Twas the Day After Christmas

Matthew 2:13-23

The Sunday after Christmas is an awkward time. Our society has already forgotten about Christmas and is already gearing up for New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. Christmas is past. But on the Christian calendar Christmas just starts on the 25^th and goes for twelve days, the 12 days of Christmas. That is why we are still singing Christmas songs in the worship service. I am pulled between the two calendars. I want to be faithful to the Christian observance while not being oblivious to what people are thinking and feeling in our society. What most of us are feeling is that things are starting to get back to normal. They will not really get back to normal until after New Year’s Day. But the family Christmas celebrations are over. We probably not have taken down the tree and decorations yet, but there is a sense that the holidays are nearing an end.

What is left of Christmas after the guests have gone home, the presents are put away and the leftovers are eaten? What happens after Christmas? In the gospel lesson for today we have the story in the Gospel of Matthew of what happened after Christmas. It is very informative and helpful to see what the characters in the Christmas story do after Christmas and what God does after Christmas.

I. First, God still speaks after Christmas.  Let’s look at the Wise Men. They are barely mentioned in our reading for today. The first line of the reading says, “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream.” The “they’ referred to are the Wise Men. Their story is in the first twelve verses of chapter 2. It clearly says there that the Wise Men came to Bethlehem at some time after Christmas. It says in 2:1 “Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is He who has been born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the East and have come to worship Him.”

How long after Christmas the Wise Men came is up for debate, but I will not debate it here. It is clearly after Christmas. Even though in the Nativity Scenes we tend to crowd the wise men, angels and shepherds all together, as if they all appeared at the same moment, the gospel story does not describe it in that way. The Wise men clearly traveled to Bethlehem and worshipped the Christ child after Christmas.

As such they are an example for us. Christmas is not the end of the worship of Christ. For many people Christmas is the beginning and end of their religious experience. It may be the one and possibly only time they might come to church to worship. It used to be Christmas and Easter were the two occasions, but Easter is not the holiday it used to be, even though from a Christian and biblical point of view it is the more important of the two holidays. But our culture does not promote Easter the way it promotes Christmas. The Easter bunny runs a distant second in popularity to Santa Claus. So for many people Christmas - especially Christmas Eve - may be their only worship experience all year. And most Americans do not even observe Christmas in a religious manner.

But in the Scriptures the worship of Christ continues after Christmas. Christmas is only the beginning. The Wise men probably started their long journey from the East after Christmas and arrived long after Christmas day. Therefore they are a model for us. Christmas is just the beginning of a new year lived in worship and service to Jesus Christ.

God still speaks after Christmas. God spoke to the Wise men after Christmas. After they had met and worshipped the Christ child, God spoke to them in a dream warning them not to go back and report what they knew to King Herod. Verse 12 says, “Then, being divinely warned in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed for their own country another way.”

God spoke to Joseph after Christmas. We see that in our reading in verse 13 “Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him.” God spoke to Joseph after Christmas.

In both of these examples God spoke to protect them and especially to protect the Christ child from harm. I will talk more about King Herod in a moment. He is the villain of the story. But for now I want to emphasize the protection of God. The purpose of God speaking and leading the Wise Men and Joseph was protection.  This is a demonstration of the love of God.

There is a hymn we sing at Christmastime. “Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, love divine. Love was born at Christmas. Star and angels gave the sign.” This divine love is overshadowed at Christmas in the waves of sentimentality that surround the holiday. But this is clearly the meaning of the holiday. God sent his only begotten Son to earth at Christmas out of love for us. When God speaks to us, it is in tones of love. Not sappy sentimental love. It is not just a feeling that brings tears to our eyes. It is strong courageous love. This is love that protects, love that saves. Love that costs something.

God still speaks after Christmas. The gospel lessons in these Sundays after Christmas will quickly go from the birth of Jesus to the teaching ministry of Jesus. God spoke through Jesus after Christmas through his parables, sermons and miracles. God speaks still today in love.

II. Second, Evil still acts after Christmas. Our gospel lesson includes the story which is called The Slaughter of the Innocents. When King Herod discovered that the Wise Men had deceived him, he became furious and ordered his soldiers to go into Bethlehem and kill all the children under the age of two in an attempt to kill the Christ child. He saw this infant Messiah as a threat to his own rule, just like the young North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un saw his uncle as a threat and had him executed this month.

We know too much about the slaughter of children in our American society. We repeatedly hear on the evening news examples of some crazed gunman, usually a young man, who goes into a school somewhere and shoots children and teachers before turning the weapon on himself. The slaughter of innocents happens today. It does not stop for the holiday season. The shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown CT happened during the holiday season last year. The recent shooting in Colorado happened a couple of weeks before Christmas. Evil does not take a holiday.

Therefore our vigilance against evil cannot take a holiday. I do not know the solution to gun violence. It seems to me that almost all of these young men who did these terrible shootings used guns that were purchased legally. These were not illegal weapons, so it seems to me that the solution to this problem involves much more than gun legislation. I was reading an article that reported that these much-publicized mass killings account for just 1 percent of all murders nationally. We are talking about a culture of violence in our country. And to be honest it is not just our country. There is a culture of violence in the world. In many countries it takes the form of civil war, international war, organized crime or government violence against its own citizens. There is no easy solution to this problem.

It is not just about violence. It is about evil in the hearts of men. Evil will not be restrained by laws. Evil is by nature law-breaking. The apostle Paul talks about this in regard to the moral law of God. He says that the Law does not stop people from doing wrong. In fact he says there is something in us that rebels against law. If it is wrong, we want to do it. If you have any doubts about that being part of human nature, spend some time with my grandsons. If you say, “Don’t do that!”, then that is exactly what they want to do. That is why there will always be bad people doing bad things. Evil does not take a holiday because we spend a day celebrating the Prince of Peace. There will be still be King Herods and Bashar al-Assads and Kim Jong-uns.

Likewise suffering, illness and death do not take time off for the holidays. I wrote a blog a couple of weeks ago entitled “A Funeral at Christmas” about recently going to Pennsylvania to conduct the funeral of a friend. I mentioned in the blog my memories of the death of my father at Thanksgiving thirty years ago and the funeral of my grandfather the next year on Good Friday. Death does not take a holiday, regardless of the play and film by that name.

Our problems do not take a holiday just because the calendar turns to December. In fact financial problems might be worse when people get their credit card bills in January. We might be able to momentarily forget our troubles for a day of celebration, but the day after Christmas they return. Problems, suffering and evil still are present the day after Christmas.

III. Third, we still have to respond to God the day after Christmas. In our gospel lesson, the Wise men heeded the dream and returned to their homeland by another route. Mary and Joseph heeded God’s message in the dream and fled to Egypt. Then a couple of years later the story says that an angel appeared to Joseph once again in a dream and told them to return to Israel to Nazareth. And they obeyed. After Christmas we have to listen to God and obey.

