- Isaiah 9:2-7 - read this passage online here »
- Luke 2:1-20 - read this passage online here »
Whenever I see one of those huge hummer-like vehicles parked outside a bank, I know it is delivering some serious coin. Occasionally I have watched as some big guys in uniforms with guns at their sides haul a heavy sack through the front doors. It doesn’t take much thought to know the bag is filled with a lot of money.
However, what would you think if you saw an old pickup instead of an armoured van in front of the bank and a young fellow in a T-shirt and blue jeans leaning against it? If you are like me, you might glance at it but then just walk on without any more thought. Here is how the fellow in the T-shirt and blue jeans described his experience in this true story [Roger Thompson, “Treasure in a Brown Bag,” Preaching Today, Tape 42]:
One day we got a call from Bank of America in downtown San Bernardino, and they were in a panic: “We've got to have some coin in the hour.” Well, all the armoured trucks were gone, and so Larry, my manager, backed his '49 Ford pickup into the bay. Now if Brinks ever finds out about this they're going to shoot this guy. We loaded $25,000 worth of coin in a '49 Ford pickup. That thing was dragging. That's over a ton.
Larry said: “Hop in. We're going up to B of A.”
We hopped. I'm in my T-shirt and blue jeans. We drove up to the front of the Bank of America, parked the truck, and Larry said, “Hang on, I'll go in and get the dolly, and we'll haul this stuff in.” I'm whistling, standing against this truck for twenty minutes. I don't have a gun. I thought, if anybody notices what is in this common-looking pickup truck, I'm a dead duck! Of course, you can't carry eighty pounds very far.
The treasure that people were walking by! But they didn't see it because of the commonness of the delivery people and delivery vehicle!Every year we still carry on the custom of celebrating the anniversary of an ordinary birth in unusual circumstances – the birth of Jesus. He was delivered in the same way every other baby comes into this world. While we may wonder about how he was conceived – and that is one of the great mysteries surrounding Jesus – we don’t usually wonder about his actual birth. He came out of Mary as any other baby is born. Anyone walking by the stable that night and knowing a baby was being born might have wondered about the place of birth but not about the birth itself. It took some angels telling a bunch of shepherds and an unusual star in the sky to tell some Magi that there was treasure to be found in the simple birth of a baby called Jesus -- born in a little Middle Eastern town in a place where animals were housed. Otherwise they would have missed him.
We are now aware this baby grew to become a man whose life and teachings have influenced the world like no other. We could be somewhere else tonight but we are here in this place, perhaps because we sense that this particular baby called Jesus has treasure in him yet to be recognized by others who walk by – treasure yet to be discovered by us.
What is the treasure to be found in Jesus? Here is part of the treasure I have found.
In the Christmas story, we read of God’s love for the world. That’s Treasure Number One.
It intrigues me that Mary and Joseph did not pick the name of Jesus for their son. Most parents want to pick a name that is meaningful to them in some way. Instead, God picked a name for him that was significant to God! One of God’s angels told both Joseph and Mary separately to call the baby Jesus “for he will save his people from the condition and the consequences of their sins.” The name Jesus means “the Lord who saves.”
You see, Jesus is an expression of God’s character. Here is a good way to think about the way God works -- from creation to Incarnation to redemption, God’s work is an unfolding of God’s character. So we ask, What is the character of God shown in the Christmas story?
Like the creation of the Earth and the universe, the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus are also expressions of a most extravagant divine love. This is love that seeks beyond every river and mountain until the lost sheep is found. This is love that travels down any road of suffering and pain, of messy living and difficulties to find, to heal and to reconcile. This is love that will suffer and sacrifice everything on behalf of the beloved and that lays down his life for his friend. This is the same love that brought us into being in the first place. And in the tiny out-the-way village of Bethlehem, this same love enters into a new and more intimate relationship with human beings in the person of Jesus. “God so loved the world” that he sent Jesus so that every person who puts his or her faith in him will be reconciled to God and be brought to live with God forever. God’s extravagant love seen in Jesus: that’s the first treasure.
Treasure Number Two: We celebrate in Christmas that God became a person in order to enter into a personal relationship with human beings -- with us!
I am not embarrassed to tell you that I have a personal relationship with my wife. Our relationship is personal, intimate and loving. She loves me and wants me. I love her and I want her. Well, God also loves us and wants us for his own.
