world that can be kind of out of control, a little chaotic, a little offbeat. And for some reason during the Christmas season, we go for our traditions because we want to

know that all really is going to be okay. All is calm, all is bright, and I can be at peace, at least for this one little slice of time. I had a really personal interaction with God. It was not about a Christmas tradition, but it was about something very, very similar. So I started thinking about it. It was about when my oldest son was getting ready to leave for college a couple of years ago, and I was worrying. I found myself getting anxious and kind of thinking a lot about and kind of worrying about how are we going to do family with one of us missing? That's weird. You know, and I was kind of wrestling through the thoughts of all the things that we do together. I always say that we travel as a herd, like we like to be together. We have things that we do together. We have rhythms we keep and disciplines we have together and just places we like to go together. And I kept turning over this idea, like what happens when one of us is missing? It just feels like that's not what I want. I don't want it to change like that. And as a regular part of my, just my reading plan that I was in in the Bible, around that time I happened into a part of Scripture that at first I didn't connect to this at all. But it was the time where Israel, the people of God in the Old Testament, they had been enslaved in the nation of Egypt and God frees them from that. And he promises them a new life, but they spend a generation in the wilderness. So they're in the wilderness in the middle of the desert. And the way that God was providing food for them was every day there would be a substance that would be rained down on the camp that they could make bread out of, and it was called manna. And so God would provide this every single day. And as I was reading about this, I read the part where he says, only take enough for today.

He specifically gives that instruction and he says, if you collect more than what you need for today, it's going to rot in your hands. You can't clutch more than what you actually need for today. And I thought about how that's an act of trust, right? They were to trust that God was going to bring more tomorrow. They were to trust in who he was, in his power, in his nature, not try to collect this for themselves. And through that story, I kind of realized at that point in my life, I needed that encouragement. I needed that challenge, like desperately, because I was worried that the things that we had done, the stuff that we were about. out was what I should be holding on to. And instead, I realized as I was reading that story that God was pushing them to hold on to Him, to the provider, to the comforter, to the one that was giving the stuff. Not the external act of collecting it, not even the stuff itself. They were to be confident in God. And this was really hard because so much of how we experience life is like the things that we do. And we want to hold on to those. And I think the more you're a tradition kind of person, the harder you hold on to those, the more likely they are to actually rot in your hands. Instead, we're to push into the nature of God as comforter, as provider, as the one who always has more good to give. So the cranks, they try to do what the Israelites did. They try to force these traditions. They try to clutch what they've always done. So they do this in the movie.

And the daughter, she says, I'm coming home from the Peace Corps. I'm bringing my new fiance. That all happened really fast, by the way. And, you know, she's coming back and they try to put all these traditions back together. And I think it's really weird that they lie to her. They don't even tell her they were going to go on the cruise because they don't want any of the traditions in her mind to be, you know, touched. And so they put this together in kind of a hollow way. And they're in their annual Christmas Eve party, which is one of the traditions they try to hurry up and throw back together. And Luther Crank is sitting there in a really low moment. None of the strategies have worked. The season wasn't magical. Now the traditions feel pretty empty. And he couldn't even go on his cruise. The skipping Christmas didn't really work. And he's kind of at a low point in the movie. And he looks out his window and he sees a guy named Walt that lives across the street. Now, Walt is his nemesis. It's like the foil in the movie. Walt is kind of a jerk. Every time he sees Luther, he calls him names. They have this like banter back and forth. And, you know, he just he always gives him a hard time. He's not anyone in his life that's any kind of joy for him. He's not even at the party.

All the other neighbors have come. He's across the street. Luther catches a glimpse of him through his kitchen window. And this is the redeeming moment in the entire movie for me. This moment is the first time the real spirit of Christmas appears in the entire movie. I don't love this movie, but I love this scene. This scene is worth watching the movie for because this is where the Christmas story actually appears. Luther gives this incredible gift. He gives this incredible gift to a guy who not only cannot repay it, it's a guy who has done nothing, absolutely nothing to deserve it. If anything, he's only ever made his life harder. Guys, this is the Christmas story. This is the story of God. This is the story that God did on the very first Christmas. He offered a gift free of cost, no strings attached. And we do our best to try to shove it off. We try to find every which way. I need to repay you. My name's not on the ticket. I can't accept this. You know, all these reasons we try to push off this gift that God has been trying to give. And he says, this is a simple offering for you. Just receive it. The Apostle Paul summarizes the Christmas story in one sentence in the book of Titus chapter 2. And he talks about what gift is actually being offered. Titus 2, 11 says, That's the Christmas story in one sentence. The grace of God appears and offers salvation. It saves something.