One issue I need to address in this scripture is dreams. In the gospel of Matthew the post-Christmas story is filled with dreams. God speaks to the Wise men and Joseph primarily in that manner. And it seems like angels populate these dreams. It raises the issue of dreams today. Does God speak to us in dreams? To be honest I do not know. I believe that God spoke to the Wise Men and Joseph through dreams. And we see this elsewhere in scripture. Joseph the patriarch in the Book of Genesis was a famous interpreter of dreams. God spoke to Jacob in the dream of Jacob’s ladder.

But God has never spoken to me in a dream. And when people have told me that God has spoken to them in dreams, I confess I am a bit cautious about interpreting such dreams as signs from God. I am not saying it doesn’t happen. I am just saying that it has never happened to me. Perhaps the Near Death Experiences that people have these days are a type of dream in which God is speaking and giving them a glimpse of heaven. But that is the closest thing like this that I know of.

I hear God’s voice in other ways. I hear it through Nature. I hear it through Scripture. I hear it through conscience. I hear it through intuition. I hear it through the Holy Spirit. I hear God speaking through his people. That is how I hear God speaking today. But the fact remains that God speaks still. He spoke to the Magi. He spoke to Mary and Joseph and he speaks to us.

If God does not speak to us today then our religion is just a memory of God speaking in the distant past. That is not my religious faith. I believe that God speaks today. We have to discern God speaking to us today. There are a lot of false voices and false prophets today just like there have always been. It takes some spiritual discernment to distinguish between the voices that claim to speak in the name of God today. To discern the authentic voice of God takes wisdom, which comes from God and from time and experience of a living relationship with God. But the more we grow to know the Spirit of Christ the more we recognize his voice.

Jesus says, “14 I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own…. 27 My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” He says, “the sheep hear his voice; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 And when he brings out his own sheep, he goes before them; and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. 5 Yet they will by no means follow a stranger, but will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers.”

God speaks today. Christ speaks today. But there are also a lot of other voices clamoring for our attention. But if we know Christ, we will recognize his voice and follow him. That is what Joseph did. I am sure that Joseph had lots of dreams in his life, but he did not pack up his family and move to Egypt every time he had a dream. He knew the difference between the voice of God and the voice of his own unconscious mind. When he discerned the voice of God, he responded in obedience.

We have to respond today. We have to be open to hear the voice of God, discern the voice of God, and then obey the voice of God. Not just on the holy days and in the holy seasons but after Christmas. After the Christmas carols have long ceased to be played and sung, we are to still hear the voice of God speaking to us in Jesus Christ. And we respond in worship, service, and love. 

The Sign of Immanuel

Isaiah 7:10-16  •  Matthew 1:18-25

It is one of the most well-known of all the OT prophecies concerning the birth of Jesus. “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” It is the basis of the Christian doctrine of the Virgin Birth. It is sung in hymns like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” which we sang on the first Sunday of Advent, and the short chorus “Emmanuel” which we have been singing every Sunday in December as an Introit. It is a wonderful prophecy, and I want us to explore it this morning.

I. First let us look at what it originally meant when it was spoken by the prophet Isaiah more than seven centuries before Jesus was born. Most Christians recognize the famous words of the prophecy but few know the context in which it was originally spoken and what it meant at that time. The year was 734 BC. It was a time of trouble in Jerusalem. The land of Israel was divided into two kingdoms at this time which were warring with each other. It was kind of like our country in the mid- nineteenth century. America had a civil war back in the 1860s and our country was broken into the north and south, the Union and the Confederacy. The same things happened in the Holy Land, although in their case the land was permanently divided into north and south. There were two kingdoms. The north was called Israel with its capital in Samaria, and the south was called Judah, which had its capital in Jerusalem.

At the time when this Immanuel prophecy was spoken the two parts of the Holy Land were at war. The northern Kingdom of Israel had allied itself with the country of Syria. Syria and Israel were plotting together to attack and conquer Judah. The king of Judah was named Ahaz. He was afraid. So the prophet Isaiah came to him. This story is in in the first nine verses of Isaiah chapter 7 before our reading for today. God told Isaiah to meet King Ahaz by the aqueduct and to take his son with him. So Isaiah did so. Isaiah told the king not to be afraid of these two nations who were gathering against him. He says in 7:4 “Take heed and be quiet and do not be afraid of these stubs of smoking firebrands.” He is saying that they are not a great fire that is going to consume Judah; he likens them to two smoldering pieces of firewood about to go out.

He goes on to prophesy that the northern Kingdom is going to be destroyed, therefore King Ahaz should not worry about it. That is where our scripture for today comes in. Isaiah told King Ahaz to ask for a sign from God to confirm this. Ahaz said he did not need a sign from God. But God wanted to give him a sign anyway. So he said, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.”  That is the part we all know, and the part that is quoted by Matthew in the gospel story about the birth of Jesus. But the Immanuel prophesy continues. Isaiah said, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel. Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings.” (7:14-16)

Isaiah is saying that a young woman shall have a son and he shall be literally named Immanuel.  By the time this child comes to the age when he can discern good from evil, which was considered to be the age of twelve in Hebrew culture, when a Jewish boy went through his bar Mitzvah and officially became a man – by the time this boy named Immanuel was twelve years old, the two kings and nations of Syria and Israel that were coming against Ahaz would both be destroyed by the nation of Assyria. That is what the Immanuel prophecy originally meant.

It is not important that we get all the historical references straight. What matters is that this Immanuel prophecy meant something different when it was first given in the eighth century BC. It was spoken into a specific historical setting and was meaningful for the people of that day. The name Immanuel means God With Us. The original message of the Immanuel prophecy was that God is with us in the hard times. That was true in the days of the prophet Isaiah, and it is true today.

It means that during those times when our world feels like it is falling apart, God is with us. When we feel threatened by circumstances beyond our control, God is with us. When we feel surrounded by enemies, God is with us. When we are weighed down by grief, God is with us. When tragedy strikes, God is with us. God is with us at all times, even and especially in the worst of times. That is the original meaning of the Old Testament prophecy concerning Emmanuel.

II. Now let’s look at what it meant in the New Testament. Our gospel lesson talks about a stressful situation that was happening in the lives of Mary and Joseph in the first century. They were engaged to be married. But before they came together it as found that Mary was pregnant. Pregnancy outside of marriage would be no big deal these days, but back then it was a very big deal. Furthermore Joseph knows he is not the father of the child, so that adds a whole other dimension to the dilemma. If something like this happened today the couple would both appear on the Jerry Springer show, or maybe they would appear on Dr. Phil to work out their issues, but not back then. It says that Joseph was a nice guy and he did not want to cause problems for Mary, so he was going to quietly end their engagement.

But the night before he was going to announce the cancelation of their wedding, Joseph had a dream. The passage says, “behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.” Then the gospel writer Matthew comments on this saying, “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,” which is translated, “God with us.”

Matthew applies the Immanuel prophecy of Isaiah to this situation. But Immanuel is more than just God with Joseph and Mary during a difficult time in their personal lives. The prophecy is fulfilled in their lives in a special way. It happens in the form of the Virgin Birth. In the OT prophecy, the Hebrew word used by Isaiah can simply mean young woman, and not necessarily virgin. But the Greek word used in the NT clearly means virgin. So this adds a new dimension to this prophecy. This is where Christianity gets the doctrine of the Virgin Birth, that Jesus was conceived supernatural manner.