If I told you I had a “personal relationship with Jesus,” does that sound too personal and too intimate a way to express my response and devotion to him? Or to God? But the treasure of Christmas is that God became a person. In other words, our most intimate relationship with God is only possible because of the astonishing and seemingly impossible event we celebrate at Christmas: God entered into our human condition. God became one of us, capable of relating to us not merely as Creator but also as Friend in Jesus Christ. The truck driver who thinks of Jesus in the passenger seat as he rolls across the plains of Saskatchewan. The school teacher who asks Jesus for patience as she nears the end of the school day. The worker in the oil fields of Alberta who talks and jokes and argues with Jesus as he goes about his work. The disabled child who asks Jesus for the strength and courage to carry on. All of these people, whatever their background, give expression to a profound theological truth: God is not only the magnificent Creator who fashions the suns and measures the span of the heavens but also the compassionate Friend who dwells among the lowly, the humble, the contrite and the suffering.
With the coming of Jesus, we discover the treasure that our relationship with God is meant to be interpersonal. Not only is it characterized by worship and reverence but also by tender mercy and forgiveness, love and mutual understanding. With Jesus, we can know God and be known by God. With Jesus, we have footsteps in which to walk. With Jesus, we have the transformative presence and power of God with us even in our most human and most painful moments. And for that I am most grateful. God’s personal relationship with us: that’s the second treasure of Christmas that we can experience in Jesus.
Treasure Number Three: In Christmas we celebrate that God delights in using the small, the weak and the foolish things of the world to humble the great, the mighty and the wise.
In his newest book What Good Is God? In Search of a Faith That Matters [Faith Words, 2010, pp. 184-186], author Philip Yancey tells a contemporary story that shows how the great and the mighty were humbled by the small and the weak. He wrote about the 2004 election in Ukraine in which the reformer Victor Yushchenko challenged the entrenched party and nearly died for it. On election day, the exit polls showed Yushchenko with a comfortable lead. But through outright fraud, the government reversed those results. Yancey wrote:
That evening the state-run television reported, “Ladies and gentlemen, we announce that the challenger Victor Yushchenko has been decisively defeated.” However, government authorities had not taken into account one feature of Ukrainian television: the translation it provides for the hearing-impaired. On the small screen insert in the lower right-hand corner of the television screen, a brave woman raised by deaf-mute parents gave a different message in sign language. “I am addressing all the deaf citizens of Ukraine. Don't believe what they say. They are lying, and I am ashamed to translate these lies. Yushchenko is our President!” No one in the studio understood her radical sign-language message.
[Inspired by that courageous translator, deaf people led what became known as the Orange Revolution.] They text-messaged their friends on mobile phones about the fraudulent elections, and soon other journalists took courage … and likewise refused to broadcast the party line. Over the next few weeks as many as a million people wearing orange flooded the capital city of Kiev to demand new elections. The government finally buckled under the pressure, consenting to new elections, and this time Yushchenko emerged as the undisputed winner.Yancey further commented:
Our society is hardly unique.… [L]ike the sign language translator in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, along comes a person named Jesus who says in effect, “Don't believe the big screen -- they're lying. It's the poor who are blessed, not the rich. Mourners are blessed too, as well as those who hunger and thirst, and the persecuted. Those who go through life thinking they're on top will end up on the bottom. And those who go through life feeling they're at the very bottom will end up on top. After all, what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose his soul?”In the birth of Jesus, whose young mother laid him in a manger, we see a God who delights in using the small, the weak and the foolish things of the world to humble the great, the mighty and the wise: that’s the third treasure of Christmas that should give most of us great hope!
Treasure Number Four: God showed us in Christmas what it means to give and to love.
We human beings love to give gifts – to those who may be in need of some of the essentials of life, to those who are friends and especially to those who are family. Sometimes we even give for no apparent reason -- we give “just because.”
In the Christmas story, the Magi brought gifts to the infant Jesus. So it could well be said we give gifts at Christmas following the example of the Magi and their gift-giving. Yet the ultimate Gift-Giver in the Christmas story is God. In the first Christmas, God showed us what it meant to give. God did not give sparingly and selectively. God gave of himself in Jesus to the whole of humanity. God did not give from a distance as one song would want us to believe. God entered into the trenches with us, into the deepest pits of our fears and struggles and sufferings in order to be with us, to comfort us, to strengthen us, to heal us, to redeem us.
In setting aside his glory in coming into our world as a baby, God showed us what self-sacrifice means because of his great love for sinful humanity. When we give ourselves or sacrifice ourselves for others, when we enter into the trenches with one another, when we restore broken relationships and deepen the bonds of friendship and family, when we give even to those who have wronged us or failed us or disappointed us – when we do this, we are honouring the fourth treasure of love and giving that God showed us in Christmas.
Hear this piece of treasure from the heart of seven-year-old Bobby: “Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”
My Christmas prayer for each of us is to listen well, to be open to God’s love, and to receive the hope, the joy and the peace God has for us in the birth of Jesus.
May this be so for you and for me -- and for the entire world. Amen.
Rev. Chris Miller
Christmas Eve, 2010
oympastor@rogers.comOYM Oriole-York Mills United Church, Toronto
Visit with us online!
No comments:
Post a Comment