Questions We Ask at Christmas

Transcription

1 Questions We Ask at Christmas Rich Nathan Christmas Eve December 24, 2014 Luke I want to begin this Christmas Eve by asking you some questions about your knowledge of Christmas trivia. I will start easy: What was Scrooge s first name in Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol? Picture of Ebenezer Scrooge In How the Grinch Stole Christmas, what was the physical shortcoming that made the Grinch so mean? Picture of the Grinch His heart was two sizes too small. In the movie It s A Wonderful Life, what was the name of George Bailey s Guardian Angel? Picture of Clarence Here is a hard one: name the original 8 reindeer from Twas the Night Before Christmas poem. Picture of Comet, Cupid, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Donner, and Blitzen. Here is a real Christmas Trivial Pursuit question: What do Donner and Blitzen mean in German? Thunder and Lightening And, finally, if you get this one wrong, then this is definitely the first Christmas you ve celebrated in America: Which reindeer has a red nose? Photo of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 1

2 I would like to read to you the Christmas Story from the gospel of Luke. Just sit back and listen. Luke 2:1 15 (NIV) 2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. 8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. 15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. I want to ask two simple questions of this story this Christmas Eve. First of all, is the Christmas Story true? And even if it is true, does it matter? Many people around the world are celebrating Christmas this year without any real belief that the Christmas story is true. They say, Oh, come on. This story of the birth of Jesus is just a fairytale; it is like the story of Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, or the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. We like the Christmas spirit; we like the spirit of giving and the decorations and eggnog, mistletoe and all of that. But believing that the Christmas story is true is a little bit like believing in unicorns. It is fine for children, but at some point we grow up and stop believing in all the childhood stories. At some point, hopefully by the time you get to be in middle school, we learn to treat the Christmas story found here in Luke 2 the way we would treat the old story of the Little Red Hen. Picture of the Little Red Hen Storybook 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 2

3 These are nice stories designed to communicate the important lessons, but we don t believe they are literally true. We don t believe an actual hen asked a pig, a cat and a frog to help her harvest the wheat, thresh it, or bake the bread. We just think it communicates an important lesson about not eating, if you don t work and help out. By the way moms put a little red hen on your counter this Christmas have your family help. The gospel writer, Luke, does not intend for us to treat the Christmas story like we do the story of the Easter Bunny, or even like the story of the Little Red Hen, simply like a fairytale designed to communicate some important truths. Here is what Luke writes: Luke 2:1 3 (NIV) 2 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register. The reason Luke begins the Christmas story with the statement about Caesar Augustus and his decree that a census should be taken for the entire world is to tell us that the birth of Christ is a historical event. It is a real event. It happened during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus and the Syrian Governor Quirinius. It is not like the birth of Zeus, or one of the Greek or Roman gods, an event that is simply a myth. The basic facts of Christianity are rooted in history. Here is what we can know from historical research, not only from the New Testament, but from Jewish reports in the 1 st century and also Roman historians. Running 1. We know that Jesus existed. It cannot be seriously contested that the existence of Jesus is a myth. Jesus was not like Hercules, Zeus, or Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. History tells us that Jesus actually existed. 2. We know that Jesus reached out to the fringes of society. In other words, we know from history that Jesus ministry was a ministry of reaching out to people who were sick, folks who were outcasts, and people who were poor. Jesus reached out to prostitutes and tax collectors. We know that from history. 3. We know that the center of Jesus message was the kingdom of God Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 3

4 Jesus talked about a lot of things loving your neighbor, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger he talked about a lot of things. But the center of his message was the kingdom of God. And #4: 1. We know that Jesus existed. 2. We know that Jesus reached out to the fringes of society. 3. We know that the center of Jesus message was the kingdom of God. 4. We know that Jesus was associated with miracles. We read about the miracles in Jesus ministry, again, not just from the gospels, but also from Jewish sources and from Roman history. Everyone who wrote about Jesus in the ancient world said that this man was associated with miracles. 5. We know that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem. As one very liberal critic of the Bible, a man named Dominic Crossan put it: The crucifixion of Jesus is the best attested to fact in history. The crucifixion of Jesus, the fact that Jesus died on a cross, is one fact about which virtually every scholar in the world agrees. You can t get scholars to agree that the sun rose this morning. But there is virtually no reputable historian we can find who would disagree with the simple fact that Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and died on a cross. 6. The followers of Jesus all believed that Jesus rose from the dead. You know, one of the most amazing facts about the early Christian belief in Jesus resurrection was that the story of the resurrection originated in the very city where Jesus was crucified. The Christian faith did not come into existence in some distant city far from where the eyewitnesses knew about Jesus death and burial. It came into being in the very city where Jesus was publicly crucified under the very eyes of its enemies. And if the proclamation of Jesus resurrection was false, then all the leaders would have had to do to nip this Christian heresy in the bud was to have dug up the corpse of Jesus, parade it through the streets for all to see, and say, Here s you resurrected Messiah dead just as we left him on the cross! We always need to remind ourselves that this faith that we call Christianity arose entirely among Jews in the 1 st century. All of Jesus early followers were Jewish. Jesus was a Jew. How many of you have ever seen the movie, Fiddler on the Roof? 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 4