This doctrine is controversial for some people. Some people get all bent out of shape when you start talking about things that appear scientifically impossible. Virgin births seem to fit into that impossible category. Although they really aren’t impossible when you study the subject. Virgin births – the scientific name is parthenogenesis – are known in the animal world. Parthenogenesis occurs naturally in some invertebrate animal species and some vertebrates (e.g. some reptiles, fish, and even birds and sharks.) This phenomenon was popularized by the movie Jurassic Park, when the all-female population of dinosaurs suddenly began reproducing without any males around. But this is not science fiction; it is science.  Parthenogenesis has been induced artificially in fish and amphibians. This type of asexual reproduction has even been induced in mammals – in mice and rabbits.

So if scientists can prompt virgin births in animals in the laboratory, why is it so unbelievable that God could have done it in Mary’s womb? Can’t God do at least as much as scientists? Humans share most of the DNA of these other mammals. It is just a matter of switching on the right gene that we already have in our body. If God wanted to make a point that this little baby was unique, what better way to do it than a virgin birth? God is not breaking the laws of nature in the Virgin Birth, but using the laws of nature. So I don’t have a problem with the Virgin birth. I figure that nothing is impossible for God. Certainly not something like this. That is what the angel Gabriel told Mary when he told her about the Virgin birth. 

But the more important point being made by this doctrine is not biology but theology. Matthew is saying that something unique in the history of the world was happening in the birth of Jesus Christ. This is what the Virgin Birth points to. If we get hung up on the idea of the Virgin birth we will never see what it is pointing to. The prophecy of Isaiah says it is a sign. A sign points to something beyond itself. The Virgin birth points to something much more important than a biological phenomenon. It is about a theological phenomenon. It points to the much more important doctrine of the Incarnation. God became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.

This is the really controversial statement. People will make grand general statements like “We are all children of God.” “We are all sons and daughters of God.” In a certain manner of speaking this is true. The Bible speaks in such terms about us. But it singles out Jesus saying he is the “only begotten Son of God.” Something more was happening in the birth of Jesus. To explain what it means to call Jesus “only begotten Son of God” would take more than a single sermon. But for now I want to say that it means that God was with us in a unique way in Jesus Christ. That is what we celebrate at Christmas. We are saying that this birth that we celebrate on December 25 was unlike any other birth before or since. God came to dwell with us 2000 years ago in Jesus Christ.

III. My third point is what this Immanuel prophecy means for us for us in practice today. It is one thing to debate whether the Virgin birth could have really happened biologically. It is another to talk about what it means theologically. But in this third point I want to address what it means practically. I believe that all doctrine is practical. Theology is at the root spirituality. It has to do with our personal spiritual experience of God.

The Immanuel prophecy is about us experiencing God with us. That is what the name Immanuel literally means, and that is what it points to in our lives.  Christianity is not about holding all the correct doctrines or beliefs. It is about experiencing God. The prophecy of Immanuel is about experiencing God present with us. Specifically it is about experiencing God with us in Jesus Christ. After his resurrection Jesus said, “I will be with you always, even unto the end of the age.” Christmas is about God being present with us in the physical person of Jesus of Nazareth. But Jesus is no longer physically present. But Christ is still spiritually present. The gospel says that Christ is present with us in a couple of different ways.

He is present with us as the Spirit indwelling us. Christianity says that God’s Spirit indwells us. If we want to experience God, we need to go no further than our own hearts. The spiritual journey is an inner journey. I have been on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I have visited the holy sites connected with the life of Jesus. I have visited several times the site of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. In fact I am more familiar with that place than any other place in the Holy Land because we lived just outside of Bethlehem for three months. It is a spiritual experience to kneel at the spot where Jesus was born. But Jesus is not there in Bethlehem any more than he is in any other place. Jesus is experienced as Spirit within those who love Him. The only pilgrimage we have to make is the inner pilgrimage into our heart of hearts. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. And the Spirit indwells us. And we can know Christ directly by going within through prayer and contemplation.

There is another way that we can experience Jesus as God with us. That is in community. Jesus also said, “For where two or three have gathered together in My name, I am there in their midst." That does not mean he is not with the individual when he/she is alone. It means that Christ is experienced in a different way when the followers of Jesus gather together in his name. In other words we experience Christ not only by ourselves within ourselves but also in others. Something spiritual happens when we gather together for worship, when we gather for prayer, or when we gather to talk about Christ in the study of Scripture. Christ is experienced in community.

Experience of the presence of Christ makes Christmas real. I know Christmas is also about family and friends and music and giving all those wonderful things. But it is primarily about Christ – not Christ in theory, but Christ in our experience. We know God with us in Jesus Christ. That is the meaning of the prophecy of Immanuel. That is what the sign of Immanuel points to.

What’s Your Theme Song?

Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:46b-55

If your life had a theme song, what would it be? Would it be Hallelujah? Or would it be “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen?”  Would it be “Let it Be” or “I will Survive.”? "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd or “You got a friend in me" by Randy Newman. What would your theme song be? Mary, the mother of Jesus, had a theme song. She wrote the song herself. Actually it was inspired by the Holy Spirit. Mary first sang the song to her cousin Elizabeth. Both of them were pregnant at the time. Elizabeth was six months pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary was barely pregnant with Jesus. Mary took a trip into the hill country of Judea to visit her cousin. As soon as Mary entered the house, the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaped in her womb. Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, proclaimed that the baby in Mary’s womb was her Lord, the Son of God. Mary responds by singing a song.

Her song is known as the Magnificat, and it is our gospel lesson for today in the Gospel of Luke. It is Mary’s theme song, and it has two parts. The first is about her soul magnifying the Lord. The second part is about her spirit rejoicing in God her Savior. Does Mary’s song apply to us? Could we honestly sing Mary’s song? Can we make her song our own? Each of us have songs that connect at a deep level in our lives. They are our favorite songs. We pick these songs – or they pick us – because they resonate with lives on a deep level. Let’s see if Mary’s song resonates with our lives.

I. The first line of Mary’s song is “My soul magnifies the Lord” That is the theme of the song. Can we honestly say the same thing of our lives? Do our souls magnify the Lord? What does this mean – to magnify the Lord? It means to be a magnifying glass for the Lord.  My oldest son asked for binoculars for Christmas. He is a naturalist and does a bit of bird-watching.  His old binoculars got wet and broken, and he wants a new pair. It is hard to get any gift idea out of him, so I when he mentioned this I jumped on it. I did some research online and found that binoculars can be very expensive. They run into the thousands of dollars. I was not going to pay two or three thousand bucks for his Christmas present. But there were so many varieties of even less expensive binoculars that I asked him to choose. He went online to binoculars.com and found the 2013 award winning pair for only a little over $100, which is more in my price range. That is what he is getting for Christmas.

