A sermon by Senior Minister John B. McCall, December 16, 2007
Isaiah 7:10-16
Matthew 1:18-23
Back in England, at the beginning of the 15th Century, there was a monastery of the order of the Star of Bethlehem. The Brothers began to take in some mentally ill patients. People in London just referred to it as Bethlehem Hospital. Over time the name was shortened from Bethlehem to Bedlam, a term which was then generalized to refer to any mental asylum. Finally, with a small letter “b” the word bedlam came to mean chaos.
From Bethlehem to Bedlam. Some of us might say it’s not a long trip at Christmas time. We want Bethlehem and we get Bedlam instead. We want Christmas cheer and we often find Christmas chaos. This distress in the soul certainly isn’t the gift we want from the coming of Jesus.
Preparing for the birth of the Christ Child has changed a lot from the days you and I were children. We may resent the shift away from “Merry Christmas” toward “Happy Holidays,” as more of our neighbors observe other religious festivals at this time of year.
For me, the greater issue is that so many have co-opted Christmas by overlaying meanings that have nothing to do with its origin. More and more people associate Christmas with Santa, the Grinch, Charlie Brown, and scads of other additions. There’s a split between those who see it as a Christian holy-day and those who see it as a shopping season.
More than 50 years ago the British author C.S. Lewis, told a story which drew the line clearly, he said, “between our feast of the Nativity and all the ghastly “Xmas” racket at its lowest. My brother heard a woman on a bus say as the bus passed a church with a stable scene outside it: “O Lord, they bring religion into everything. Look — they’re even draggin’ it into Christmas now!”
As the celebration of the season focuses less and less on the central meaning of Messiah’s birth we may want to blame the society in various ways. It’s the merchants who start their sales in October, now! It’s the immigrants who don’t even celebrate Christmas! It’s the ACLU that has taken away the manger scene on the courthouse lawn… and so it goes.
Quite honestly, I think the wisest choice is to tolerate all that swirls around us. Shouting matches about the true meaning of Christmas won’t help anyone. Rather, let those of us who cherish the story hold it tenderly and teach it faithfully.
Every one of us who makes it to worship during this Advent season is preparing spiritually for the joyous announcement that Christ is born… again! No one, not even the Grinch, can steal that!
For a few minutes, then, let’s put aside all the tasks that aren’t finished and take a deep breath — then wander together into the simple beauty of the story of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem of Judea. Like wide-eyed children at this morning’s pageant, let’s step into the story.
Remember that the way we generally tell the Christmas story is a conglomeration of the four Gospels. Luke has angels and shepherds, the census and the stable.
Matthew has wise men. And Matthew, too, most clearly connects the birth of Jesus with the Hebrew prophecies. Again and again he says: “this happened in order to fulfill the promise of God…” Matthew portrays the characters as completely passive. Everything happens to them. They don’t even speak. Instead they follow the script that God has written. To Matthew the message is that God is in charge.
Matthew also has this brief but powerful vignette about Joseph, a small town carpenter from Nazareth. He was a commoner though a direct descendent of the great King David. Matthew tells us Mary and Joseph were betrothed. In biblical times this was more than an engagement. It was the first of two stages in marriage — a public announcement of the promises and a promise of fidelity. It signified a commitment that could not be lightly changed.
Imagine what Joseph felt when he discovered that Mary was pregnant! His dreams were shattered. It would have been easy to cast her aside and to disgrace her publicly. Matthew tells us Joseph wasn’t that kind of man. Instead he decided to do the right thing quietly, and prepared to divorce her. Then an angel of the Lord came and told him what was to happen. Mary’s child was to be the long-awaited savior. Joseph would name him Jesus meaning “he will save his people;” Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us.”
Joseph’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was ninety miles by road, but it was much farther as a journey of the heart. Nothing happened the way Joseph had planned it, yet God was dwelling in the midst of every moment. This rugged man from the small town had planned how it was supposed to work, but God had other ideas!
