Creator of All That Is; you wait for us until we open to you. We wait for your Word to make us receptive. Attune us this hour, we pray, to your voice, to your music, to your silence. And oil the hinges of our hearts’ doors, that they may swing gently and easily to welcome your coming!   Amen.

 

 

 

As you may have guessed by now, today is the first Sunday of four Sundays of what the Church calls Advent. Advent means “the arrival of something” – the arrival of a notably important person, or a thing, or an event. For the next 23 days, starting today, we’re going to be focused on Christmas – the arrival of an event; the arrival of a birth that happened 2,000 years ago in the Middle East; in a very small, little dingy town, with no publicity; no fanfare; no promotional campaigns. There were no t-shirts, hats, posters, or coffee mugs. But it still happened. And 2,000 years later it is still capable of stopping traffic.

 

Why? What is special about Christmas? Why is it the most-celebrated event on the planet? Why is it that billions of people are going to make some very special plans? They are going to go to, and have, and throw wonderful parties. They are going to decorate their dwellings and their businesses. Why is it people are going to go to special worship services, and play special and beautiful music, shut down their places of business, engage in a variety of traditions, spend a significant amount of money, travel sometimes huge distances, gather in homes and workplaces to celebrate Christmas? Why? What’s the big deal? What makes Christmas so special?

 

This season I hope for us to spend some time looking at, and lifting up, and hopefully lovingly embracing the reason – the purpose of Christmas.

 

You’ll remember that on the very first Christmas, in the Bible, 2,000 years ago, an angel announced three things. It is our text today, and we’re going to look at that in just a moment. In that announcement, I hope we will be able to find, discover, even uncover, over the next few weeks, the three reasons – the three purposes – of Christmas. They are simply this: 1) Christmas is a time of celebration; 2) Christmas is a time of salvation or healing; and 3) Christmas is a time for reconciliation.

 

We’re going to look at that over the next few weeks. Today we’re going to deal with just one, the first purpose of Christmas: Celebration. Let’s look at Luke 2.

 

And there were shepherds living out in the field 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 to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:8-10).  

 

The first purpose of Christmas: Celebration. It’s a party. “I bring you good news of great joy.”

 

Actually, it’s a birthday party, as most of you know. At Christmas, we have more parties – we throw more parties – than at any other time of the year. The calendar is already full for most. Yet, how ironic. It is so often true that the guest of honor is left out of the party. Christmas is a birthday party for Jesus. That’s why we go around saying, “Merry Christmas!” That’s why when the local merchants bid me, “Happy Holidays,” I always respond to them, “And Merry Christmas to you!” I want them to know, and I want to know within myself, that the winter solstice may be happy holiday for some, but for me, Christmas is just what the word says it is. It is a birthday celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

 

Now, I don’t want to mess with anybody’s mind today, but I need to tell you a little secret, if you don’t already know this. God loves parties. God really loves parties. In fact, the Bible says angels hold a party every time a single individual turns from self-centeredness, or self-absorption, and turns toward, trusts in, believes in, and follows Christ. The angels have a party, a celebration.

 

This week, a friend of mine asked some people, “Just what are you going to be celebrating this Christmas?” He got all kinds of responses from people on the streets. They said things like this:

 

“Christmas. Well, let’s see. It’s all about family.”

 

“It’s all about being home for Christmas. It’s all about that wonderful Christmas spirit that happens this season.”

 

“What am I celebrating? Not a lot, this Christmas.”

 

“This Christmas I’m celebrating the blessings my family has had this past year. There have been many.”

 

“This Christmas I’m celebrating the birth of Christ.”

 

“This Christmas? Nothing. I just want to get through it.”

 

Wow! There are lots of mixed feelings out there about the season. 

 

The bottom line for us: Christmas is a party. It’s a celebration. Why? Because the angel said it: “I bring you good news of great joy, which is for everybody.”

 

So, what’s so good about that good news? There are three things I want to lift up for you today. There are three things I think are worthy of our best celebrations. 1) God loves us. 2) God is with us. 3) God is for us. If that is true, folks, it’s party time. If it’s not true, then we need to just close up shop and hunker down. OK?

 

Let’s start with God loves us.

 

The most famous verse in all the Bible says, “God so loved the world that God gave God’s one and only Son, that whoever would believe, who would trust, who would follow, who would believe in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

 

Christmas says to the whole world, “God loves us.” 

