"A Memory that Lives" - Christmas Eve 2020

 

watch - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnlvyWETRQ

Christmas Eve, 2020

 

            Fisher Court, in Clawson, MI, a suburb of Detroit is where I spent my childhood.  From the end of our short driveway, you could see the elementary school a half block away to your right and town hall a full block and a half to your left.  On the other side of town hall was the baseball fields where I played little league.  The fields were on the grounds of the junior high school.  We call it “junior high” back then, 7^th and 8^th grade.  The junior high was connected to the senior by our town pool, a wonderful, indoor poor.  It had a high dive and a 12-foot deep-end.  One of the great accomplishments of my life was touching bottom in that deep- end. 

            A Christmastime, when it would be completely dark by 6PM, we would drive one mile to my grandmother’s house.  As we passed the town hall, we kids were thrilled to see the town’s nativity set-up illuminated by neon lights, with glimmering letters that said “Noel.”  When we saw the baby Jesus in the manger, whichever one of us kids saw “Noel” first would shout, “Sing for it, Daddy.”   My dad’s baritone voice would belt out “The First Noel, the Angel did say.”  It feels like we made that trip and asked my dad to sing like that about 100 times.  Every time I remember it, the number grows. 

That memory sticks out for me; maybe your family did something one year, one Christmas.  It affected.  Twenty years later, forty years later, you look back and you swear, “Oh we did that every year.”

What stuck out from that night in Mary’s mind?  Was it how tired she was, making that journey to Bethlehem by donkey while pregnant?  Was it the kindness of the innkeeper?  Our tradition slants the story, casting the barnyard birth as one more misfortune.  Poor Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, relegated to a night among farm animals with no room in the inn.  We forget that hospitality was an ultimate value in the ancient near east.  Joseph and Mary may have been grateful that someone gave them a safe, warm, dry, private place for the baby to be born.  We cast our modern sensibilities, but Jesus was certainly not the first or last to be born in such hard circumstances.  The story shows his humble beginnings.  His entire life, he would identify with peasants and he would alienate governors, priests, and kings. 

What did Mary remember?  The visit by excited shepherds?  The nearness of angels?  Relief at a healthy birth?  The steadfast, quiet compassion of her new husband Joseph? 

What sticks out for you as a Christmas memory, something that transcends time and becomes bigger with each passing year?  How we experience events in our memory impacts us as much as the original event.  When this time of year comes round, what thoughts, unbidden creep into your consciousness?  What memories flood your mind, blindsiding you?

Some are wonderful memories? When I remember yelling “Sing for it, Daddy,” in my memory, my father is an opera-quality baritone belting out “The First Noel.”  I know my dad, in actuality, is a passable church-choir bass-baritone, but not a professional singer.  Knowing that does not change my memory, where my dad sounds just a little better than Josh Groban as we drive and he sings.

I know many of our stories of the birth of Jesus have taken on legendary status that more resembles rich story-telling than precisely recorded history.  Yes, Jesus was born of the virgin, Mary.  Yes, his birth was in a Bethlehem stable because Joseph and many other Bethlehemites were forced to go there by the edict of a Roman census.  Beyond these barebone facts, a story surrounds the birth of the Savior.  In churches like ours, in grand cathedrals where thousands worship, in candlelit, third-world village chapels where less than a dozen gather, and in numerous other places worldwide, God moves in the telling of the story just as God moved in Mary and Joseph and shepherds and the innkeeper the night of Jesus’ birth. 

We have our memory and our memory defines us in powerful ways.  Our entry and re-entry into this story that we hear and believe shapes us.  Part of who we are as God-worshippers is tied to the hearing and telling of the birth of Christ each year.  It’s no longer the year from Hell, 2020!  Not tonight.  Tonight, it’s Christmas Eve, and we are transported to Bethlehem.  Like a thousand Christmas Eves prior, we are gathered with church and family once again for the birth of Christ. 

