Page 1 Text: Luke Dec 24, The Good Infection

Transcription

1 Page 1 Text: Luke Dec 24, 2018 St Stephen s Christmas Eve The Good Infection It is Christmas Eve, and I am glad to be here with you! Another Christmas has come! I have been thinking about that; I have now celebrated Christmas every year for over seven decades. Perhaps there was a time when Christmas meant nothing to me, but I don t remember it. What I do remember from my early childhood is the happy expectation, the smell of the trees, the sound of the carols, the sight of the church, and the unforgettable story of Jesus and the manger. And, of course, Christmas morning. I remember it well. When I was a boy, we had a donkey who was a regular in our church s outdoor cheche. He would stand there, tied up in the evenings. One year he tried to eat the plastic baby Jesus. Another year he got loose, and I heard the stories about a police car following him down the highway with lights flashing as he trotted along, hardly believing his freedom, ears straight up!! I think that was his last year. As I got older, I suppose Christmas lost some of its mystery for me. I came to faith in my mid-20 s and soon had a family of my own with 6 young children. I had become a busy pastor and Christmas was the busiest time of my year. With my work and our family, we were so exhausted and overwhelmed by the time Christmas came, we were glad to just get through it, just glad to survive. That can happen. But these days, Christmas seems to be recovering something of my childhood experience. Maybe it is the grand-children; I am sure that is part of it. But it is more. When you get older, you find that your childhood eyes and your childhood heart could see things that are easy to lose sight of when you get all grown-up and busy. Jesus had

2 Page 2 reason to tell us we must become like the children if we are to enter his kingdom. Watch out for the all grown-up and busy. There is something magical, even mystical about Christmas. It tugs on your heart. It captures your imagination. It stays in your memory for decades. I am still surprised by it, still drawn to it. I still haven t gotten to the bottom of it. And it hasn t yet gotten to the bottom of me. That is what Christmas can do. This month I read an essay by CS Lewis about bicycles. ( Talking about Bicycles ) I ride my bike a great deal, and I read Lewis a great deal, but I had never known that he had written an essay about bicycles, so I looked it up. In the short essay he talks about four stages of bike riding Talking about Bicycles by C.S. Lewis Unenchanted Age Enchanted Age Dis-Enchanted Age Re-Enchanted Age There are these four ages about nearly everything The first is when you are too little to care about them. They are what big people do. He called this the unenchanted age. Then you learn how to ride a bike, and you are overjoyed. Up and down the hills, it is jubilant, effortless, almost like gliding. He called this the enchanted age. Then comes the time you had to use your bike to get somewhere, to go to school or to a job, day in, day out, good weather or bad. Maybe all your friends are driving, but you are still riding. Every ride feels like it is always uphill, all the time. You do not like it. He called this the disenchanted age.

3 Page 3 But then a time would come later in life when you would pick up your bike once again, and you would find the faint memory, perhaps, of your childhood enchantment coming back to you, and once again, riding would be like gliding but now you have caught hold of something beyond the bicycle something that hints of life yet to be life that shall be - and the combination of the memory from ages back and the hint of what is yet to come gives you joy! He called this the re-enchanted age. Lewis of course, is not just talking about riding bikes. He thinks there are these four ages about nearly everything, like love, like politics. I was with my aging mom last week and we had a chance for a long conversation. She suffers from painful arthritis. She told me she had been having dreams of her childhood, playing tennis, when movement was easy and joyous. I didn t think this was just a memory. I thought it was also a hint. I told her, It s coming Mom. It is coming. When I read Lewis essay, it pretty well describes my seasons of Christmas. At first, unenchanted. Then came the years of enchantment. Then came dis-enchantment. And now re-enchantment. Christmas has the power to enchant. But it can be lost. If it is lost, Christmas can re-enchant. A Dis-Enchanted World I think our culture is deeply dis-enchanted. When I say disenchanted I mean we have lost the vertical dimension of life. We live in a flat, barren world no heaven above, no hell below, no sense of the reality of God, no shared sense of truth or goodness or beauty or meaning or purpose beyond ourselves, and so we sink into ourselves. All that matters is your tribe or your ideology or your passions or your pleasures or your politics. A world like that quickly

4 Page 4 becomes fractured and aggressive, degraded and addicted. Your soul becomes thin. Anger surges. Life is shallow. People live and die alone. Do you know that in spite of our fabulous medical technology, life expectancy in the West has been declining for some years - because of suicides and drug overdoses. We medicate ourselves to death to numb the pain. We live in a dis-enchanted, deadly world, and I wonder if reenchantment is possible. I wonder, and I worry. Sometimes I can weep. You do, too. Well, this is Christmas eve, and the arrival of Jesus has the power to bring a spring thaw to a frozen land. Or a frozen heart. Let s take a look at how his coming works its magic. Even before his birth it was clear that this was no ordinary baby, not even an extra-ordinary baby. Isaiah said he would be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Not a normal name. An archangel visited Mary to bring news: God s Son shall become your son. Not a normal birth announcement. The angels on Christmas night added their own chorus: Good news, great joy, for all the people A Savior, Christ the Lord, is born to you And then it was wise men from the east: saying, Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him. No one knew quite what it all meant at first. But those who were there knew this baby was someone special. What do you think would happen if God were to live your life, the one you have to live? The one with all its brokenness and blessedness,