Binoculars magnify. Mary said that her soul magnifies the Lord. That means that by looking into her soul – through her soul - she can see the Lord clearer and bigger. It also means that people who look into her soul can see the Lord clearly. Is that true of our lives? When people look into our lives – into our souls – can they see the Lord clearly? Can they see the Lord magnified in our lives? If our answer is “No” or “Not very well,” then perhaps we should address this spiritual issue.

First, we have to identify our soul. We have to locate it. Most people don’t even know their own soul. People are out of touch with their own true spiritual nature. They live as if they were bodies or minds or emotions or some combinations of these. In the Bible the soul is our true self. The Bible does not say we have a soul; it says we are a soul. It is who we really are. I wrote a blog recently inviting people to look into their own soul. With a little direction we can identify our soul, our true spiritual nature. All it takes is looking in the right direction in the right manner. It takes some prayer and time, but it is not difficult to identity the soul that lies at the heart of our being under our psychological self. It is the still quiet place deep within us that nothing in the world can touch.

Once we have identified the soul, it is likely we will have to dust it off. If you don’t use your soul regularly it is probably pretty dirty. I was dusting in my house recently, those high places that Jude cannot reach. In our second floor bedroom we have high ceiling. We have a post and beam house and so we have rafters, and cobwebs collect way up on the ceiling and in the corners. So I was standing on our bed the other day with my long-handled duster trying to reach those cobwebs, so I would not have to look at them any longer while lying in bed.  When I was up there, I was amazed at how much dust was up there out of sight. Dust on the rafters and on the top of the picture frames. So I dusted, and Jude was sneezing for the next 24 hours.

There is likely dust on your soul. You might have a dusty soul. If you haven’t used your soul recently it is likely very dirty. If the lens of a binoculars or a magnifying glass is covered with dust we will not be able to see through it. It will not magnify anything. It certainly will not magnify the Lord. So the first thing we need to do after identifying our soul is clean it off.

How do you do that? Everyone knows you don’t clean off your eyeglasses or camera lens with your fingers. That will just smudge it and make it worse. You blow on it to get dust off. If the dirt is more substantial it takes some lens cleaning solution and tissue. In the spiritual life our soul is cleansed by the Holy Spirit, which is the Breath of God. “Breathe on me, Breath of God,” the hymn says. Cleanse my soul. Only the Spirit can do this work.

We cannot see the holy God with impure eyes. God has to do the work of cleansing in our souls. Our part in it is confession and repentance, and making amends to people if necessary. If we are going to magnify the Lord, the magnifying lens of our soul needs to be crystal clear, and only God can do that. Just like we cannot perform heart surgery on ourselves, so we cannot perform soul cleaning. This is the grace of God. He is the great Physician, the Supreme surgeon. He needs to do it, but we need to ask him. Ask him to open you up and clean you up - to do whatever is necessary to clean off your soul so that it is one again operational and can do what it was designed to do, which is to magnify the Lord.

The purpose of our lives is to magnify the Lord. That is supposed to be the theme song of every one of our lives. Most people’s lives sound more like a country song – lost love, wounded hearts and wrong choices. Or maybe your theme song is about being misunderstood or missed opportunities. Maybe it is a sad song about loved ones who have died and illnesses endured. That does not have to be the song of our lives. These elements of life are real. They can be mentioned in some of the stanzas, but the refrain of our life’s theme song, needs to be that God is magnified in everything that happens in our lives.

Our souls are a magnifying glass. If the magnifying lens of our soul has been cleansed by the work of Christ in our lives, then it can do its work. Astronomers had no clue of the billions of galaxies that were out there in space until we put the Hubble telescope up in orbit. There, above the haze and grime of Earth’s atmosphere, it could see clearly. It magnified our sight into the far depths of space. It transmitted to us a universe rich in color and motion, beautiful galaxies doing dances through space. It takes your breath away to see what human beings could never see before. In the same way it takes your breath away to look through that Hubble telescope which is the soul, your true nature, deep within. Look into the world through the lens of your immortal soul and you will see God. Your religion will no longer be based on blind faith, but on faithful sight. Your soul magnifies the Lord.

And your soul will magnify the Lord for others. There are some people who shine with the glory of God. That is why ancient paintings used to picture halos around the heads of saints. That light of the glory of God shone through them. Our lives can magnify the light of God’s presence to others. The purpose of our lives is not just so we can know God. It is so that others can know God. Others can know God when they can see God clearly in and through us. People think that proclaiming the gospel of God is about words. It is not. It is about the quality of our lives. Words can be a part of that, but if our lives do not coincide with our words we are seen as hypocrites. There is nothing Jesus hated more than hypocrisy. Our lives – our actions, our demeanor, our tone of voice, the expression on our face and in our eyes – these are what communicate the Spirit of God to others. The Holy Spirit of God who dwells in us is magnified through our souls and translated into speech and action in our lives. And people see that. That is how we magnify the Lord.

II. The second part of Mary’s song is to rejoice in God. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” If the soul had a color, its color would be joy. The soul is actually a rainbow of colors including love, peace, compassion, patience, gentleness. But the one that Mary focuses on in her song is joy. Different people have different spiritual qualities that dominate their spiritual life. The dominant spiritual quality of Mary’s life was joy.

How wonderful it must have been for Jesus growing up – to have a joyful mother! No wonder he turned out so well! We all know what our own mothers were like. If we gave it some thought, we could probably identify one quality that best describes our mothers. The quality Jesus would have said described his mother was joy. It was her theme song. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”

How can we have joy as a dominant note in our own lives? How can we make Mary’s song our song? How can we sing, “my spirit rejoices in God my Savior?” First, we have to know God as Savior. We have to know God as Savior before we can rejoice in God as Savior. Mary said, “my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” She did not say God my Creator. I am filled with joy when I am surrounded by Nature and feel overwhelmed by the beauty of nature that reflects the beauty of God as Creator. But that is not what Mary is singing about. She is singing about God as her Savior. She is talking about the salvation that was to come about through the infant in her womb at that very moment.

A lot of people these days don’t like the idea of God as Savior or Jesus s Savior. For them it has negative connotations. It presupposes that they need saving. Some people don’t like that idea. They don’t think they need saving. Jesus ran into people like that all the time. They thought they were fine just the way they were. They do not think they need to be changed, at least not in a fundamental manner. A person that does not need to be saved will never know the joy of God as Savior. They will never sing along with Mary, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” To rejoice in God a Savior means that we first admit that we cannot do this life all by ourselves. We need the grace of God. Only then can we know the joy of God.

Finally notice that the word is rejoice. It is an interesting word. It starts off with the prefix re. That means again. Re-joy. Joy again and again. This is not a fleeting experience of happiness. It is not a past event that we look back on fondly. This is a repeated joy. Re-joy. Re-joice. Joy can be the dominant note of our lives over and over again.