Moments stand out in our memory.  My mind is fixed upon a moment in 1986 or 1987.  I am not sure of the year, but I remember the moment vividly.  We were staying at my Grandmother’s house on 7 Mile Road in Detroit.  We had gone out.  When we got back to the house, I can see my grandmother’s face as she opened the front door.  Something was wrong.  Someone had broken in and robbed her while we were out.  She lived in a high-crime city, Detroit, and crime came her way Christmas Eve.  It didn’t feel very good at the time, but what I take away from the moment is our family was together, and the feeling of being violated did not last.  The love of family and the spirit of making it a merry Christmas anyway is what lasted.

What moments were fixed in Mary’s mind from that night?  What moments come back to you with instant recall when it is Christmas Eve and you sink from the immediacy of the present into the fullness of your entire story?

From moments and memory, we have to move forward, but not too quickly.  We don’t rush to what’s next. We take our time.   Christmas Eve is not time to rush anywhere.  But calmly, deliberately, we know tomorrow comes and life continues forward.

Mary and Joseph would settle in Bethlehem, but not for long. Within a year, strange visitors from the East, the Magi came.  These Persians gave extravagant gifts to this poor family.  God told Joseph in a dream that had to leave, and so they fled to Egypt, to avoid the murder of Jesus at the hands of Herod’s soldiers.  Then, finally, God told Joseph in a dream they were to return, and they did, settling in Nazareth.  They raised Jesus there. 

We savor the moments that live in our memories.  We also move forward from those moments.  We move forward in faith.  That’s what Mary and Joseph did.  They cherished the baby Jesus, and, in faith, raised the child Jesus.

Think on cherished memories Christmas Eve evokes in your heart.  Take a moment. Ponder them.  Consider what memories might be made tonight, Christmas Eve 2020.  God is here and loves us.  God has you in His hands.  On this very night, His spirit can bless you so that you’re empowered to face whatever life brings next.

As we close our service and sing “Silent Night,” open yourself to God.  Receive what God gives.  Open your heart to receive God’s spirit.  You don’t need to ponder moving forward right now.  Just sit in this moment before God.  Receive his love as His Spirit washes over you. 

Leaving worship full, you will have all you need to go forward in faith. 

AMEN

To You is Born a Savior (Hebrews 1)

View here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVc26bzIz10&feature=youtu.be

“To You is Born a Savior” (Hebrews 1-2)

Rob Tennant, Hillside Church, Chapel Hill, NC

Christmas Eve, Dec 24, 2019

            We’re coming to you live from Chapel Hill, North Carolina!  Merry Christmas!  We live in heart of great learning and great college spirit and sports; Chapel Hill is home of the University of North Carolina Tar Heels.

Suppose a few months from now, springtime, when 60 degrees feels down right balmy after a couple of weeks where the high is 35 – suppose you walk across campus.  After months inside huddled up avoiding the cold, people will be out all over. 

So, walking across campus on this wonderful spring day, you survey people.  Each one willing to talk to you, professor, student, maintenance worker – everyone; you ask, “Who is Jesus?  What do you think of him?”

You’ll hear a variety of answers.  Some might say “He’s the baby born in the manger,” but I don’t think you’d get that answer too often.  You would if you conducted this survey right now; Christmas is on everyone’s mind.  We’ve heard “Away in a Manger” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem” about 100 times by now.  But right now, no one is on campus.  Imagine asking this question months from now.  Who is Jesus? What do you think of him?

Some might say something about Easter.  You’re asking this in March. 

Some might say vile things just to rile you up because there are people on college campuses who love agitating just for the sake of agitation! 

Some will say something like Jesus is the Son of God and savior of the world.  Contrary to popular belief, there are true Jesus-followers on UNC’s campus. 

Questions like this posted to random people help church insiders see the varied opinions people in the world have about Jesus.  On Christmas Eve, most people talk favorably about him.  Radio stations play Christmas music on an endless loop from Thanksgiving through the end of the year.  Pop stars, country music stars, R&B stars, rappers, hard rockers – they all do a Christmas album at some point.  They all perform on TV Christmas specials. 

