Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · December 24, 2006

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Prayer of the Day

Lord Jesus, in this hour of worship, help us recall what incredible lengths you would stoop in order to lift us up to God.  You descended to earth that we might rise to heaven!  Be born in our hearts, Lord Jesus, and enable us to see our lives transformed in you.  Amen.

Scripture

Luke 2:1-7

Our text today is one that is very familiar to the Christmas story.  It comes from the gospel of Luke.  We’ve heard it before already this season.  We will hear it again tonight.  We never tire of this amazing story.  Hear the words that Luke tells us.

Now in those days a decree went out from the emperor of Rome, Caesar Augustus, that all should be registered, enrolled, taxed.  The census, the first, was taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria, and everyone went to his own town to be registered.

So a man named Joseph set out from Nazareth in Galilee and traveled up to Judea, to Bethlehem, to the city of David, since he belonged to the house and the lineage of David.  And he went there to be enrolled, to be taxed together with Mary who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child.  While they were there, the time came for the babe to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son.  She wrapped him in swaddling clothes – strips of cloth – and laid him in a manger – an animal trough in a barn – because there was no room for them in the inn.

This is the Word of the Lord for us this day.

Message

An Almost Frightening Quietness

Rick Frost

It is almost always interesting to see how people in our time and place approach the holiday seasons.  We need to say right up front, I think, that there are people – you know them, and I do, too – who have contempt for the Christian sacred season.  They haven’t celebrated Christmas since they were old enough to know better and stop believing in “you-know-who.”  By the same token, they don’t believe in God.  They don’t believe in Jesus.  So, they consider it a violation of their constitutional rights to publicly have to put up with it.  For them, Christmas is simply a paid vacation, a time to take a break.  It is sort of like spring break.  Throw a party, maybe take a cruise, maybe ply your trade and cash in on all the money being spent this season.  There are those that you and I know in our society who hold Christmas in such contempt.

Now, there are other people, of course, you know that for them this is a time of peace.  It’s a time of love.  It’s a time of joy.  It’s a time of family traditions and friends.  It’s almost a magical time for some.  It evokes feelings that are romantic, and generous, and open-handed, and unselfish, and altruistic.  It’s just what people in western culture have learned to do.  It’s the most wonderful time of year.  People go to great lengths, you and I among them, to make it a very happy and wonderful day.

Now, I think we need to say also for some this is a sad occasion.  This season causes them to feel blue and depressed.  It’s a time they would really like to avoid, to put their life on fast-forward, to sort of get through it as quickly as possible.  I think most of us know the reason.  Sometimes we have been through some very difficult times and situations in our lives.  Christmas evokes all of those feelings.  Sometimes it just reminds us of things that may not be going well in our lives, or some of the things we’re missing, or some of the things we have lost, some of the things that are painful to us.  There are people in our midst for whom this season is a sad season, and they would like very much to avoid it.

But, for most of us, probably most in this room, this is a time of year that presents, quite frankly, to the Christian community a particular danger.  That danger is simply this.  We are so familiar with Christmas.  We’re so used to doing it.  We’ve been doing it for so long.  We’ve been doing it in so many of the same ways. 

It’s sort of like taking communion every Sunday in church.  It’s easy to just get into the pattern and to have a feeling of indifference about it. 

The true mystery and the wander of biblical Christmas is sometimes something that leaves us unmoved, untouched, unshaken, unaffected.  We can be blind, literally, to the shining fact that lies at the very heart of this season for us.

No doubt, we have and we will enjoy the cards, the gifts, the giving, the receiving, the wonderful music, the decorations, the parties, the festivities, and just the general atmosphere of good will and kindness and benevolence.  All of that is good.  But so much of that has been heaped on to this holiday that the historic facts upon which all of this rejoicing is founded almost gets smothered – sort of covered up in the process.