What is the most common emotion that you feel? What do you feel most often during the day or during the week? Is it sadness? Is it boredom? Is it frustration? Is it anxiety? Fear? It can be joy! I am not talking about fits of giddiness. I am not even talking about having everything going just right so that you will be happy. I am talking about deep abiding joy - the gift of joy given to us by God the Savior that produces praise of God. That was the keynote of Mary’s life and it can be the theme of our lives as well. As the hymn Blessed Assurance says, “This is my story this is my song, praising my Savior all the day long.”

How the Grinch Stole Advent

Matthew 3:1-12

Everyone knows the Dr. Seuss book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. All about the Who’s in Whoville, little Cindy Lou, and the Christmas dinner of roast beast. It was made into a film and then a musical. The mean old Grinch on the top of Mount Crumpit cannot stand all the holiday preparations taking place in the valley below. He does everything he can to stop Christmas from coming. He dresses up like Santa Claus and steals all the presents. Yet Christmas still came all the same. “He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!”

When I think of John the Baptist I cannot help thinking of him as a little like the Grinch. His message is so harsh and often so angry sounding. It is so incongruous with the Christmas spirit. That is probably not fair to John. John is regarded as a great biblical prophet. Jesus said of John that among those born of women no one was greater than John the Baptist. But I picture him as a stern figure. I am sure he was not much fun at a party. He probably never went to a party in his life. Jesus used to attend lots of parties. In fact he was criticized by the Pharisees for spending so much time with winebibbers and sinners, unlike John who was known for his fasting, his austere diet and for being a teetotaler. The two men were cousins, but there never were two people so different than Jesus and John the Baptist. I think that is why John had his doubts a the end of his life about whether Jesus was really the Messiah. That is in the scripture for next Sunday. When I think of John the Baptist I think of the Grinch in his Santa suit. He is a sort of an anti-Santa.

While all the world is getting prepared for Christmas, we come to church and read about John the Baptist. Advent is a different than Christmas. The two seasons are very different in tone and purpose. I tend to blend the two seasons in my preaching and worship planning. I like to sing Christmas carols as well as Advent hymns during these weeks in December leading up to Christmas. Some churches don’t. Some churches sing only Christmas songs. This is especially true of Baptist churches. More liturgical churches sing only Advent songs and no Christmas carols at all. I have a friend who is an Episcopal priest. She insists on never singing a Christmas carol in worship during Advent. Not until Christmas Eve will she break out the Christmas carols. I, on the other hand, cannot wait that long to sing carols. I do both I start off Advent with only Advent hymns, but as the month progresses I include more and more Christmas carols. The whole American society is playing Christmas music, and I would feel like the Grinch not to join in.

But I do not want to ignore the important themes of Advent either. I do not want Advent to be stolen from the church. I think it has been stolen, and it is important that it be reclaimed. I do not want the message of Santa to drown out the voice of John the Baptist. In spite of his stern tone, John the Baptist is an important figure in the Advent season. This morning I want us to look at him and his message. But I want to do that in a fun way. I want to compare John the Baptist and Santa Claus. I have nothing against Santa. I even dressed up like Santa one year for my kids when they were small. That was the first and last time I ever donned a Santa suit. I have nothing against either of these guys, but I think it is instructive to compare these two men who appear each year during December. Santa is the personification of the American Christmas. John the Baptist is the personification of the Advent message. Let’s compare them.

1. First their physical appearance. In his famous poem “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” commonly known as “Twas the Night before Christmas” Clement Moore describes Santa in these words:

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot.
A bundle of Toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler, just opening his pack.

His eyes-how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly!

He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself!
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head,
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

That is the picture of Santa etched on all of our minds. Now listen to the gospels depiction of John the Baptist. This is our gospel lesson for today from Matthew:

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Wow! What a difference between these two characters! One lives on milk and cookies, chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf, with a round little belly which shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly. The other probably never tasted jelly in his life! He was known for his fasting. He lived in the desert on a diet of locusts and wild honey. By the way, the locusts referred to here are not grasshoppers. It refers to the locust plant, which grows in the desert, and produces pods with beans that we know as carob. So get the picture of John eating grasshoppers out of your mind. That is the type of thing you may see on the TV show Survivor but not here. But John was a desert ascetic. He appeared gaunt and lived a life of self-denial. He has a very different image than the American Santa, who seems to be the symbol of self-indulgence. Santa wears a fur coat. John wears a tunic of camel’s hair which was not known for its softness and comfort. Santa comes bearing gifts. John is penniless.

More important than what they wore and ate is what they said. The message of Santa and John could not be more different. Santa was a man of few words. But when he spoke they were word of encouragement and happiness. Encouraging his reindeer on and wishing everyone well as he rides off in his sleigh, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!" What a nice guy. We would much rather be around Saint Nick then Saint John. John’s message is harsh. Santa’s is so much nicer. That is why there are Santas in every mall and not John the Baptists. Shopping malls pay men to dress up like Santa and promise little kids gifts. But if some street preacher began to preach like John the Baptist in a shopping mall he would be quickly escorted away by the security guards. We say we have religious liberty, but you will never hear a John the Baptist type preacher preaching John’s Advent message in any mall this Christmas season. It is not good for business, and business is what the American Christmas is really about. Somebody stole Advent. Somebody kidnapped the Biblical symbol of Advent, John the Baptist, and replaced him with Santa Claus.

What is John’s message? What is Advent really about? The gospel lesson opens, “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." That is what Advent is about in one sentence. It is about repentance. The word repent literally means to rethink. Advent is a time to rethink our lives in the light of the coming of Jesus Christ. Many people are so busy during the holidays that they do not have much time to think or rethink. They have presents to buy, food to bake and parties to go to and musical events to attend. But Advent is a time to be introspective. That is why I have taken the time this Advent to write Advent blogs linked to the church website. You can subscribe to them if you want and have then delivered to your email inbox. I am trying to encourage people to put aside time each day for prayer and devotional reading is month. This is the perfect season to try it.

Part of rethinking or repentance is confession. Most people wait until New Year’s Eve to think about personal resolutions for the upcoming year, but Advent is the time when we can do the preparatory work of self-examination and confession.

It is not just thinking repentance, it is also doing repentance. Our gospel lesson reports “But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” Repentance does not just mean a change of mind, it also involves a change in behavior. If we truly repent, then we will bear fruit worthy of repentance. That means a change in the way we live. John was not a feel good preacher. People did not come out into the wilderness to hear John coddle them. They came to be challenged. To repent in action and not just in word or thought.

The second thing that John mentions is Presence. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." Christmas is when heaven came to earth in Jesus Christ. Christians believe that God became a human being. Heaven touched earth at Christmas. Heaven touches earth now. The kingdom of Heaven has come near. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.” That means literally that you can reach out and touch heaven. That is how close it is. This is the gift of Advent! Who cares about ipads and big screen tvs? We can experience the presence of heaven on earth now! We can know the presence of God! It is not far away. You don’t have to wait until you die to have a taste of heaven. God is here now. The kingdom of heaven has come near. All we have to do to know the presence of God is open our eyes and our hearts. Let down the walls that prevent us from enjoying the presence of God.

