December 24, 2014 – Christmas Eve
Worship
When Jesus was born, God entered
humanity. The God of unmeasurable
greatness, of knowledge so vast we cannot comprehend it, reduced God’s own self
to a newborn baby. The theological word
for this is incarnation. The most
important moments in salvation history are the crucifixion of Jesus and then
his resurrection. Neither matter unless
the incarnation happens.
Pastor Jenny Warner of Oregon feels
strongly about the importance of incarnation prior to crucifixion and
resurrection. I had not really thought
about the sequence or the idea of distinguishing among these theological
treasures, but her words make it clear why thinking first on incarnation can be
quite powerful. She writes:
Every year of
my life, the sentiment goes stronger, the belief grasps tighter, that it is the
incarnation that saves me, that incarnation is the germinating seed containing
the healing of the world, that incarnation may be Christianity’s best hope for
a relevant future. Easter is not possible without Christmas. In fact, Easter
may be just one more manifestation of the incarnation.
Flesh infused
with God. God encountering flesh. Holiness embedding itself into a human life
and revealing itself with compassion, healing, truth-telling and relentless
embrace. I want that.
Give me incarnation
before you give me resurrection. The end of my life may be a long way off, but
today my life feels like a Bethlehem barn. Hay is scattered everywhere.
Children must be fed and nurtured. The list of things to do is longer than the
hours in my day. There is no time for reflection. I need to know that mystery
resides in the most mundane and profane realities of my life.[i]
Does life ever feel like a “Bethlehem
barn?” It’s noisy. The other day, Candy decided to have some of
M__ and H__’s good friends over for decorating Christmas cookies. It was Candy and 8 children, 7 of them
elementary school-aged. I__r, the 8th,
was her helper. She said the two young
boys in the crowd were a little jumpy.
Noise. Cookie decorations
everywhere. Eight kids bouncing off the
walls because school is out and Christmas is almost here.
Does life ever feel like a “Bethlehem
barn?” Some are spending Christmas far
from family. Their kids are grown and it
was too expensive to fly home this year.
Every TV show has teary-eyed family reunions with heartwarming holiday
music on. The list of who to shop for is
lengthy. And the only emotions that
won’t go away are disappointment and sadness.
Christmas isn’t going to be quite what the Hallmark special makes it out
to be.
I imagine Joseph and Mary had
disappointment. After the trauma of
birth without midwife or any help, they were out in the cold. No one in their family came. Except for Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, no one in
their family approved. That noisy,
stinky barn was the cradle of new life, the Son of God. But sadness crept from the dark corners.
The Bethlehem barn is not an easy
place. Think of actual Bethlehem today
and the Middle East in general. A few
generations ago there were significant communities of Middle Eastern Christians
– Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis. Many
have died off in the unending wars of religion and territory. Many Syrian Christ followers this year are
spending their fourth Christmas in the Bethlehem barn – refugee camps.
Pastor Warner knows salvation is in
the cross and resurrection, but she also know it is not only there. And sometimes those events seem so Godly, so
out of reach and she needs something that feels real.
Today life
feels like a Bethlehem barn. Hay is scattered everywhere. Children must be fed
and nurtured. The list of things to do is longer than the hours in my day.
There is no time for reflection. We need to know that mystery resides in the
most mundane and profane realities of life.
We need the salvation we have in the
living Christ and in the life Jesus led.
It began at his birth. It began
before his birth.
Isaiah 62 is originally a prophetic
poem about God’s salvation of the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem in both testaments represents that
place where God is at home. In the
Gospel of John, Jesus says true worship is not place-dependent but can happen
anywhere people worship God “in spirit and in truth” (ch. 4). The New Testament and the church that grows
out of it is a ‘sending out’ church. We
are to spread out over the world proclaiming salvation in Jesus.
Still we have much to learn of God
from the words about Jerusalem and in the end, we who have “gone out to tell”
will be gathered to God, to God’s Holy City.
We will be called home to rejoice in eternal life lived in God’s
presence.
Before that eternal life, we live in
this one. God stepped into humanity the
way we all do, as a baby. And on the
occasion that we remember his birth, the lectionary organizers have us read
Isaiah’s words. “See, your salvation
comes; his reward is with him, and his recompense before him” (v.11).