Don’t you know how that feels? We lay out the plans and lists. We make the decisions and figure the bottom line. Then, for reasons we cannot easily discern, it all falls apart. God doesn’t keep dreams from collapsing. But God helps us to pick up the pieces, and always speaks the final word.
This Christmas event, both long ago, and right this minute, reminds us we are first receivers. We can love because God first loved us. We live in the light of a gift so enormous that we have not ever figured out fully what it means. As Christians we believe God sent salvation not as a mighty king and warrior, but in the form of a fragile infant. We call it the “Incarnation” — God in flesh, in human form.
This simple truth was made even more clear several years ago, when I heard a speech by Dr. Carlyle Marney a Southern Methodist, as I recall. He said this: “This is the basis of our preaching, and the fact of our redemption: that the Word not silence, became Flesh not concept. And Grace not merit, ministers to Faith not knowledge, in such a way that we may know that we are an incarnation, too.”
WE ARE AN INCARNATION, TOO! God became human in Jesus reminding us that God becomes human in you and in me! God chose to live as we live, rejoice as we rejoice, suffer as we suffer, die as we die. If we can’t comprehend God our Creator, maybe we can gain a glimpse of God in Christ our Brother.
God had always been beyond us. Now God stood beside us and walked with us as life unfolds. Never again must it be as though God is distant and separate. Never again will there be an impassable chasm between the divine and the human. “And his name shall be called Emmanuel, meaning `God is with us'”
But what does this promise really mean in our own lives?
Doesn’t it mean, first, that God has seen our human situation and offered light in our darkness? In Jesus, God gave us a focus, a point toward which we can journey. It makes me think of the paper white narcissus bulbs Andrea starts each year in the kitchen window. It grows so fast you can almost see it. And it always turns to the light, leaning, stretching, gaining life from the light.
Then, doesn’t “Emmanuel” mean that God has given us something concrete to replace the theoretical? The Word did not become flesh just so we could turn it back into a bunch of words. What we need is not an argument or a debate or even a learned sermon. We all need the concrete. What we need is a life that shows us how to live.
In Jesus we can see what life looks like when God means everything to us. We call his life “authentic,” because it had a single center. You and I are so often scattered with so many centers. I often feel like a Jack of trades and master of none. I look with admiration on those who are single minded.
Gradually, as I mature, I know more certainly that love is all that really matters. The center of that love is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ. As a kid, I never understood how my father could say all he wanted for Christmas was for us to be together. Now I do. Emmanuel means God came in one life to show us how to live.
Then doesn’t this incarnation mean that we’re not abandoned to the consequences of our own foolish mistakes? The prophets had promised that God wouldn’t give up. As often as the Children of Israel turned away, God would pull them back.
We’d still be basking in paradise were it not for our human thirst for freedom and the hunger to know everything. Adam and Eve represent our readiness to challenge God. Then for generations God watched us wander in the wilderness, stray from the path, compromise the vision and generally get ourselves into a terrible situation. Emmanuel, God with us.
Christmas is not our solution to the human predicament. It’s God’s answer when we could no longer fix our mess.
If we really “want our Christmas back” we simply need to let this story make a difference, bringing it from the outside, back into the center of our lives. The Advent of God in Messiah doesn’t mean the world is suddenly redeemed.
Rather it means that we have a hand to hold as we walk the path of life.
It means we have a light toward which we live and grow.
The author and poet, Ann Weems, writes:
Too often our answer to the darkness
is not running toward Bethlehem
but running away.
We ought to know by now that we can’t see
where we’re going in the dark.
Running away is rampant… separation is stylish:
separation from mates, from friends, from self.
Run and tranquilize,
don’t talk about it, avoid.
Run away and join the army of those who have already run away.
When are we going to learn that Christmas Peace
comes only when we turn and face the darkness?
Only then will we be able to see The Light of the World.
[“Toward the Light,” in Kneeling in Bethlehem, Westminster Press, 1980]