Christmas is an offering. It's a gift. It's a gift of salvation for you and for me. God offers his son to a people who have only ever made his life harder, who cannot repay it, who are trying to find every excuse not to receive it. And he stands in front of us today and says, don't make it complicated. No strings attached. It's a gift. If you don't use it, it will just go to waste. And Christmas, this is a, what is the verse in Titus says, That's grace. Grace is favor to the undeserving. Christmas is a story about when grace becomes visible. The word in the original language there is epiphyno. It means to shine a light on. It means literally to light up, which is what makes something visible. That's the story of the first Christmas. That's the story of what Luther did. He made the grace of God alive and visible. It showed up on the scene. If you want to find the things that you're looking for in the Christmas season this year, that's your strategy. Your strategy is grace. Your strategy is to give grace as much as you can to as many people as you can everywhere that you can. Because this is the December strategy that delivers all those other things. The comfort that you want, the meaning that you want, the magic that you want. It's all buried in giving grace the way that God gave grace on that very first Christmas. You are invited to partner with God in making his grace visible, in shining a light on who and what grace really looks like and acts like.

And that's what we're invited into. We're invited to offer favor to people who don't deserve it, to give gifts to people who can't repay them. If you went through your December and that's what you did, it would be the best December you've ever had. That strategy would take you through this season and you would have more memories, more comfort, more magic, more meaning than any December you have ever lived. God appeared visibly and tangibly to offer his grace to us on the first Christmas. Listen to this classic passage from the Christmas story out of Luke 2. In all the ways that God shows up in visible, tangible ways. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shone around them. And they were terrified. But the angel said, do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you. He is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you. You'll find a baby wrapped in claws and lying in a manger. Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying, glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. When grace appears, God's peace, his favor, his salvation appears. You hear all the ways in the story that his grace showed up on the scene. Angels out of nowhere, light, glory, intense glory from heaven, a chorus of praise, a baby in a manger. These are real things. These are tangible, visible aspects of grace. What if you decided that that's what you're going to do everywhere you go this December? To the office party, to the neighborhood gathering, to the extended family get togethers, that you're going to give grace in real, visible, tangible ways. What if you said to yourself, I know exactly what I'm here to do. I'm not here to execute a tradition. I'm not here to, you know, skirt the edges and try to avoid all the people I don't want to talk to.

I'm actually an agent of the grace of God. I've showed up on the scene to offer gifts to people who don't deserve it. And to give favor, to bring the peace of God into this situation. Do you know that you're uniquely equipped for that? That God has already gifted you. He's already equipped you for some aspect of that. 1 Peter 4.10 says this. Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms. God's grace takes on all kinds of different forms. And the word for stewards there, it's almost like a manager. So you've got access to the grace of God and you get to decide. You're the manager of it. You get to pass it out. And if you do, you're going to find the things that you want through this season too. I was thinking about this because I mentioned in the first service that I have a gift of words. Like I like to write words. So I'll sometimes write note cards to people or encouraging notes to them. And I got this little picture of the sudden appearance of the grace of God. Because nobody ever mails anything anymore, right? And every now and then when you go to your mailbox and somebody has sent you like an actual handwritten note. Boom, the grace of God could appear right in your hands. I got that little picture of like, what if I took the time to do that this season? What if I wrote one card every other day or whatever? And I can imagine in mailboxes all over the place, all of a sudden the grace of God appears for that person. What if you're financially blessed and you can pass out the grace of God somehow? I have parents who are getting much older and they sure could use somebody nearby that had muscles to help them get. Get things out of their garage or drag things into their house on occasion. What if that's you? What if you live near someone like that and you could pass out the grace of God like that?

I have a friend with a gift of hospitality and something just happens when she brings people into her home. She gets to pass out the grace of God if she wants to, if she chooses to. And if you do this through your December this year, if you adopt this as your Christmas strategy, as your December strategy, God will deliver all the things that we go looking for in all those other places. Did you see when Luther gave the cruise that five minutes before that he was sitting in disappointment and all of a sudden he felt comforted. He felt better, better after giving a costly gift. All of a sudden a night that was completely hollow was filled with meaning. His season began to take on a purpose and even relationally a friendship. You could see the glimmer of it. It started to appear out of nowhere and he got all of that because he gave somebody a gift they didn't deserve. He favored somebody that couldn't pay him back. He actually passed out the grace of God and that's what we're invited into. That is what your December could hold. So this Christmas you cannot give what you haven't received. So first I want you to just receive the gift. What did Luther say in the movie, I love it, don't make it complicated. No strings attached. Just take it. The grace of God has appeared to offer salvation to all people. That's what Paul wrote. And as you receive that he acquits you to give that out, to pass it out to everyone around you. I promise you the best moments of your season will be when grace comes onto the scene. So if you want to agree with me, we are going to stand together and we're going to just commit this to God if you will. We're going to take a moment and sing some familiar words and when you hear these words

at other times, on your Spotify playlist, in your car, at a party, whatever, I want this to trigger your agreement to make giving grace your December strategy this year. Remember you're an agent of God's grace and you're invited to pass it out all season long. Come on, let us adore him, oh come let us adore him, oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord. Sing it as a prayer, we'll give you, and we'll give you all the glory, we'll give you all the glory, we'll give you all the glory, we Christ the Lord, oh come, oh come let us adore him, oh come let us adore him, oh come let us adore him, Christ the Lord. Amen. Y'all have a great week.