So let’s simply, as a community of faith – not just here but everywhere, hopefully – say it again and say it clearly.  What we Christians are, in fact, celebrating is the awe-inspiring humility of the Creator of all that is.  While all of this other may be wonderful and glorious and fun, it should never blind us to the quiet but explosive significance of Christ’s-mass, of Emmanuel, of God with us.  For we Christians, most of us, believe that so great is God’s love for all of humanity that God – God’s self – would become a human being, a person just like you and me.  All of God, all of the divine, all of heaven that could be poured into a human being was done so – mystery of mysteries – unexplainably, that night in Bethlehem so long ago.

So, in the midst of all the sparkle, and the color, and the music, and the fun, which is today, I think it is good for us to gather and to remember that God’s insertion of God’s self into human history was, in fact, achieved with an almost frightening quietness and humility.  No advertisement.  No P.R.  No grand announcement.  No 500 t-shirts to the first 500 people who show up.  None of that.

In fact, the entry of the Creator of all that is into God’s creation was almost heart-breakingly simple and humble.  I mean… There’s not much beauty or romance to be found in a young woman looking desperately for a place where she can give birth to her first baby. 

But Luke was very clear.  His story is clean of all decoration, anything that would remove this amazing event from the lowly, from the poor, from the marginalized.

Folks, in the history of the Church, there have been millions and millions of people so poor and abandoned that their ability to identify with this amazing scene is something that you and I and most of us simply read about on an annual basis.

Yet, who of us is not moved by the bitter fact that no one would give up a bed for a pregnant woman ready to give birth?  Who of us is not moved by the mystery of the fact that the Son of the Living God, the creative force of the universe, is born in a stable? 

It’s unthinkable.  It’s unbelievable.  It’s unimaginable.  So, for centuries, artists, poets, composers, filmmakers, academicians have tried to do one of two things.  They have either tried to decorate it up, exaggerate it, make it more acceptable, attractive, palatable for the modern mind, or on the other hand, they have worked overtime to try to tear it down, to refute it, to minimize it, to reject it.   Or what’s happening most of all in our society today, replace it. 

Point?  The point is this.  I think that at least once a year we, in the Christian community, should invite the entire world to look at the record.  Just look at the record.  At the time of this amazing event that I read to you earlier from Luke, only a handful of people knew that it was even going on.  As far as we know, no one spoke of it or even wrote a word about it for over 30 years.  Even when the babe grew up to be a man, only a few people recognized him for who he actually was.  Two-three very short years of teaching, preaching, healing, training, calling people, and his work was finished.  His confrontation with the authorities, his popularity with the people, his unwillingness to be used by the political agenda of some saw him betrayed and very judiciously murdered.

By normal human standards, folks, this is just another little, tiny tale of failure.  It’s happened a gazillion times in history.  Young man, young woman, humble home, humble origin, stirs people up, put to death by the malice of the powers that be.  All of this happening, you see, in a very obscure, remote, out-of-the-way, no-count, occupied, middle-eastern providence in this vast, vast thing called the Roman Empire.  It’s a blimp on the screen of history.

Well… The fact is it has been 1500 years since that great super power, that apparently invincible empire, utterly, completely, totally collapsed, fell, crushed.  As you know, the only thing that is left of it today is ruins. 

Yet, you and I are here today because of a baby that was born in poverty, born in humility, born in a dessert town in the Middle East somewhere, cut down as a young man in his prime.  Yet, he is the one who commands the allegiance, the loyalty, the commitment of over a billion people in this world this very day.  Although none of us have ever seen him, we have been encountered by his Living Spirit, and that Living Spirit has changed, and transformed, and shaped, and moved our lives by the one who came to offer us new life, folks.  New life, regardless of the circumstances in which any of us find ourselves, that new life has been offered.  Life now, and life eternal, and life as it was meant to be. 

That undeniable fact is by any measurement, folks, the most astonishing phenomenon in human history.  It is the solid rock of evidence that no one – and I mean no one – can ever explain away.  That’s why, behind all the fun and games, and all the parties and celebrations, we should, I think, allow ourselves to feel down deep, actually experience a sense of awe of what the Bible calls worship, wonder, amazement, almost a sense of fright, if you will.  Reverence: does that word resonate?  What God has done in Christ Jesus?

