Sermon for December 26, 2021

Christmas Eve Meditation

Mark 1:1-8

Mark 1:1-8 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  Matthew and Luke both begin their Gospels with the Christmas narrative.  Mark does not -- he begins with John the Baptist, announcing the coming of Jesus' public ministry.  Only in the reading of the other Gospels do we get a more full picture of Jesus.  The Gospels work together to enrich our understanding of the life and ministry of Jesus.
  In the same way, the church works together.  There are people who have been in church since they were in the womb, hearing sermons every year of their lives, constantly inhaling the aroma of church life.  Their story is one of endurance and faithfulness and ongoing education.  There are others who start their Christian narrative later in life, often meeting Jesus through the ministry and service of a faithful friend.  Their story is one of awakening, of seeing life for the first time through new eyes, of renewed energy.
  These stories, and the countless other stories that make up the life of the church, combine to weave a rich tapestry of grace.  God works in each of our lives separately, and as well tell and live our stories together, we illustrate how diverse and wondrous the love of God is.  Christmas is a time to celebrate God's radical inbreaking into my life and my story and your life and your story.  This Christmas, listen to each other's stories, ask your friends and loved ones to share their stories, and may we strengthen one another for the lives of service to which we are called.

Luke 2:8-20

Luke 2:8-20 
English Standard Version (ESV)

  Who were some of the first people to hear the Good News?  Shepherds, out caring for their flock by night.
  Shepherds have a long track record in the Bible.  Moses was caring for sheep when God spoke to him out of a burning bush, and David was out caring for the flocks as well.  Jesus declares himself as the Good Shepherd.
  What to make of all this talk, especially in a day and age when we have so little direct experience with sheep and shepherds?
  Know these two things, today especially.  The first is that God comes with Good News for everyone -- it is not a message that goes first to the powerful, and it is not exclusive to the rich.  Your station in life has no impact upon God's love for you and your invitation into the Kingdom of God.  The love of Christ knows no socioeconomic borders.  The second is that it is okay to not fully understand exactly what God is doing in the world.  When the angels first arrived on the scene, the shepherds were afraid -- it was only once the angels explained their mission that the shepherds understood the next steps.  Likewise, many of us are still figuring it out.  This Christmas morning, know that God calls you, and that the Christ child means hope  is still alive! 

Merry Christmas!

Luke 2:1-7

Luke 2:1-7 
English Standard Version (ESV) 

  Throughout human history, God has been at work.  This common thread, at times intersecting with the political realities of the day, is woven into the everyday life of the rich and poor, as God works to gather all people back.  There are times in our common history where we wonder if the thread is broken, but God is still at work, sometimes in subtle and quiet ways, working to sew threads of peace and justice, that unmerited grace and unlimited favor may be the colors that define our lives.  When we look back, we can see how God has been at work, and we know the promises of God will continue to call us forward, creating something beautiful and unbounded, defined by the love that God is and shares freely.
  You are loved, and that is seen fully here in Luke's Gospel, as Mary and Joseph make their journey.  Our hearts go with them, eager to peak into the manger where that baby begins, seeing all the universe held is those tiny, vulnerable hands, knowing that the cries of life that emanated from a plain manger would one day echo inside a newly hewn tomb, where new life would again cry out in triumph after the trial was complete.  On Christmas Eve, we look forward to new life after birth, and it reminds us that through Christ, there is new life after death.
  May we rejoice in the baby, knowing the promise of Christmas only grows.

Sermon for December 29, 2013

Luke 2:8-20

  8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
  13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” 15 When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.”
  16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. 17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. 18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. 20 And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

**************************

*********************************

I’ll say this:  I like James Bond movies.  I always have.  In college, TBS used to do ‘7 days of 007’, which meant they would start showing James Bond movies around 5 in the afternoon and show them until around 4 in the morning.  And yes, I’d try and watch them all.  Recently, Skyfall ended up on Netflix, and I watched it twice in two days, then spent the next week looking for another excuse to watch it.  I’m a big James Bond fan.