How does it all tie together? Why do present day scholars read a 5th
century BC prophet who imagines a new Jerusalem and connect his promises to the
birth of Jesus? Why does an Oregon
pastor sometimes feel more hope filled by a powerless newborn than a courageous
savior who embraces the cross? She still
knows the cross and resurrection are the key events. But, for this night, she actually focus on
the salvation we have in Jesus’ birth and life.
Remember, Jerusalem – the city of
Shalom – that is where God is at home.
If people want to be at home with God they need to be there. If one is not at home with God, that one is
truly lost. Christmas like no other time
can magnify an individual’s feeling of being abandoned, lost, alone, disappointed. If our hurts are blown up and made even
bigger than they seem around Christmas it would appear that in such a state of
despair we are farther from God than ever.
Ah, but then, don’t we see the genius
of the incarnation. People who feel like
their lives are a mess are the very people who can most easily identify with Mary
and Joseph at their lowest moments. When
they were ready to quit and the journey to Bethlehem seemed too much, Mary and
Joseph epitomized human frailty. A
person alone, sobbing in grief on Christmas Eve epitomizes human frailty. And that is where God appears.
The baby in the manger is God who can
be touched. Jerusalem is the Holy City
that is where God is at home and to be at peace with God we have to get
there. But most people can never get
there. The incarnation, Jesus in the
manger, is God’s recognition that we cannot, try as we might, get there. The only way we can live in peace with God is
if God will meet us in our own Bethlehem barn.
The birth of Jesus is God’s statement that God is willing to do just
that.
We have role in the story and that
role is to recognize our own brokenness and from that place of brokenness to
reach out to God. “Upon your walls, O
Jerusalem” says Isaiah 62:6.” “Upon your
walls, I have posted sentinels. All day
and all night they shall never be silent.
You who remind the Lord, take no rest, and give him no rest until he
establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth” (v.6-7). That’s right.
Our job is to pester God!
Remind
the Lord? Give him no rest? That is what it says. So, let this baby born Bethlehem remind us
that God loves us so much God made God’s own self accessible. The holy God of the universe reduced himself
so that humans could not just approach but embrace, eat with, laugh with, and
cry on his shoulder.
Now, we get blinded by our pain, or
the business and stress of life becomes all we see, or the bad things that go
on like police officers being killed, like wars, and numerous other problems become
obstacles – all of it obstructs our view of God. We forget about God to the point that we
think God is gone and we’re on our own.
God isn’t gone. But He’s out of
our view. And we aren’t living in
Jerusalem any more, in that place of being at peace in God’s presence.
It is then that we “remind” God of who He is – our Savior. In this reminder, we also reiterate what God
does – saves us from lives of meaninglessness and pain. He gives us abundant life. Isaiah tells the sentinels to give God no
rest, but to continue to pray day and night.
Our job, in the depths of our depression, is to pray day and night,
reaching out to God constantly until we have received His blessing.
We also do this on behalf of others. A part of our spreading out as New Testament
people is we look around and see who is hurting. We reach to them with whatever help is needed
– comfort, friendship, hospitality, etc.
At the same time, we reach to God on their behalf. In their pain, they cannot see that God is as
easily touched as a new born baby’s cheek is stroked. We reach to God for them that He might reveal
himself to them that they would see His salvation.
In here excellent message this past Sunday, Heather made this
point. She said even though Christmas
falls at the end of the calendar year, it is the beginning of the lectionary
year. Christmas is the beginning of the
story.
At the cross, Jesus pays the ultimate price for sin. That is a dramatic, one-time event. That is the
story for the ages. Christmas is the
opening chapter in that story. Our
Christmas salvation is the arrival of God in a way that we can see every
day. It is the promise that God is not
just saving for Heaven after we’ve trudged through the miseries of earthly
life. God is trudging through the
miseries with us.
God helps us host the 7 elementary school and we need that help
when we do that having just gotten over a week of sickness. God helps those Syrian believer find joy even
if their Christmas is in a refugee camp.
Because He is with them, it can still be a celebration. God helps the lonely person for whom
Christmas seems terrifying. It can have
happiness too, because God brings that.
God is in everything with us. God
is in the Bethlehem barn and thus the Bethlehem barn becomes that place where
God is at home and one can have peace with Him.
Wherever we are, we find that we can have “Immanuel,” God with
us. That is our Christmas salvation.
AMEN
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