There on the holiday special is the singer who shocked the nation with her see-through dress as she sang about lurid sex on stage at one of last year’s awards shows.  Now you see her dressed just a bit more modestly and she’s singing, “Hark the herald angels sing, ‘Glory to the new born king.’”  That’s worship music!  She’s Christian!  Ah, the second verse … “Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord.”   Who but a follower of Jesus could sing such words?  Now hear this.  It is possible she does indeed believe in Jesus and at the same time lives hedonistically and as a bit of an exhibitionist.  Christians are not perfect and even in church, we are not perfectly consistent in living our faith.  We try. 

The problem with Christmas praise of Jesus is after Christmas day, the deeply moving confession of faith is stored in a box with the tinsel and artificial boughs of holly.  That faith will be kept in the closet to be brought out next year at this time.  It is a faith that does not lead to life change.  Is that kind of faith truly faith at all?

Who is Jesus?  What do you think of him?

Know this!  The shepherds mentioned in so many hymns and carols sung by pop stars and by us were in search of something more.  Those shepherds stationed in tableau on fireplace nativity sets across America did not rush out of the fields and into Bethlehem to see a baby.  They worked with animals.  They watched thousands of births.  They knew the earthiness of birth, the messy beauty, and the wonder.  They appreciated new life, but they weren’t enamored with a peasant couple’s first child.  They had seen human and animal babies born in stables before. 

They ran through the Bethlehem night whooping and hollering and waking everyone up as they praised God because they had been visited by an angel.  The heavenly messenger promised “good news of great joy.”  Babies are beautiful, a wonder, but millions are born every day.  This baby, the angel said, is a “Savior [the Savior], the Messiah, the Lord.”

I’ve talked before about lectionaries – cycles of scriptures readings.  One of the passages scheduled for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day in the Roman Catholic lectionary is Hebrews chapter 1-2.  I’m asking “Who is Jesus?  What do you think of him?”  We’ve already identified that he’s the baby we sing about and a Heavenly messenger proclaimed him Lord, Messiah (which means promised, anointed one), and Savior. 

Let’s put those questions to the writer of Hebrews and the reading for today.  Who is Jesus?  In Chapter 1, verse 1, he is identified as the Son – the son of God.  Verse 2 - he is the heir of all things and it is through him that God created all worlds.  God the Son didn’t come into being at the birth of Jesus.  He always existed.  When Jesus was born, God the Son entered human flesh.

Verses 3-4, and I quote: “He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.  When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High, having become as much superior to angels the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs.”  That’s a mouthful and I won’t try to unpack all the theology contained in these verses.  I simply summarize by saying the baby in the manger in our nativity sets is Jesus the savior and sustainer of all things.  The world would not turn and the universe would not hold together without him.   

In Hebrews 1:8 God is quoted as saying to the son, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever.”  The final words to the hymn “Silent Night” are, “Jesus, Lord at thy birth.”  Hebrews chapter 1 is the Biblical foundation for this faith claim that Jesus was Lord even before he was born. 

The incarnation is a mystery.  How could God Almighty, the ultimate power and ultimate personality in the entire universe step out of divinity, empty himself as it’s described in Philippians 2:7, and enter the body of a human newborn?  Did the baby Jesus know he was God?  I don’t think so.  I think he did what all babies do.  Cry, sleep, eat, poop, and repeat.  He was fully human.  At the same, he was fully God.  How that fits together I cannot perfectly explain.  I just believe it. 

Reading Hebrews alongside the Gospels, we see who Jesus is.  Tonight, an equally important question is what do you think of him?  I don’t know what the pop star who sings the songs on the TV Christmas special thinks of Jesus.  Her faith is out of my jurisdiction unless she happens to be in this worship service tonight!

I am concerned about your relationship with Jesus.  He loves you.  The whole Christmas story is the opening chapter of God’s love letter to you.  That’s why God the Son stepped out of Divine space and restricted himself to the confines of our world in human flesh.  Jesus is God’s declaration of love for you.

