Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · December 28, 2008

First Sunday After Christmas

Prayer of the Day

Gracious God, Giver of all good gifts, we thank you for your generosity. We thank you for the celebration of the gift of a child and hope born again in our hearts. May we be open to receive the gifts of all of your children, as well as your Son. Amen.

Scripture

Luke 2:40-52

The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.

Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up as usual for the festival. When the festival was ended and they started to return, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming that he was in the group of travelers, they went a day’s journey. Then they started to look for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him they were astonished; and his mother said to him, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” He said to them, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he said to them. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them. His mother treasured all these things in her heart.

And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.

Message

The Life-Giving Lessons of Christmas

Larry Gallamore

Christmas is always a marvelous time of the year when we think about the rehearsal of the Christmas story. We do it every year. I keep thinking, every year we get something different from the Christmas story. We recognize it is such a powerful story. It’s the story that we identify with. It’s one that actually defines our own existence as Christians in the world. It’s a story we dare not allow our children to forget. 

As we rehearse the story every year, it becomes a tremendous story, because we recognize that every year Christ is coming into the world. It is a world filled with difficulty. It is a world that needs help. It is a world that has so many problems. He’s coming into the world to give us the hope we need, and the peace that we need, and the joy that we need, and all of the things we need to be able to encounter and defeat the problems and difficulties that we all have.

As I think about the Christmas story, it is always a wonderful story, because I know, that as I grew up with this Christmas story in the church, every time I heard it, I thought to myself, “Wow! It’s Christmastime.”

As a child, I couldn’t wait for Christmastime. Sometimes, I think, we all need to be like children around Christmas. But as I waited and waited for Christmas as a child, I thought, “What a tremendous story. How marvelous!”

As a teenager, I thought, “What’s this story mean? What does it mean about life, and living, and what’s it mean for me as a teenage kid growing up in Missouri?” As a young adult, I thought, “What does it mean as a young adult?” 

When I got married and started a family, “What’s it mean for a father, a family person?” As I look at the years, as I grow older, I ask, “What does it mean to me – the Christmas story?”

In seminary, when they teach you how to preach, some seminaries will tell you the story, and they will tell you, “Go ahead and tell the biblical story. Then you are always asking yourself the question, ‘So, what?’”

The first time I heard that I thought, “What do they mean, ‘so what?’ This is the biblical story. It’s the story of Christmas.” I wanted to get up in the classroom and shout at the professor, “Don’t you understand? This is the story of Christmas, and you said, ‘So, what?’”

But, I think we need to ask that question: “What does it mean to us? What does it mean to us in terms of living?”

Well… I think Jesus came for reasons. I believe those reasons are very important to every one of us. First of all, the Bible says he came “that we might have life and have it more abundantly.” There’s nothing more wonderful than life, as you look at life, friends. There’s nothing more precious than the life we have. There’s nothing more valuable to us than the very life we have as we sit and stand here this morning, living and breathing human beings full of life, full of joy. There’s nothing more precious than that.

I wondered what life meant when I was a teenager. I searched around and tried to find what life really means, because I was wondering how I needed to live. You know… You’re not born with an instruction book. I thought, as a teenager, “I’m old enough to read the book. I would know if I had an instruction manual. But, you’re not born with one.” 

I began to discover that the manual for me was probably the Bible. But as I looked at the Bible, I thought to myself, “How can I understand the Bible? How can I understand it except for understanding the stories?”

I paged through the Old Testament and began to read in Leviticus and so forth, and I thought, “All these dietary things don’t tell me anything. I don’t know anything about that. What good is that?”

Then I found the New Testament and began to read about Jesus. How remarkable it became, because I began to see that Jesus came that we “might have life and have it more abundantly.” I kept asking the question: “What is life?” I could find no answers in our society as I looked around. Life? I saw some people living a life to the fullest, and some people were so happy to be alive. I saw others who were just miserable. I thought, “What is life?”

I turned to Webster’s Dictionary. I learned early in life that when you can’t find out about anything, you always turn to the dictionary. Thank God for wonderful school teachers who taught me that. I began to look up the word “life.” As I looked up the word “life,” I found, in the dictionary, certain meanings of “life.” It’s that process that defines a living organism from a dead one. I thought, “How incredible. That’s really helpful.”

I looked at the other definitions that were there. One definition said it is a process we all go through; it’s an incredible journey that people live.  It’s intended to be a journey that you live, that you go through the duration of the time here on planet Earth. And I thought, “That’s incredible. If it means you are alive and living, then some people that have life really don’t have life.” I continued to think, “There have been times in my life when I didn’t have the real life I needed.” 

I started thinking about that, and I said to myself, “Life means that you have life in Jesus Christ. Life means that he is guiding your life. Life means that he is directing your life.”

Folks, over the years, do you know what I’ve discovered? It doesn’t make any difference if you are a child. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a teenager. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a middle-aged adult. It doesn’t make any difference if you are that category we call… (I don’t like this label.) … senior citizen. 