5 Picture of Fiddler on the Roof You know that great song in Fiddler on the Roof, - Tradition, tradition No one in the history of the world held more fiercely to their traditions than 1 st century Jews. You want proof for the resurrection? Think about this how in the world did this faith ever arise among Jewish people, if it wasn t true? Jews had 2000 years of Jewish tradition telling them that Jews never bowed down and worshipped any human being as God. It is idolatry. It is blasphemy. Many of you know that I was raised in a Jewish family. What you may not know is that I went to a Jewish parochial school when I was a child. And I remember my teachers telling us over and over again that the difference between us Jews and Christians was that Christians bowed down and worshipped human beings, whereas we Jews only bowed before God. What in the world would ever cause a Jewish man or woman to bow down before a man named Jesus and worship him? What could account for the throwing off of 2000 years of tradition, if it wasn t this extraordinary experience of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead? What accounted very early on, historians say within a few years of Jesus death, for Jewish people to change their day of worship from Saturday to Sunday? For a millennium and a half Jews worshipped God on Saturday, the 7 th day of the week, because it was the Day of Rest, the day that God ceased creating the universe. And then suddenly, shortly after the death of Jesus, Jewish people living in Israel began to worship God on Sunday. What happened on Sunday to make Jews change their day of worship? If it wasn t seeing the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, then what was it? It had to be something amazing, life shattering, to change tradition. The Christmas story of God coming into the world through Jesus is true. It s historically true. Some people object to all religion. They say religion is a way to keep people down, to make sure that wealthy people keep their pockets lined with money while poor people are taught to believe in pie-in-the-sky-when-you-die-by-and-by. Karl Marx said: Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature It is the opium of the people. In other words religion is just an illusion that dulls the pain of an unjust world. It numbs us. It makes us blind to what things are really like. The Christmas story, in other words, is not just untrue; it is dangerous because it keeps people from really working for peace on earth that the angels announced. I think of John Lennon s famous song, Imagine. Picture of John Lennon 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 5

6 Imagine there s no heaven Its easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people Living for today Imagine there s no countries It isn t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people Living life in peace. Think about this with me. What Lennon is saying is that if you take religion out of the picture, if you get rid of this illusion about the truth of the Christmas story, you get rid of all the illusions of heaven and hell, if you take religion out of the picture all together then everyone will start living in peace. Frances Spofford recently wrote a book titled Unapologetic. SLIDE Picture of Book Cover Unapologetic Here is what he said about the idea that if you just got rid of religion, people would live in peace. He said: I don t know about you, but in my experience peace is not the default state of human beings, any more than having an apartment the size of Joey and Chandler s is. Peace is not the state of being we return to, like water running downhill, whenever there is nothing external to keep us from it. Peace between people is not the norm! As for the inner version, I m not at peace all that often, and I doubt you are either, and I m bloody certain that John Lennon wasn t. The mouthy guy he was as well as the songwriter of genius, the leatherboy who allegedly kicked his best friend in the head in Hamburg, didn t go away just because he put on a white suit. What seems to be at work in Imagine is the idea always beloved by those who are frightened of themselves that we re good underneath, good by nature, and only do bad things because we ve been forced out of shape by some external force [like religion]. Let s imagine something different than John Lennon s song. Let s imagine this Christmas that you are 42 years old and you ve just gotten divorced. You wake up on Christmas morning and realize that you are an idiot, that you threw away a really great person and the possibility of a really great marriage because you were too self-centered or too 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 6