You can enter into a real relationship with God by putting your faith in Jesus.  You can do that tonight.  We have a few moments of worship left.  Acknowledge your need for God’s forgiveness.  Confess your sins and ask Jesus to come into your heart as your Savior and Lord.  Turn away from sin and to Him.  No matter what’s happened in your life, he’s welcoming you with a divine smile and arms outstretched.  He’s got a heavenly embrace for you.  He truly the Savior the angel promised the shepherds.  Give your life to Him. 

We end our service by singing “Silent Night” by candle light.  Our candles are lit from the flame that burns on the Christ candle.  If you have never entrusted yourself to Jesus and you want His light in your life, after the service, I’ll be happy to pray with you and talk you through the process of inviting Him into your heart. 

Let us Pray.

Christmas Eve, 2018 (a sermon)

December 24, 2018

Christmas Eve Candlelight Service

“An angel of the Lord stood before them.” The refers to the shepherds who were tending their flocks in the fields outside of Bethlehem.  Luke writes, “they were terrified” (2:9). You would be too; so would I be trembling in awe if visited by a divine messenger.  Whenever angels appear in the Bible, humans are overwhelmed. It is the reason the most common first word angels speak is “Fear not.”  To Zechariah, the Father of John the Baptist, the angel had to tell him, “Don’t be afraid.” Similarly, to Mary, “fear not;” and the same to these shepherds.  

Can we even hear the words of the message or are we simply too shaken from the encounter with something otherworldly?  Hopefully, we can hear.  “Angel” literally means messenger.  When an angel comes, what he has to share comes straight from God.  It’s a message we need.

That night in the fields near Bethlehem, the message was, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people; to you is born this night in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord (2:11).   All people.  The world is so big.  Life along the North Carolina coast moves at a different pace than here in the triangle; and our daily experiences are not the same as our fellow North Carolinians west of here, in the mountains.  And do some of our traditions differ from the folks in Cherokee, North Carolina? I think so. This vast diversity is just in our state. Think of the numerous cultural expressions in the the rest of the U.S., and the rest of the world!  The angel speaking to those trembling shepherds promised good news for all people - including the millions we never meet.

In the mid ‘80’s our family had only lived in Virginia a few years.  Every December we drove back to Detroit where we stayed at my Grandmother’s house.  My’ mom’s mother lived alone on 7 mile road. On Christmas Eve, we would go out to the suburb of Clawson, where my Dad’s very large family lived.   My mom’s mother would come with us. We stayed out late Christmas Eve every year, enjoying time with family.

One year, we returned to grandma’s Detroit home to discover there had been visitors: robbers.  They opened all the presents and stole anything they thought was valuable. We felt pretty violated, but quickly we gained perspective.  We weren’t hurt. The things they took were just that - things. We had each other. We had just enjoyed a night of great happiness with family.  How broken were their lives that they thought the best way to spend Christmas Eve was to break into someone’s home and steal from them.

I am bringing you good news of great joy.

To you is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

It’s a message for all people because all people need a savior.  

We’re here together enjoying familiar Christmas songs.  Not 2-3 miles from here are families struggling so badly they have to decide whether to pay the heating bill or buy food.  Forget presents and a Christmas tree and decorations. They just need to survive. But they can’t forget presents and trees and decorations.  They live hand-to-mouth in this land of plenty; the wealth of others is in their faces as they struggle to make it through each day.

I am bringing you good news of great joy.

To you is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

It’s a message for all people because all people need a savior.

Maybe sadder than the desperately poor family is the wealthy one with $50,000 cars sitting in the driveway of their million-dollar home.  Yet, love and laughter is absent from that home. This wealthy family has experienced divorce, suicide, addiction ...

I am bringing you good news of great joy.

To you is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

It’s a message for all people because all people need a savior.

Tonight, Christmas Eve, soldiers from our country and other countries are on duty.  They carry rifles and look for enemies. They are far from home, far from the families they love.  Why, why on this night is this the story? Because war doesn’t take a holiday. Nation against nation, man against man, we humans kill each other.  

The angel promised this to all people, I am bringing you good news of great joy.

To you is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord, because all people need a savior.

Police are on duty tonight.  Why? As my story from 30 years ago attests, crime doesn’t take Christmas Eve off.  The world is broken and broken people either sit in their own hurt or do things to hurt others.  We need that angel’s word.