Every James Bond movie pits the smarts and skill of James Bond up against some new and clever villain.  The plots are always different, and yet they all bear the same theme—Bond always comes up against the villain in the end, and they spent a lot of time talking and a little time fighting, and James Bond always wins.

There’s another element to every movie, though.  It’s not one that is often noticed, but it plays an important role:  henchmen. 

The villain is always surrounded by a small crowd of well-armed men who are never highly valued by the villain.  Each one has a mother, but the villain uses them as disposable shields to protect himself against James Bond.  They are thrown at the enemy, usually nameless folks who quickly meet their end.  They are disposable, men without personality who act as pawns in a movie focused on larger actors.

Most action movies that revolve around conflict have these characters, usually men who play a role but are lost within the larger plot developments.  We fail to pay much attention to them, and I have to imagine that the actors themselves aren’t that excited to be hired and then disposed of with so little attention.

But maybe we, as a society, are used to the idea of disposable people.  Maybe we’re a little too comfortable with the idea that some people matter more than others.  It’s certainly not a new idea—it’s been around as long as people have, it seems like.  Folks in Jesus’ day certainly viewed lepers and beggars in this way, as people not worthy of their full attention.  There are people like that in our society today—people we see but don’t really see, caring little about their personalities or futures.  They play a role in society, but we gloss over their presence in order to try and see the people and things that we believe really matter.

So it surprises us when we come across Scripture like we have today.  We’ve grown so accustomed to hearing about the shepherds that we fail to grasp its shock value.  Shepherds were not highly esteemed.  In fact, I doubt most people even considered them at all.  Remember when the sons of Jesse were paraded before Samuel to see if one was worthy to be king?  Where was David, the future king?  He was watching the sheep, and considered totally unworthy of being king.  The youngest, the least respected, was sent to watch the sheep. 

So imagine the shock when this story was told in the first century—people would have gasped to hear the news that God told the shepherds first.  The shock value would be the same if the President was coming to Chattanooga and the first people who heard the news were the ones waiting in line at the Community Kitchen.  Our first thought might be to wonder why folks who matter so little in society receive such news before others who wield more power and influence?  Shouldn’t those in the halls of power be the first to hear?

God is teaching us something.  2,000 years later, we still need to hear this lesson.

God is trying to teach us that people are defined in a radically different way in God’s kingdom.  From the very first moments of Christ’s life on earth, we learn that it’s not the most influential or the most powerful or the richest that are considered first.  There is an equality that frightens us, because it teaches us that what we’ve achieved in this world doesn’t garner us special attention in the eyes of God.  In the lives of the Pharisees, we see this fear played out—they are terrified that they don’t matter more because they’ve spent their lives trying to earn God’s love.  They can’t fathom a God who loves without condition or regard to what you’ve done. 

God is flattening society, and he’s teaching us that we need to love all people equally.  He’s trying to teach us to set down our preconceptions, to stop valuing people on the world’s standards.  God is trying to teach us that all people matter, not because of what they’ve done or how they look, but rather because they are hand-crafted in the image of God, uniquely valued by the creator of the universe and important enough to die on a cross to redeem.  People matter.  All of them.

If you hear nothing else from this sermon, I’d like for you to hear two points.

The first is that you matter to God. God made you, and God loves you.  God died on a cross to redeem you from sin and death, and God wants you to experience abundant and eternal life.  You are more valuable to God than silver or gold.  No matter what the world tries to tell you, you matter.  No matter how messed up you may feel, you matter to God.  God’s love levels the playing field, no matter which end of it you feel like you’re standing on.  If you die penniless and homeless or in the richest estate in the ritziest zip code in America, God’s love for you will not change.

This leads us to the second point—what kind of statement is your life making about the lives of the people around you?  Are you willing to love people, all people, because God does?  Will you see your broken-hearted neighbor and the homeless man on the street and the stressed-out family in the mall and the wealthy banker downtown the same—as people valued and loved by God and worthy, therefore, of your love, time and attention?  Will you love and serve others as God loves and serves you?  Will you stop overlooking people and writing people off because God never does?