5 Page 5 with all its hardships and responsibilities and hopes and fears. What if God had to live your life? Sometimes people have pondered that, prayed that. Sometimes when life seemed too much to bear, people have dared that of God. God has answered that prayer, dared that dare. Dorothy Sayers says God has the honesty and courage to take his own medicine what he asks of us, he gives of himself. The Enchantment Begins To heal our lives, God enters our life and brings his own kind of life right into our kind of life. The Son of God becomes the son of Mary. And then his new kind of life begins to spread. Welcome to Christmas. I ve been greeting some people all weekend who have come to our services but they are sick. So when I go to shake their hand or give them a hug, they say No I ve not been feeling well, but I really wanted to come and I am so glad to be here so no handshakes today Merry Christmas. They don t want their infection to spread. Because infections do spread. Jesus life works like that. CS Lewis calls it a good infection. His life infects every life and every part of life he touches. I ll give you some snapshots: He begins in his mother s womb, and when he dwells in her womb, he makes it a sacred place. You ponder that and that ponders you - and soon enough you see that every mother s womb is a sacred place, and every life that starts there, grows there is sacred, is special, to the Lord, who began his own life there. From his day on, Christians have worked to welcome every human life, no matter how young, no matter how old (it doesn t matter) - as though they were welcoming Christ himself. In little Bethlehem, he arrives little Bethlehem! And like little Bethlehem, he is helpless, frail and weak as he is laid in the

6 Page 6 manger. There are no royal privileges for this child. He is completely dependent on his human mother and his earthly father. In his life, weakness is welcomed. Jesus embraces it, he suffers it until weakness becomes what I like to call a thin place thin enough, cracked enough for God s strength and mercy to pour through. He meets our failures with his forgiveness, no matter the failure. Blessed are the weak. Before he is two, he will be an international refugee, fleeing from a crazed Herod. Everything his family owns will fit on the back of a donkey. Refugees ever since have looked to him, and Christians ever since have looked to refugees as though Christ were one of them. He was. As a boy, he learns his lessons and reads his scriptures. He will astonish the rabbi s with his wisdom by the time he is 12. He has astonished all of us ever since. His followers will go on to establish schools and universities that love truth and live the truth. Your mind matters, we learn. It is holy, sacred, important. Given by God, meant for God. The maker of all things works with his hands alongside his step-dad in his carpenter s shop, sanctifying the workplace, filling it with his presence and making it a place where labor and creativity are blessed and brought in service to the community. No workplace need be anything else. He seems to have a special love for those who suffer. He moved towards them. They flocked to him. I think they were drawn as much by his compassion as by his power to heal. We are, aren t we? His followers get infected by that same compassion, and for centuries we have poured out our lives, sometimes at the cost of our lives for the suffering of the world, which soon enough led to clinics and hospitals and the birth of modern medicine. It all started with this baby. We could go on and reflect on how Jesus blesses family life he grew up in a family or the single life The Son of God was a single man how he turned religious authority and political authority

7 Page 7 upside down and made them places to serve - - but you see what I mean. His life has haunted our world, enchanted our world, infected our world. No part of life is beyond his reach. No single life is beyond his touch. If you like living in a flat, barren, hopeless world, watch out; Jesus is dangerous. You will want to stay away from him. But if you are weary of that world, wounded by that world, and are looking for a different kind of life well, it is Christmas, a very good day get close to him. You begin to move towards him, and you soon enough see that he s been moving towards you the whole time. That s why he came. And now His life draws you, haunts you, gets into you. It seeps in through the cracks. And your life begins to change. You ve been infected. The Good Infection Here is how Lewis puts it. Good things as well as bad, you know, are caught by a kind of infection. If you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone. They are a great fountain of energy and beauty spurting up at the very centre of reality. If you are close to it, the spray will wet you: if you are not, you will remain dry. Once a man is united to God, how could he not live forever? Once a man is separated from God, what can he do but wither and die? Mere Christianity, bk. IV, chap. 4, para. 8, p. 153.

8 Page 8 This is Christmas, the day when God entered our life in order to give us his life. There is no reason to wither and die any more. But if you want to be wet, you must get into the water. Prayer: Thank you for coming into this world, pouring your life into our lives, to heal our lives. To heal our world. That s why we are here tonight, Lord. Because you have come. And we know that is why you have come. Because we are here. So touch every one of us infect every one of us with your life until we are healed all the way through. Use us to spread your life, everywhere we go... until our world is healed, all the way through. Prayer: The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. (Isaiah 9:2 7, ESV) And so, Lord, you have come to us, even to us! We are so very grateful. Mend your world, Lord, with your great mercy, with your great love, with your great power. And mend us, too, Lord. Till all is made new.