When I became a senior citizen, I started looking around for other ways to define my life. I thought, “Senior citizen doesn’t define me, because the kid is still alive in there.” I thought, “It doesn’t define me at all.” I searched, and I was just sure I was going to come up with some brilliant way of defining life at that stage. But I didn’t. I couldn’t find anything. Finally, one day I stumbled upon some wise person that very adequately labeled the senior citizen category. They said, “These are the people that are chronologically gifted.” I thought, “That’s me. That’s me! That’s life!”

You know, folks… It does mean that. Then I realized age doesn’t make any difference at all. Age doesn’t make any difference at Christmastime. When we got ready to start opening the gifts, age didn’t make any difference. The adults were as excited as the children. When we got ready to have Christmas dinner, age didn’t make any difference. The adults were as excited as the children. 

I thought, historically, how some people have actually lived out their lives in wonderful, wonderful ways, and I thought, “I want to be alive every day of my life. I don’t care if I live to be 100; I still want to be alive.” 

I thought of people like Galileo who wrote a book at 74-years of age. As I thought about that, I thought about a man who is a very brilliant scholar whom I talked with a few months ago. He said, “Larry, I’ve written my last book.” 

I said, “No, no, no. You can’t do that. All that talent. You have so much in your head. You have so much in your life. You have so much to share.”

He said, “I’m too old to write another book.”

I said, “Do you know that Galileo was 74 when he wrote his last book? Do you know that Michelangelo was 71 when he became the supervisor of the Sistine Chapel? Do you know that Grandma Moses was 71 before she even started painting? Do you know that Susan B. Anthony was 80-years-old when she was out there running up and down the streets trying to get the right for women to vote.”

He looked at me kind of funny. I said, “Do you know that at 52 she walked into the voting booth and said, ‘I’m voting.’ She went ahead and voted anyway. Do you know what they did? They gave her a new experience. It’s called ‘jail.’ She was so alive, so alive at 52, so alive at 80!”

Jesus came, folks, so that we “might have life and have it more abundantly.” Do you know what that means? That means that in the story I read to you this morning, Jesus was already preparing in the temple, because he recognized his life had to count. He recognized it had to make a difference. Quite often in our lives, we find ourselves saying, “Can I make a difference in this world? Will I affect anybody in this world? Will my life be anything to anyone?” Jesus, at 12, had already started to open the incredible gifts that were in his own life. 

You know, folks… There are so many gifts in this congregation. There are so many gifts in the lives of the people here. I want you, this Christmas, to recognize every one of those gifts. I want you to start opening them, like a child. I want you to realize that all those gifts that come, come from God.  When you open those gifts and share those gifts with other people, some wonderful and marvelous things happen. Jesus came that we might have life and have an abundant life.

There is a second reason he came. He also came to show us how to live. I discovered early in life that Jesus came to show us how to live. I kind of stumbled upon it. I was looking through the Bible one day as a child. In the Bible we had in our home, I discovered in the New Testament, there were some red letters there. I thought, “Wow. There must be something going on here. Red letters and black letters in the Bible.” So I rushed to my father, and I said, “Dad, what do these red letters mean?”

He said, “Oh, Son, those are the words of Jesus.”

I thought those must be incredibly important to put them in red. So, I began to read the words of Jesus. I discovered Jesus teaches us how to live. Jesus says, “The kingdom of God is within.” 

In the teachings of Jesus, you find every thing you ever need to know how to live life. I found the instruction book I was looking for all the way along. You see… In Jesus you find the instructions for life and living: how to live, how to be a child, how to be youth, how to be an adult, how to be a senior citizen. In Jesus, you find all that.

I started thinking as I was reading the Scripture that every time I would read it, I realized, “This is here to change me. This is here to make me new.” Then I realized something, suddenly one day. It wasn’t on my own; I read it somewhere else. I read a certain phrase a writer had shared in a book: “Any time you learn something new, you become something new.” I thought, “Wow! That’s what Jesus is talking about.”

Jesus is saying that any time you learn that the kingdom of God is within you… Any time you learn that there is peace and joy within you… Any time you learn that there is love within you… Any time you learn that there is something you have to give to others within you… you just can’t wait to share it. And Jesus shared his life. 

That’s why he was back at the temple. That’s why he was asking all kinds of questions. People who ask questions find answers. 

Kids will ask questions at certain times in their lives. When they are asking questions, we need to provide answers. If you don’t now the answer, tell them you don’t know, but tell them you will help them discover the answer. 

You see… When we get into life and living, we sometimes think we just exist here on planet Earth. We keep thinking to ourselves that it is all fate. We keep thinking that my future is already determined. We keep thinking to ourselves that life is this way, and I have to play whatever cards are dealt to me.  There are some people, in this life, who are dealt a perfect hand, and they don’t play it very well. There are other people who are dealt, in this life, all kinds of problems and difficulties – physical problems and all kinds of other problems – and they play their hand well, and they become so important.

Look at Jesus: only three years in ministry. Someone said the other day when I brought up the fact that Jesus only had three years in ministry, he said, “He only had three years, but think of the impact. He had more impact on people, in those three years, than anyone else who has ever been on planet Earth.”