 

Who? God! What God is that? Well, the best way I can help you with that one is to invite you to venture away from the city lights on a very clear night. Then, when you get out there, simply look up. You see that fiery sort of fuzzy band of white light up there? That’s called the Milky Way. That is our galaxy. It’s just one galaxy, and they say there are billions of others. Who can conceive of such a universe, much less the infinite number of universes? No one can.

 

But just for fun, think with me for just a minute. Suppose you could drive your car to the sun. Let’s say you had that little, sweet ride of yours. It averages about 150 miles an hour. How many of you do that? You hop in, pull the moon-roof back, and you step on the petal. You drive nonstop, 24/7, for 365 days a year. Guess what? Assuming you don’t take any potty breaks, you can get to the sun in just a little over 70 years. Isn’t that amazing?

 

Now, let’s just say you don’t like to drive. Maybe it takes too long. Maybe you want to fly. Jump in that private jet of yours and blast off at a blistering 600 miles an hour. They say that in 16½ days you can reach the moon. In 17 years, you’ll pass the sun. That’s a little bit better than 70 years. In just 690 years, you can have lunch on Pluto. How does that sound?

 

Now, here’s the bummer. You’ve been on the road for nearly seven centuries, and you haven’t even left our solar system yet, much less our galaxy. If you wanted to vacation on Alpha Centauri – the next closest star system to ours… If that’s where you want to vacation, you better pack your lunch and clear your calendar. At your speed of 600 miles an hour, the scientists say it’s going to take you just a little over fifteen-million years to make the trip.

 

Now, folks, doesn’t a house imply a builder? Doesn’t a painting imply or suggest a painter? Don’t stars suggest a star maker?

 

The Bible says, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” That’s the God we are talking about here. It is the one the Bible says, not only creates, but also loves. God is loves. It doesn’t say, “God has love.” It doesn’t say, “God just could love.” It doesn’t say, “God might love.” It doesn’t say that at all. It says, “God is love.” That is the God we are talking about. That’s the God we are describing. The Creator of all that is… The Creator of the heavens, and the earth, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea… It is the same one who created you and created me, just so God could love you and me. God made you to love you. That is the reason we are breathing today. That’s why that heart is still pounding in your chest. The Creator of all that is created you to love you. Wow!

 

Now, get this. That love doesn’t just happen on your good days. That love is available on your bad days as well. It’s not just when you feel it. It’s when you don’t feel it as well. That love is there whether you think you deserve it and on days when you don’t think you deserve it at all. 

 

Why? Because God’s love is not based on what you do. It’s not based on what you think. It’s not based on what you feel. God’s love is based on God’s nature. God’s nature is expressed in Christmas. That God, that Creator, that star maker is love. That’s the message. Does that sound like good news to anybody else here besides me?

 

So, Number One: God loves you. God loves us.

 

Number Two: God is with us. This is worthy of celebration. 

 

You may not feel that presence. You may not sense that presence, but God being with us is not dependent on how you feel. It’s not dependent on what you know or what you don’t know. If science has taught us anything, it has made it abundantly clear there is a lot more going on in the universe than anybody knows. There is a lot more going on than you know and a lot more than anybody else knows. Christmas says, “God is with us all the time.”

 

One of the names for Jesus, given at his birth was Emmanuel. We sang about it earlier. Emmanuel means, “God with us.”

 

In Hebrews 13:5, God says, “I will never leave you; I will never abandon you.”

 

Folks, there are people in this room today… There are people whom you know, whom you care about, whom you love, who have, in fact, been abandoned. I’m sorry for that for you and for them. I know it stings. I know it hurts. It hurts at levels too deep for even words. However, here is the good news today. There is good news of great joy that God will never abandon you. God will never abandon anyone whom you know, whom you love, whom you care about, people whom you don’t even know. You may not feel that right now. You may not experience that right now, and that’s just simply because you are not aware. It’s not part of your consciousness. You’re not tuned in. You’re not connected.

 

By the way, did you know God hates loneliness? God hates it. God hates loneliness. That’s why, when God created the first human being, God said, “It is not good for human beings to be alone.”