The third part of John’s Advent message is Preparation. Our gospel lesson says of John, “This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Advent is a time of preparation. I am not talking about food preparation, Christmas decorations or travel preparations. John is talking about spiritual preparation. In the parallel passages in the other gospels it talks about building a road in the wilderness – cutting through mountains and filling in valleys. He is talking about hard work. More than reading a daily Advent devotion or blog, though that can be a start. During Advent John the Baptist calls us to take our spirituality seriously, so that when Christmas comes, it will have a depth and meaning that is more than sentimentality. John was a very serious preacher and he calls us to take our relationship to God very seriously. That is the blessing of the Advent season. It calls us deeply into the spiritual life. Let us not let anyone steal Advent from us.  

Missing Christmas

Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44

John Grisham wrote a book in 2001 entitled Skipping Christmas. It was later made into a movie in 2004 entitled Christmas with the Kranks starring Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis. It is about a suburban couple whose only child is on a one year assignment with the Peace Corps in Peru. Therefore she was not going to make it home for Christmas. So the couple, Luther and Nora Krank, decide to skip Christmas. No shopping, no parties, no tree, no outdoor decorations, nothing. They decided they were not going to miss it at all. The story is all about the resistance that they got from friends and the community to their radical idea. The twist in the plot is that everything changes when the daughter changes her mind at the last minute and announces she is coming home with her new Peruvian fiancé and expects her parents to show him their over-the-top Christmas with all the trimmings. So they have to quickly do in 24 hours what normally took them a month.

Some people today would not mind skipping Christmas like the Kranks. Some people dread Christmas because it means having to spend Christmas without family or a particular family member who has passed away. Christmas is promoted in our society as family time, represented b y Norman Rockwell paintings. But if the family situation is difficult, the holidays are difficult. Our Blue Christmas service this afternoon is designed exactly for people who have a hard time with the holiday season; part of them wishes they could skip over the whole month of December. Some people wouldn’t mind missing Christmas. But most people look forward to Christmas. They plan for it months in advance. The Christmas Tree Shop is their favorite store. In researching this message I read a blog written by a young woman who was traveling to India for a couple of weeks and would be back in the US after Christmas. She wrote:

“When I told my friends and colleagues in Atlanta that I would be visiting India until December 28th, the reaction I received was almost unanimous:  “You’re going to miss Christmas?!” they would say in a tone that sounded as shocked as it did sympathetic.  “I’m so sorry,” they would continue, or, “That’s too bad.”  I heard this over and over again from everyone from people at church to the lady at the airport ticket counter when I checked in for my flight. I’m sure these people meant well, and I tried to appreciate the concern they expressed.  But after a point it got old and annoying.  “I’m not missing Christmas,” I would attempt to explain; “I’m just celebrating it in another country.”

We can easily confuse celebrating Christmas with particular American cultural observances. Personally as time goes on I care less and less about cultural trappings surrounding Christmas and more and more about the spiritual celebration of Christmas, especially the spirit of anticipation in the Advent season. I could not imagine doing what so many people do – going through December without honoring Christ in worship. I think that a lot of people miss Christmas without even knowing what they are missing.

1. This morning I am going to talk about missing Christmas. First let’s talk about missing the date of Christmas. When is Christmas? You have to know when it is in order to observe it. When is the real Christmas? The real Christmas is of course the birthday of Jesus Christ. When was Jesus born?

Well I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but you missed it. You missed Christmas. We celebrate Christmas on December 25, but that is certainly not the date of Jesus’ birthday. The 25^th of December was chosen by the church in the 4^th century, over three hundred years after Jesus’ birth. That particular dare was not chosen because it was handed down as the historical date of Jesus’ birth. It was chosen because it was already a holiday in the Roman Empire. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, church leaders were trying to get the populace involved. So they adopted Roman holidays and turned them into Christian holidays. In the calendar used at the time, December 25 was the date of the winter solstice. It was a celebration of the victory of light over darkness, so it fit the Christian themes perfectly. On our calendar the solstice is December 21, but on the calendar they used at the time the solstice fell on December 25. When the calendar later changed, that date stuck for Christmas.

When was Jesus’ really born? Biblical scholars admit they don’t know. But they are pretty certain it was not in the winter. They say that because the shepherds were out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. They did not do that in the cold of winter. They did it al the rest of the year, but not in the winter. Furthermore the Christmas story connects Jesus’ birth to a Roman census, which was likewise not done in the winter, because it made travel so much harder. Many biblical scholars suggest spring as the time of year since that was when the census began. So it is more likely Jesus was born on March 25 or April 25 rather than December 25. But the truth is we don’t know exactly when Jesus was born. But in any case you missed it. You missed Christmas.

II. Now let talk about the future date. You might wonder what I am talking about now. Christmas remembers a past historical event not a future event. True, Christmas is when we celebrate the coming of Christ to earth. But the scriptures talk about two comings of Christ. The first coming at Christmas and what is called the second coming. In fact the season of Advent, which starts today and leads up to Christmas, is just as much about preparing for Christ’s second advent as celebrating his first advent. That is why we have the scripture passage from Isaiah about the day when “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore.” That obviously has not happened yet.

In the gospel lesson for today Jesus talks about a future day that he calls “the coming of the Son of Man.” That is Jesus’ favorite term for himself. Many times he said that after his death and resurrection there would be a day when he would return to earth. Every communion service ends with the words “For as often as we eat this bread and drink of this cup we remember the Lord’s death until he comes.” Every communion service is not only a looking back to Jesus’ death but a looking ahead to his return.

 The question then becomes when? When will Christ come? Jesus says in our gospel lesson that no one knows. He says, “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only…. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming…. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” Jesus is saying that we do not know when it will be. He says that he does not even know when it will be. If no one knows the date it would be easy to miss it.  So Jesus says that the only way not to miss it is to be ready at all times.

There are a lot of things that the average person has to do to get ready for Christmas. We have to put up the tree. I am probably going to be doing that tomorrow on my day off. Then decorate the house. Jude does that mostly, with a little help from me. Of course there is the Christmas shopping. I will do most if not all of my Christmas shopping online this year. Then there is holiday travel. Perhaps you will be traveling at Christmas or someone is going to travel to see you. Either of these takes preparation. We already did our holiday traveling at Thanksgiving. We just got back Friday from a week in Florida and Pennsylvania seeing family. So we are not going anywhere on Christmas. The kids will have to come to us if they want to see us. Then there is the Christmas cooking. My favorite part – not the cooking but the eating. So there are lots of preparations to prepare of Christmas.

There are also spiritual preparations if we are to celebrate Christmas. That is what Advent is designed for, so that we do not come to Christmas spiritually unprepared. That is why it is good that this first Sunday of Advent also is communion Sunday. At the Lord’s Table is the normal setting where we do a little soul searching, some spiritual preparation. This is spiritual preparation not only for Christmas but for that day when we will come face to face with God, whether it is when Christ returns or we go to him. Either way it takes preparation. This should take at least as much time and thought as shopping and baking. People spend more time preparing for a trip to Florida than a trip to heaven. That does not make sense. They do more to prepare for guests coming to their home than Christ returning to earth. That does not make sense either. I suggest that you take some time for spiritual preparations this Advent. I have put a couple of links for online daily Advent devotions on the church website. At least that way each day you have a bit of a reflection on the spiritual meaning of the season. That way we will not miss either the celebration of this first coming or his second.