I understand Judy, the director, and others were trying to get the children to “get it.”  To sense what was going on – the sense of awe.  They were trying to get the kids ready for tonight.  They were talking to them and asking them to really get into it.  One little kid (I don’t know which one it was) said, “Oh, my God!”  We thought that was a little too much.  We didn’t want him to express it that way.  But you know what?  That’s not too far from it.  “Oh, my God!”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit in church somewhere tonight and feel, just actually feel, something of the presence? 

I was trying to remember the last time I felt that sense of presence.  I remember the day.  It was March 12 of this year.  I do remember that day.  It was the day that winds started to pick up, and the clouds got sort of gray-green-black ugly.  Sirens started to wail around our neighborhood.  It became so intense that Jan and I called the neighbor next door and said, “Alice, can we come over and sit in your basement?”

The rains did come.  The hails beat on the roof.  The electricity went out.  The windows shook.  We sat in that basement in awe, almost a sense of fright, of the power – the amazing power – we had just beheld.  We knew we had been in the presence.

We get to feel that so seldom in our lives.  Folks, I want to ask you to don’t let anything blind you to this incredibly significant event that creates awe that happened in Bethlehem a long time ago, because nothing can alter the fact that we live on a visited planet. 

So let’s be very clear tonight.  We are not going to be celebrating a beautiful myth.  We’re not going to be celebrating a lovely piece of folklore.  We are going to get together to celebrate a solemn fact.  As the great biblical scholar J.B. Phillips put it, “The Creator of all that is has been here once historically, and as millions will testify, God will come again with the same silent and almost devastating humility into the human hearts of anybody ready to receive him.”

Wow!

Max Lucado is a marvelous Christian writer, who hangs out in San Antonio.  He said it this way.  I loved it.  Maybe you saw it.  He wrote not long ago about Christmas Night.  Not Christmas Eve, but Christmas Night.  He said these words:

You know, it’s Christmas Night.  The midnight hour has chimed.  I should be asleep, but I am awake.  I’m kept awake by one stunning thought.  The world was different this week.  It was temporarily transformed. 

The magical dust of Christmas glittered on the cheeks of humanity every so briefly, but it reminded us of what’s worth having and what life is intended to be.  We forgot, just for a little while, the compulsion of winning, and wooing, and warring.  We stepped off our racetracks and our roller coasters, and we looked outward toward the Star of Bethlehem. 

‘Tis the season to be jolly, and it’s that way because more than any other time, we think of him.  More than any other season, his name is on our lips.  The result: for a few precious hours he is beheld Christ the Lord.  Those who pass the year without seeing him suddenly see him.  People, who have been accustomed to using his name in vain, pause and use it in praise.  All of a sudden he is everywhere.  In the grin of a man as he drives a car full of presents to the shelter.  In the twinkle of an eye of the waitress who tells of an upcoming Christmas trip to see her children.  In the emotion of a father who is too thankful to be able to finish the dinner prayer at the table.  He’s in the tears of the mother, the father as she/he welcomes her/his son/daughter home from overseas. 

He’s in the heart of the guy standing in front of Schnucks ringing the bell.  He’s in the soul of Susie and Richard as they listen to our youth sing carols to them on their front yard.  Emmanuel: God with us.

Max continues: 

Well, it’s Christmas Night.  In a few short hours, the clean-up will begin.  The lights are going to come down.  Size 36 is going to be exchanged for size 40.  (Rick: Yea, I wish!)  Eggnog is going to go on sale for half price.  Suddenly life is going to be normal again.  December’s generosity is going to become January’s payments.  The magic is going to start to wear off. 

Bur for the moment, the magic is still in the air.  Maybe that’s why I’m still awake.  I just want to savor that spirit just a little bit more.  Not only do I want to savor, but also I want to pray.  I want to pray that those who beheld him today might look for him in August.  I can’t help but linger on one fanciful thought, that if he can do so much with such timid prayers, lamely offered in December, just how much more could he do if the people thought of him every single day?

Merry Christmas.

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

And now may our faith in God uphold us, our hope in God motivate us, and the love of God surround us, in ways that enable us to go from this place and serve our fellow human beings, in Christ’s name and for his glory!  Amen.