 

Folks, whether you ever get married or not is irrelevant. The issue is that you need people. You need people in your life. More than that, however, you need the Spirit of the Living God in your life as well. The reason anybody feels loneliness is because he/she is not connected to others and to the Lord.

 

Good news today! God says, “I not only love you, I’m with you in every moment of every day, of every night, of every occasion. All you need to do is tune in, get connected, learn how.”

 

That means there is nothing you or I or anybody else has to face in the year to come, 2008, alone. Now, you can, if you want to. But you don’t have to, because Emmanuel is with us. God is with us.

 

Here is more good news. When God is near, our experience has been, it removes your fear. If you, or anybody you know or love, is afraid, worried, anxious, or lonely today, you and they need to tune in, get connected, open your heart to the Spirit of the Living Christ, and sense, become conscious of, actually experience and encounter that relationship.

 

That is why we wrote this guide for our people. [Editor’s note: Rick holds up “A Prayer Guide for the Season of Advent.”] It’s a wonderful thing. Would you agree? Would you be willing to spend 15 minutes every single day, starting today, between now and Christmas Eve? That’s what spirituality is all about. It’s taking time to do those things, to connect.

 

1) God loves us! 2) God is with us! 3) God is for us! These are things worth celebrating.

 

Folks, so many people are, literally, afraid of the Spirit of the Living God today. You may be one of them. Maybe you get nervous when people start talking about God. Perhaps you’re nervous because you think, “If I open myself… If I allow myself to think… If I allow myself to feel… If I allow myself to pray… If I allow myself to move, step by step, just a little bit closer to God, God’s going to scold me, or berate me, or rake me over the coals, or chew me out for all those things I’ve done wrong, or all those things I’m doing now that I’m not proud of.” 

 

People are afraid. If that is you today, or if that is somebody you know today, I want you to hear this. Hear it very clearly.  The Bible says that the Creator of all that is didn’t come, didn’t become one of us, to condemn the world. The Spirit of the Living God came to save it, to heal it. Those are the same words in the Bible.

 

“I bring you good news of great joy which is for all people.”

 

What’s the good news? God is for you. God is always, in every moment of every occasion, pulling for you, luring you, encouraging you to know what the good thing is. God is encouraging you to do the good thing, the right thing, the loving thing. God wants you to succeed. God wants you to live in all the fullness. God wants you to have that for your life. That’s the reason you’re here. 

 

God not only loves us. God is with us. God is for us. “If the Lord,” as Paul says, “is for us, who in the world can be against us?”

 

Folks, the easiest thing in the world is to condemn. You know that. The easiest thing in the world is to criticize, to accuse. I can play the blame game all day long with my eyes closed. 

 

However, if you haven’t noticed, we don’t spend a whole lot of time around here condemning people. We don’t spend a whole lot of time around here condemning society. This is the reason. I don’t know about you, but there seems to be plenty of that already. There’s a lot of that around. More importantly, you and I are Christ followers, and he didn’t come here to condemn the world. He came here to save it, to heal it. We have a broken world, a hurting world, and it needs saving.

 

We talk about a vision. We talk about what we’re supposed to do in this world. We have a world to save. We have people to help heal. We have a world that needs healing. We have lots to do. That’s your role. That’s my role. That’s our role together. Our job is to point the way – the way, the truth, the source – of new life that is here for anybody who wants to take it, not only now but for ever.

 

So what’s so special about Christmas? What’s so special is that we have some good news. There’s a great joy, and it’s for everybody. I don’t care if you’re Presbyterian or Pentecostal. I don’t care if you’re Catholic, or Protestant, or Muslin, or Mormon. I don’t care if you’re Jewish, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Baptist. I don’t care if you don’t even care what you are. You don’t know who you are, and you don’t care.

 

Christmas is good news of great joy for all people. Not just you. Not just this church. Not just Disciples of Christ. The joy – the good news that’s been coming to this earth – is for all people! Wow! The good news is God loves us; God is with us; and God is for us.

 

So, Merry Christmas, everybody. Let’s get in the Spirit. It’s time to celebrate. Let’s get started.    

 

And all the people say… “Amen.”

 

 

Long-Awaited Christ, we, your people, celebrate that you were born among us. We, your beloved, celebrate that you are with us. We, your partners, celebrate that you are for us. Come, Lord Jesus; let us usher in this season with celebration! Amen.