III. This leads me into my third point. We have talked about Christ’s first coming in the past, and the future coming of Christ in the future. Now I want to talk about what I might call the present coming of Christ. Theologians refer to this as realized eschatology. The date of that coming is now. For this I will refer to our Epistle Lesson from Romans. “11 And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. 12 The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.”

Here the apostle talks about awakening from sleep. I imagine most of you have seen the 1990 film Home Alone starring Macaulay Culkin. It is about an eight year old boy who oversleeps and is accidentally left behind while his family flies to France for Christmas. He wakes up and his whole family is gone. Most of the film has to do with the antics of this little boy defending his home against some would-be robbers. But the sentimental theme of the film is about family and holidays. The little kid overslept and almost missed Christmas.

Jesus tells a number of stories in the gospels about people who overslept and missed the big day. He tells the story of a wedding where half of the bridesmaids overslept and missed the wedding. The Gospels relate the account of the eve before the most important event in the history of the world according to Christians, the death of Christ. Jesus asked his disciples to stay awake with him for a few hours, but they all fell asleep. They missed that great opportunity to be with their Lord during the longest, darkest and most difficult night of his life. The gospel account says Jesus scolded them. “Then He came and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “Simon, are you sleeping? Could you not watch one hour?”

I think that most people are sleep-walking through life. You know when you are sleepy you are hardly aware of things around you. Most people are hardly aware of God around them. Some people are completely unaware of God. In fact some people are so unconscious that they believe that God does not even exist. They think he is an imaginary construction of the human psyche. They are completely asleep spiritually. Others of us are only half-asleep. We are aware of God at some times – like when we are in a beautiful setting in nature or perhaps in worship or in prayer. At such times they can sense the presence of God. But at other times, which may be most times, they are unaware of God. Just as unconscious of God as they are unconscious of this world with they are physically asleep. When we are physically asleep each night we are unconscious of this physical world. People can also be physically awake but spiritually unconscious of the spiritual world.

In our passage Paul tells the Roman Christians to wake up out of spiritual sleep. He is ringing an alarm, but the people just hit the snooze button and fall back asleep. How do we wake up spiritually? The same way as we wake up physically. That is why the analogy of spiritual sleep and physical sleep is so good. In the morning we just naturally wake up. That is the grace of God working in our bodies. Some people go through life obvious to God, but then something happens in their lives which serves as a spiritual wakeup call. It is usually some transition in life. Sometimes it is a crisis. Something changes in our outward circumstances, and our hearts are suddenly open to new possibilities. A part of that openness is being open to God. People notice God is working in their lives and in the world. They wake up and notice that God is present. God did not just appear. God was always present, but their eyes were not open. And when we notice that God is real and present then we have to respond in some way. It can’t be business as usual. The appropriate response is worship and service and most of all love.

Sometimes we can do something to wake up. Most important I think is just the intent to wake up spiritually. If we don’t try, it probably won’t happen. We can also set an alarm to wake ourselves up. I will sometimes set an alarm on my watch or my phone or kindle to wake me up after a certain amount of time. I understand worship on Sundays as a wakeup call. My job as a preacher on Sunday mornings is to wake people up. I have known some people in the congregation to do just the opposite; they fall asleep, but that is not my intent. My intent is to get people to be aware of God sometime during this one hour, so that they can be more aware of God during the week. 

Paul told the congregation in Rome, “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand.” Wake up! Or you will miss Christmas – the meaning of Christmas. The meaning of Christmas according to the Gospel of Matthew is Immanuel, which means “God is with us.” Let us wake up to the presence of God with us in Jesus Christ and in God’s Holy Spirit. Let us not miss the coming of Christ - the celebration of his first coming. Neither let us be unprepared for his second coming. And most of all let us not miss God coming to be with us right here right now.

The Wisdom of Humpty Dumpty

Isaiah 65:17-25 Luke 21:5-19

We all learned it. Although I am not so sure that kids learn it any longer.  I am sure it is not on the standardized tests, so I would not be surprised if schoolchildren today have never heard of Humpty Dumpty. They could identify Big Bird and Sponge Bob , but probably not Humpty Dumpty. But I imagine most of us here learned it in childhood. 

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

This rhyme dates from the late eighteenth century. The earliest known written version of it is found in Samuel Arnold's book Juvenile Amusements published in 1797. This early version is a little different than the one we all memorized. It goes:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
Four-score Men and Four-score more,

Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before.

Like most nursery rhymes its original context and meaning is lost. Many suspect it has to do with the political fall of a public figure in 17^th or 18^th century England, perhaps some rotund bigwig of the day. The most popular origin story is that it refers to a large short stout cannon that sat on a wall of the town of Colchester, England, in 1648. At least that is what that town says to attract tourists. At that time it was a walled town with a castle and several churches and protected by the city wall. The story is that a large cannon, which was nicknamed Humpty Dumpty, was placed on the wall to protect the town. During a battle a shot from a cannon of the attacking army succeeded in damaging the wall beneath Humpty Dumpty which caused the cannon to tumble to the ground. The Royalists, or Cavaliers, "all the King's men", attempted to raise Humpty Dumpty on to another part of the wall, but because the cannon was so heavy they were not able to do so.

Who knows if this story is true? I still like to think of Humpty as a giant egg, but it does not say that in the nursery rhyme. We owe that picture to Lewis Carroll and the illustrations in his book Through the Looking-Glass published in 1872. But the fragility of Humpty Dumpty as an egg, which when shattered cannot be put back together again, is what gives the rhyme its enduring value and wisdom.

Why am I talking about Humpty Dumpty? What does this have to do with Jesus Christ? Our gospel lesson for today teaches the same lesson as the nursery rhyme. In our passage in the Gospel of Luke Jesus is standing in the courtyard of the Jerusalem Temple as people were gathering for the Feast of unleavened Bread, known as the Passover. This was the temple built by King Herod and situated on the highest hill in Jerusalem. The temple was lifted even higher by being surrounded by a high retaining wall. Herod’s temple structure was the most beautiful temple in Israel’s history. It surpassed even the temple of Solomon. People came from all the Mediterranean to marvel at this wonder of the ancient world. As Jesus stood there in the temple with his disciples, he overheard the people remarking on the temple’s magnificence and how it would last forever.

 Our scripture lesson says: “Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, “These things which you see - the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.” Jesus said that that this great structure would be torn down, not one stone left on another, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would never put it together again. And this prophecy came true. Within the lifetimes of some of those who heard Jesus’ words, the Roman army attacked Jerusalem and completely dismantled this temple, stone by stone. To this day the only thing left of Herod’s temple is the retaining wall around the foundation. It is known as the Western Wall or the Wailing Wall, and is the holiest site to Jews today. That wall itself is impressive. The stones are huge. We can only imagine what the temple built above it was like.