I am bringing you good news of great joy.

To you is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.

It’s a message for all people because all people need a savior.

We have had a lot of joy in and around our church throughout the holidays.  There have been beautiful worship services, much laughter, meaningful moments, some surprises, and a full share of joy and good cheer.  Our joy comes from the beauty and power of the story we tell - the story of Jesus’ birth. Right in the middle of this story, from the mouth of the angel, we are reminded that we need a savior and promised that he has come, for everyone.  Even if you think you have it all together, you still have as much need for a savior as anyone else in the world.

This war-torn, crime-filled, drug-addicted, heartbroken, lonely world is the way it is because of sin.  Sin cuts us off from God. Sin is the overall category for choices we make that hurt ourselves and others; and sin is the decisions we make in life that offend God and take us off God’s path.  And every one of us sins every day. This is why Jesus had to come and be in the role he was in. To us is born a Savior, Christ the Lord.

This Christmas Eve, as I wish you happiness, I invite you to consider your own need for a Savior.  As you ponder that, consider that the Gospel of Luke presents Jesus as the Savior you need.

Throughout his gospel, Luke repeatedly shows his sense of the salvation Jesus brings.  Salvation is reversal of status. We were in tension with God, but with our faith in Jesus, we are in right relationship with God.  We were enslaved by sin, unable to break free. Jesus breaks the chains. He is the truth and when we know Him, we are free. Right now we live in a world of war, crime, addiction, broken relationships, and death.  He brings a new kingdom - the kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and peace. When the Savior visits and we receive forgiveness, we then have new life. We become new creations and a part of a new community as we are adopted as sons and daughters of God.  

When can we hope to begin to see this salvation?  In Luke 4, Jesus, the baby grown up, says “today the scripture has been fulfilled.”  It will be finalized at His Second Coming and we long for that day when pain and death are finally and completely overthrown.  But even today as we live in the world with sin around us, upon giving our lives to Christ, we begin to lean into the eternal kingdom and live a kingdom ethic of love and grace right here, right now.  Salvation begins the day we visit the manger, and recognize that the baby there is our Savior and thus we worship Him as our Lord.

Who is this salvation for? Trust God’s messenger, the angel.  The promise made to the shepherds is good for each and every one of us.  “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all people.”

Who is salvation for?  For you. Only you know all the details of your story, but whatever the good and the bad, your story needs a Savior - the Savior.  The same Jesus who will save the world from humanity’s attempts to destroy it loves you and wants to save you from the pain and heartache you have to carry.  If you’d like to learn more about how this Savior, born Christmas night, can be your Savior who completely changes the direction of your life, I’d love to hear your story.  Maybe together, we can talk and pray and ask the Lord to come into your life and change your life’s direction. Please see me after the service, or connect with me in the next couple of weeks.

I wish all of you a very Merry Christmas.  We will close our service by singing together “Silent Night.”

AMEN

Christmas Eve

“From Heaven to Earth” (John 1:1-5, 14-18)

Christmas Eve

December 24, 2017

            We from John’s gospel, chapter 1.  You are aware that there are four gospel, four ancient writers who set pen to paper to tell the story of Jesus – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  We read John1, but, which of the four is the best to read on Christmas Eve?

All the action happens in Luke chapter 1.  An angel comes to the priest Zechariah as the old man gives the annual offering in the inner sanctum of the temple on the Day of Atonement.  The Heavenly messenger tells the aged holy man that he and his childless, post-menopausal wife will have a son.  Miraculous!  Then it happens.  That baby grows up to be John the Baptist, the prophet who prepares the way for the coming of the Messiah – Jesus.

            Zechariah’s wife who had the miracle pregnancy, Elizabeth, the mother of John, is the also the cousin of a young betrothed woman, not barely more than a girl, named Mary.  Mary was soon to wed Joseph, but they had not yet been together.  She was a virgin.  An angel comes to her to tell her she will have a son, before her marriage, before intimacy with her betrothed.  Another miracle! 