There are no disposable people in society, and I’m tired of living in a world where people are written off because of how they look or choices they have made.  They matter to God, and if they matter to God they should matter to us.  The question to us is how we are going to show that love to the them.

Let us pray 

2013 Christmas Eve Meditation

****************************

When Rachel was pregnant with Caleb, we may have documented every move that little boy made.  We always knew about how big he was and what was developing next.  There was a ‘fruit of the week’ chart that compared the size of the fetus to a fruit, so we knew whether he was the size of an apple or a kiwi.  We waited and waited, filled with anticipation, until he arrived in the world.  It was a fascinating process.

This summer, we were pregnant again.  It was a little different.  Every once in a while, I’d look at Rachel and ask, ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’  I kept forgetting about this minor fact.  We were so caught up in work and Caleb and other facets of life that we kept overlooking the fact that there would soon be another little life in our midst.  In my defense, it was a little easier for me to forget that Rachel was pregnant, seeing as how my body wasn’t constantly changing.  When the delivery date came, we weren’t even close to ready. 

Honestly, the last 3.5 months have continued to leave me feeling exhausted.  Life is busy, now, and there are two little lives in our midst.  We collapse into bed at the end of the day and wonder how we’ll manage when Rachel goes back to work.  We haven’t put the Christmas tree up, and the stockings aren’t hung by the fire with care, and I don’t think St. Nicholas is going to pay a visit there.  We went out looking at Christmas lights last night, and our street is almost completely devoid of lights.  We’re all just worn out.

But just like you can’t go in and ask the doctor for a few more weeks until the baby comes (not that Rachel would have agreed to that anyway), you can’t go to the calendar and ask for a few more weeks until Christmas.  It’s coming, whether we are ready or not.

Thank God.

Imagine if Christmas waited until we were ready.  Imagine if we delayed the arrival of Christmas until everything was decorated and the cards were all sent and everything was baked and everything was at peace and on and on and on… we’d have Christmas in July, just in time to begin preparing for the next one.  It would be awful.

Imagine, too, if God had waited for Christmas until humans were ready.  Imagine if God told the world that he would send a Savior once we had cleaned up our act.  A Savior would come when we stopped killing one another and stopped mistreating each other and figured out how to play fair and be nice to each other and do all those things our parents told us to do when we were kids.  Imagine if God had told the world that a Savior would come when we finally stopped sinning and earned a visit from God.

We’d still be waiting.  We’d be waiting forever, and I don’t imagine there would be much hope for Christmas to come anytime soon.  As one bumper sticker read, When world peace finally arrives, imagine how quiet it will be until the looting begins.

Fortunately, God didn’t wait for us to get our act together.  Into the midst of our mess, into the midst of the chaos, Jesus Christ was born.  God descended to earth and took on humanity long before we were ready, long before we earned it.  We never could have deserved this, but God didn’t wait.  God took the initiative, and God reached down from heaven and took his place here on earth, a light that shines in the darkness.  God brought peace and hope and light and joy and life into our world, a world filled with darkness and chaos and violence and despair.  God came down because God didn’t want to wait for us to change the world—God wanted to transform the world in which we live.  God wanted to change us, here and now, and redeem the world.  God wanted to get to work on his project of redemption.

God came before we were ready.  God came before you were ready.  Before you could even think to ask, God knocked on the door of your heart and invited you into eternal and abundant life, starting now.

I know you’re not ready.  I know you don’t feel worthy.  None of us are.

But God comes down into our mess and delivers us through it.  It’s not about what we must do—it’s about what God has done.  Your choice is whether or not you will accept the invitation into eternal life and live transformed, loving your neighbor and serving the world. 

Christmas doesn’t wait until we’re ready.

Thanks be to God for God’s amazing grace that comes down to earth, a light shining in the darkness that shall never be extinguished.

Let us pray