I. Our gospel lesson this morning teaches us an important truth. It is the same point that Humpty Dumpty makes. It is the impermanence of earthly things. We could also describe it as the fragility of worldly things - as fragile as an a giant egg sitting precariously on a wall. Jesus develops this point by mentioning several aspects of life that are impermanent.

1. First is material things. That is the reference to the temple itself. If anything seems permanent it would seem to be a building made of huge stone blocks. But even that fell. Just like the Twin Towers fell. I recently read a book entitled The Harbinger. The Harbinger is a 2012 best-selling Christian novel by Rabbi Jonathan Cahn, a Messianic Jew. He is the Senior Pastor and Messianic Rabbi of the Jerusalem Center/ Beth Israel in Wayne, New Jersey. His book was recommended and loaned to me by someone in our congregation. Cahn sees recent events, particularly the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001, as signs from God - a warning to America. He draws a lot of parallels between ancient Israel, especially in the prophet Isaiah’s day, and 21^st century America. I have some problems with his biblical hermeneutic, that is his way of interpreting scripture. For example, he compares King Solomon to George Washington, which in my opinion is going a bit far. But the basic message of the book is valid. The World Trade Center was our Tower of Babel and our financial temple. And it came down like the Jerusalem temple of Jesus’ day did. This has symbolic and spiritual significance and not just political and historical significance. The broader and more profound teaching involved here is that riches and power are impermanent.

2. Second is the changing face of religious beliefs. Jesus says, “Take heed that you not be deceived. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am He,’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ Therefore do not go after them.” Religion is continually changing. New messiahs arise and fall. Self-styled prophets predict the end of the world and are sometimes foolish enough to actually set a date. The dates come and go and the world continues as it has. You may remember that the world was supposed to end last year 2012. New Age writers cited Mayan and Aztec calendars that predicted the end of the age on December 21, 2012. It is almost a year later and we are still here. Jesus says about such prophets, “Do not go after them.” Religious fads like this come and go.

3. Jesus mentions international instability. He says “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” In a parallel passage he predicts that the city of Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies and destroyed. And it was destroyed by Roman armies in 70 AD. We tend to think that our American nation and our worldwide power will last. But history teaches us that like the Roman Empire fell, so will the American superpower status one day fall. Probably not in our lifetimes or the lifetimes of our grandchildren, but it will happen.

4. Jesus even talks about weather and natural catastrophes. “11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.” We all know about climate change. Even though it has been politicized, as far as I can tell as a scientific layman, it is certainly happening.  How much it is manmade and how much it is the natural cycle of global change over the centuries is up for debate, but the change itself is certainly happening. We talk about superstorms now, and the regular flooding of coastal areas. A study published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences predicts that more than 1,700 American cities and towns – including Boston, New York, and Miami – will be under water, although it wisely does not give a date. It does say that this trend will be irreversible by the year 2100. Geologic history tells us about immense changes in the earth’s surface - ice ages and continental drift. Even something as solid as the earth changes.

5. Jesus speaks about persecution. In fact he devotes more words to persecution than to any other topic in this passage. “12 But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up to the synagogues and prisons. You will be brought before kings and rulers for My name’s sake. 13 But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony. 14 Therefore settle it in your hearts not to meditate beforehand on what you will answer; 15 for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to contradict or resist. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 And you will be hated by all for My name’s sake.”

I have mentioned previously the situation of Christian pastor Saeed Abedini. He is the American Iranian pastor presently serving an eight year sentence in Iranian prisons for preaching the gospel.  He is just one example. The persecution of Christians is heating up in the world. It even makes the Evening news shows now. Churches are being burned in Syria and Egypt. These are among the oldest Christian communities in the world. They have endured for 2000 years. But now their existence is threatened.  Then there is persecution in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In spite of the American wars, Christians are persecuted more in Iraq now more than before our involvement. Christians are still persecuted in Afghanistan even without the Taliban in power.  The United States is an island of religious freedom in a world that is persecuting Christianity at an accelerating rate. We are deluding ourselves if we think it could never also happen here.

All these areas – I have mentioned five of them – show the impermanence and fragility of the world as we know it. It is important to get this through our heads and let it sink into our hearts and saturate our souls. As the apostle Paul wrote, “For the present form of this world is passing away.” That is what Jesus was saying to his disciples as he stood and taught them on the temple mount.

II. Our response to the transitory nature of this world is to hold to that which is eternal. The apostle john wrote, “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” Jesus told a parable about a man who built his house upon sand as opposed as to one who built his house upon a rock. What do we build our lives on? In our gospel passage today, Jesus says that in spite of all the changes in the world that he was predicting, there were certain things we could count on.

He said, 8 “But not a hair of your head shall be lost.” If Jesus was referring to not going bald, then this certainly does not refer to me. I have lost quite a few hairs of my head. In the context, he was referring to the section on persecution. He did not mean that Christians would not be killed. In fact he clearly says that they will. They are now being killed. The physical hairs of their heads are being lost and a lot more than that. We read it in the newspapers and see it on the television news. Jesus is not saying that no physical harm will come to Christians. He is using a figure of speech to talk about spiritual matters.

In our lives things will happen to us. Bad things will happen. We are not immune from tragedies just because we believe in God or trust in Christ.  Some Christians do not understand this, and therefore their faith crumbles under pressure. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to Christian people just like any other people. It is not whether bad things happen. It is how they affect us. Through faith in Christ bad things cannot harm us at the deepest level. If our souls are grounded in God and Christ, then the storms of life cannot shake us. They cannot move the foundation. That is what Jesus is talking about.

The last thing Jesus says in our passage is this: “By your patience possess your souls.” This little gem can easily he overlooked in the midst of talk of earthquakes, wars and persecution. “By your patience possess your souls.” Live in your soul, in that center. Possess it. Do not just visit it once in a while during prayer or meditation. Make it your home, Possess it. Live there. If we live in the world, then our lives will be tossed to and fro with the winds that shake this world - whether those be political winds, religious winds or meteorological winds. But if we possess our souls, if we dwell there in the presence of God Almighty who resides in our souls as Holy Spirit, then nothing will shake our lives. Spiritually speaking, not a hair on our heads will be harmed.

Jesus says to possess our souls in patience. ”By your patience possess your souls.” Patience means waiting. We do not need patience when everything happens how we want it when we want it. We need patience when things are not going according to our wishes. When answers to prayer seem to be delayed. When things are not going according to plan, then possess your souls by your patience. Wait on the Lord. Wait and see what great thing God will do in you and in your life. By doing this we dwell in eternal habitations. We live in eternal life. Our life is hidden with God in Christ. We experience that which is eternal in the midst of a world that is temporary. Everything passes away. Like Humpty Dumpty, things fall apart and we cannot put them back together again the way they used to be. That can be a good thing. For it forces us to find our strength and our solid rock in that which will not pass away. That is Christ, who is the same yesterday today and forever.