Newly pregnant, she journeys to see her cousin Elizabeth who is farther along in her pregnancy.  Elizabeth’s baby, still in the womb, leaps with glee at the approach of the mother of the Lord.  Luke chapter 1 is full of encounters with angels, miracle pregnancies, and people who respond to overwhelming news by worshiping God joyfully.

Upon flipping the page to Luke 2, the narrative become prosaic. 

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ² This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³ All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴ Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵ He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷ And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

If anything, Luke’s description of the actual birth of Jesus is understated.  Movies depicting this are much more dramatic than the actual Biblical account.  The film The Nativity Story from a few years ago depicts an exhausting, harrowing journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  In one scene, Joseph is guiding the donkey ridden by a very pregnant Mary.  They have to forge a waist-deep river that’s moving quite quickly.  As the water beats against them and Joseph stumbles trying to keep stable as he walks the rocky river bed, Mary sees a large, poisonous snake slithering through the water toward them.  The nervous donkey bucks sending Mary flying.  Joseph doesn’t hesitate.  He viciously grabs the snake and flings it.  Then he heroically lifts his pregnant wife out of the cold water, carries her to the safe river bank and retrieves the traumatized beast of burden so they can continue their journey.  That might have happened.  That or some episode like.

Luke doesn’t give us anything about the journey.  He just tells us there was a tax imposed by the imperial overlords: Rome!  Rome says move, and you move.  Like every other beleaguered Israelite, Joseph had to comply with the census by returning to the village of his birth.  Though it might not have seemed wise, he took his pregnant wife with him.  They made the 3-day walk.   Thus Jesus, the Messiah, was born, in the city of David, Bethlehem, just as prophecy hinted he would be.  Luke’s narrative of the actual birth is void of drama. 

The action resumes in verse 8 of Luke 2.  An angel terrifies a group of shepherds.  The divine messenger begins, “Do not be afraid.”  He then tells the shepherds, “I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people; to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:10-11).  That angel is joined by a multitude – 100’s?  1000’s?  The night echoes with their angelic praise songs.  When they finish, then shepherds run to Bethlehem waking everyone until they find the grotto where a baby was born. 

Right away these men of the field know they have found the one.  Mary realizes she’s part of the biggest story in the history of the world.  She’s right at the center of it.  Luke must have known her, in her later years.  He probably wrote this gospel after he talked with Mary many times and after she had died.  Either he knew her, or he talked with people who had known her quite well.  He was able to tell us that she took it all in, quietly rejoicing in her heart and treasuring all that took place.

There is nothing quiet about those shepherds.  They thunder into the quiet village looking for the baby.  Once they find him, they thunder through the quiet village waking everyone to tell them what had happened.  Then, they thunder back out to the field so recently filled with angel-song.  Now that same hillside pasture is filled with the voices of shepherds as they praise God. 

Luke is where the action is.  Much of what we think of as the Biblical Christmas story comes in Luke.  Matthew Gospel doesn’t have any of this.  In Matthew, the angel visits Joseph in his dreams.  Matthew is not concerned with why Joseph and Mary are in Bethlehem.    He just puts them there and he doesn’t mention a stable at all.  Matthew tells us that angel convinced Joseph to stay with Mary even though she was pregnant and he had nothing to do with it. 

Luke says nothing about visitors from the East. The wise men are only in Matthew and by the time they arrive, the baby Jesus is probably closer to two and toddling around.  He and Joseph and Mary are in a house in Bethlehem.  The shepherds have long since exited stage right.  Yes, our tradition has the shepherds and the wise men all together at the stable nativity scene.  It’s a lovely tradition that my family maintains in our own nativity sets.  It is not Biblically accurate, but that’s OK.  It’s a tradition that blends the stories from Luke and Matthew.

Do not go searching for the story of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel of Mark.  Mark begins with Jesus at about age 30, getting baptized.  John’s gospel also does not mention the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem or angels visiting shepherds or a virgin birth or wise men from Persia visiting the child Jesus.  None of those aspects of the story are in John.  John gives us the theology behind the birth of Jesus.