Now, when I read the Old Testament, I’m always fascinated, because I read about all the people who lived a long time. I keep asking the question, “How did they live that long?” I keep thinking that, in terms of scientific things, maybe the air was pure. Maybe they did a lot of things back then. However, that doesn’t concern me right now. I keep thinking, “How did they live that long?” But the saddest one of all is two lines in the Old Testament. I read: “There was a man named Methuselah, and he lived to be 969 years old.” And that’s it! It doesn’t say anything about his accomplishments. It doesn’t say anything about him giving anybody anything. It doesn’t say anything about how he lived his life. It just says he lived a long life.

The one thing we have to say to ourselves in 2009 is this: “We have to live every moment. We have to live every hour. We have to live every day. We have to live every month. We have to live the entire year of 2009, because Jesus lives within us.” 

People out there in the world need that. People aren’t using their religion. I keep thinking, as I look at this Christmas story, “People aren’t using their religion. If we all used our religion, we would have peace in the world.”

I must tell you. I’m sure you do the same thing. This Christmas holiday, I’ve had to pray through the news every once in a while. You heard me right. I prayed through the news. When I heard that Israel and Palestine were in war again, I started praying through the news, because I know that is not what God wants. I started thinking about the world religions. In Christianity, if we would always do what Jesus taught us, everything would be fine, and there would be peace on earth. I even give benefit to the Muslims when I think about them. If they really believed in peace, there would be peace on earth. I thought about the Hindus and the Buddhists, and all the other people. I’m not criticizing any of those people or their religions. I’m Christian, because I believe in Christ. But I am saying that if every one of us could pull together, we could probably have peace on earth. Instead, there is division. It’s not what Jesus wanted. It’s not how we’re supposed to live.

When you think about life and living, it is to be lived to the fullest. Everyone needs the opportunity. Every child needs the opportunity to live life to the fullest. If you don’t have that opportunity, what a shame it is. We have to pray about that, folks. We have to meditate about that. 

Now, some of you are saying, “I don’t know how to meditate.” Some of you are saying, “I don’t know how to pray.” 

I don’t need to tell you how to meditate, because I think most of you know how to meditate. I had a man in my office a few months back. (I never tell stories about people in this church, by the way. You’re safe. Only other churches.) He was in my office, and he was saying to me, “Larry, you keep saying we need to meditate. I don’t know how to meditate.”

I said, “Well, it’s what Paul said about ‘pray without ceasing’.”

He said, “I still don’t know how. Could you please tell me how?”

Suddenly, God gave me the way he could meditate. I’d probably read it somewhere in the past. But God gave, in my mind, at that point and time how he could meditate. I said, “Listen. You are a big sports fan. Aren’t you?”

He said, “Yea. You know that.”

I said, “Let me tell you how to meditate. Sunday, I know what’s going to happen. You are going to watch the games on Sunday. On Monday, you know what is going to happen? You will have watched those football games. It’s wonderful. I know, because I do, too. You will watch all those players, and all those plays, and everything about the games. Then on Monday, you are driving to work. I believe you have about 15 or 20 minutes to drive to work. As you drive to work, I know what is going to happen. Running through your mind is every play that they missed, every catch they missed, everything that happened. You are running it all through your mind and saying, ‘If they would have done this and that, they would have won’.”

He said, “Yea. How did you know?”

I said, “Because I do the same thing. You are going to be going down the road, and you will run all that football stuff through your mind for 15 minutes or so. You’ll get all the way down the road, close to where you work. You’ll think back, and you’ll be thinking: ‘Wait a minute. There were several stop signs back there. I don’t even remember, but I know I stopped at every one. There were several turns back there, but I don’t even remember making the turns, but I know I turned at every one.’ Well, you were meditating on football. You have to learn to meditate on Jesus Christ. You have to learn to meditate as you pray.”

He said, “Oh, OK. Now I get it. What am I supposed to do?”

I said, “Think about Jesus. Read the Bible. Pray and think about what God wants for your life. Invite Jesus into your life. The more you invite Jesus into your life, the better it is going to be in your relationship with God.”

He said, “Oh, that makes a lot of sense.”

I said, “When you first met your wife, didn’t you spend some time with her before you fell in love with her?”

He said, “Of course, I did.”

“OK. You have to spend some time with God before you fall in love with God. When you fall in love with God, then you will recognize that God guides your life. God is with you every day of your life.”

He said, “I get it, but do I have to stop watching football?”

I said, “Absolutely not! Football is where you learned how to meditate. Now, I’ve taught you how to meditate on your religion, how to meditate on God, how to meditate with prayer.”

So, you see, my friends, Jesus teaches us how to live. It’s an incredible story. It’s the most wonderful story in all the world. It’s the story that gives life. This Christmas, help that story to be alive in you. 

As you move into 2009, you’re looking for life. You’re looking for happiness. You’re looking for fulfillment. You’re looking for peace in the world. All those things are possible, my friends, through the power of Jesus Christ.

So be it. Amen.

Benediction

God, thank you for the sweet spirit of a child. Thank you for telling us long ago that the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Let us come to you as children, shepherds, and kings, with spirits that long to see clearly and hasten to be near you.  Amen.