“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. … All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing was made” (John 1:1, 3).  This is the cosmic Christ.  The second person of the trinity, God the Son, who in the incarnation becomes Jesus, is the agent of creation.  This picture of the cosmic Christ, also found in Colossians 1 (v.15-20), is the opening of the Gospel of John. Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but God the Son always existed.  In Jesus, God the son came to earth in human form. 

John’s initial way of referring to Jesus, God the Son, is the Word.  In chapter 1, verse 14, John says, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s son full of grace and truth.   No one has ever seen God.  It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (v.18).  In that last statement John uses hyperbole as a part of his presentation of Jesus as the only path to God.  He wrote Gospel with the goal of showing who Jesus is so that readers will surrender their lives to Jesus and accept Him as their Lord and Master. 

Abraham, Moses, Elijah, and a few others in the Old Testament had seen God and lived to tell about it.  The parents of Samson are on this list.  So too are Noah and Enoch.  The thing is in all these cases, God made a special appearance to a specific individual for a specific purpose.  The specific purpose in the coming of Jesus was accessibility to God for all people.  In Jesus Christ crucified, Jesus Christ resurrected, the way to God is opened for all people.  With the ascension, reported in Acts 1, Jesus departed bodily, but then the Holy Spirit came as his lasting presence with all people in all places.  Christmas is the story of God come to earth so that you and I can know God, worship God, have forgiveness of sins, and follow God the rest of our lives. 

Luke gives the main story.  Matthew fills some details not in Luke.  Luke gives us Mary’s perspective.  Matthew gives us Joseph’s.  John lays out the theological significance of what God has done in Jesus.  God is with us, God the Spirit, active among us.  As John’s Gospel winds down, we read this in chapter 20, verse 30-31.  ” Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe^[d] that Jesus is the Messiah,^[e] the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  When we recognize the work of Christ among us, at work in the Spirit in our lives, then more signs are performed that point the world to God.  In other words, God did not stop doing new things at the close of the final book of the Bible.  God continues to be on the move, creating new life in the world.  God does this work through His church when His church is responsive to Him.  In us, the story continues.

A new year is about to begin.  As we celebrate Christmas, remember the year that was, 2017, look forward to new horizons, and as take the next steps in our lives, think about what it does say in that final book of the Bible, Revelation.  The mistaken notion is that Revelation is all about Heaven and the Gospel is all about how we get to Heaven.  Listen to what Revelation actually says.  “I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘See, the home of God is among [women and men], He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them’” (21:2-3). 

If the first act, the birth of Jesus, is God come to earth, the Word made flesh, then the second act, the book of Revelation, is the second coming of Jesus.  He comes.  We don’t go.  I love the Brad Paisley song, “When I Get Where I’m Going.”  The feeling of the song is lovely and sometimes brings me to tears.  But the Biblical message is ‘when Jesus gets where he’s going,’ and where he’s going is here.  It’s called the Second Coming.  The end of the story is Heaven, made new, joined with Earth, made new.  Christmas is the preview of the eternal joy we will have as sons and daughters of God living forever in God’s presence.  

We step to that ending when we put our trust in Jesus.  We trust him to remove our sins.  We trust him to rule our lives.  His will for us is better than our own.  Gospel means “good news.”  The Good News is that in Christ all sin is forgiven, all people are united in love and in a new community, the Kingdom of God. 

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year.  If you have never given your heart to Christ, I encourage you to do that.  Email me if you have questions about how to become a Christian (tennant.hillsong@gmail.com).  I would love talking with you about this. 

If you have been a Christ-follower in your life, but lately have turned away from Him, you can turn back to Him tonight.  That’s what repentance is, turning from sin, turning away from a destructive path, and turning to the Lord.  He’s waiting to receive you in love. 

If your relationship with God, in Christ, is great, if you are walking with Christ already, praise God.  He’s got new things instore for your life too.  As you move into 2018, open yourself to him afresh, seeking new mercies every morning.   

AMEN

This sermon was done at our church’s Christmas Eve service.  We closed singing ‘Silent Night’ by candle light.