7 unwilling to ever apologize, or too unwilling to look at yourself and ever change, or spent too many years chasing your career, or you couldn t keep your pants zipped up, or whatever. But you look at your life and say, I blew it. And then someone comes up to you and says, I know you are going through a hard time right now with your divorce and all, but at least there is no truth in religion, so you can go about living your life in peace, since you are such a wonderful person. Who is fooling whom? Who is holding onto the myth now? Or let s say you ve allowed some habit to get out of control in your life alcohol, prescription drugs, food, video games, overspending, overeating, sex whatever it is. Again someone comes up to you and says, Well, I know you ve got this addiction in your life, but isn t it great that at least there is no truth to religion. You can just go on living your life in peace. Or you are single and aren t dating anyone. You don t have any kids. Or you are old and living by yourself. Or you are in a hospital or in prison and someone comes up and says, Isn t it wonderful that there is no truth in the Christmas story and that we don t have to concern ourselves with religion. Just go ahead and live your life in peace because you are such a good person and you absolutely can meet all of your needs by believing in you without ever having to reach out to God. See, the thing that the story of Jesus challenges is the myth that is told to us a thousand times a day in America that really underneath it all that you and I are perfectly wonderful people, who can meet our own needs. And if only we were left alone just to be who we are, we would be perfectly happy and live lives of peace and joy and love just like the beautiful people we see on TV. Let me tell you a story. Many of you know that I came to Christian faith from a completely unchurched background. Until I was 18 years old, I never set foot in a church building for any reason not for a wedding, not for a funeral, not for a baptism. I never actually looked in a church building. I was raised in a Jewish family and a had pretty thorough-going Jewish religious education. I was bar mitzvah at age 13. Although, much earlier than that I became a confirmed atheist. I just didn t believe there was anything out there beyond matter and energy, definitely nothing supernatural. But it was through a woman named Marlene that I came to rethink the whole issue of God. And over the course of a number of months I found myself beginning to believe that there was a God. And then following that, I found myself beginning to believe that God did enter the world through Jesus of Nazareth. Well, a couple of years after I began to believe in Jesus, I found myself doubting that the whole story was true. I took a number of religion and philosophy classes at my college at Case Western Reserve University and most of my professors were violently opposed to 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 7

8 faith of any kind. When they found out I was a believer, they took particular pleasure in trying to undermine my faith. And then Marlene and I got married. We lived next door to a guy who was getting his Ph.D. in philosophy. He had been raised in a Christian family, but had rejected his childhood faith. He liked nothing better than to come over in the evening and argue with me about why my faith made no philosophical sense. So I went through a particularly dark time in college. I began to think maybe this Christianity thing is all an illusion, maybe it is a myth. Maybe I just had such a strong need to believe in something that I latched onto Jesus, but that the whole story is untrue. And so I began to ask myself what do I know for certain from my own experience of life? What do I know for certain? And what I came to, friends, is that I know down to the marrow in my bones that there is something wrong with me. That there is a deep crack that runs through my soul. That the modern story that I am a perfectly good person underneath, that I ve just been pushed and distorted by forces outside of me by bad parents, by bad schools, and religion and all of that, that underneath it all I m really a nice human being. I realized, friends, that all of this modern teaching about my essential goodness was just a myth and that Christianity offered the very best explanation for my own experience of me. Christianity said that I along with every other human being have this inborn tendency to screw things up, even really good things. I found Christianity to not just be historically true, but true to my own experience of myself. That yes, just as Jesus taught, I do pretend to be better than I am, that I am self-centered, that there is a crack that runs right through me, that try as I might, I can t on my own become the kind of person that I know I should be. I found in my own experience that what the New Testament writer, the Apostle Paul, wrote was true. The good I wanted to do, I don t do and the things I know are wrong, I do. The Christmas story is true. It is true as a matter of history. It is true as a matter of our own experience of life. But does the Christmas story matter? Even if it is true; even if God did enter the world in Jesus; even if this account that we read in the book of Luke is true, does it matter? Why can t we just go ahead and be good people without all the pomp and circumstance of church, without all the singing that church people do to God, what Christians call worship? Why don t we just go out and do good and not waste our time with going to church and taking communion and worship, and reading the Bible and all that stuff? What s the point of what we read in vv ? Luke 2:13 14 (NIV) 13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, 14 Glory to God in the highest heaven, 2014 Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 8

9 and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests. Why does all this worship stuff matter anyway? Let me suggest in closing two reasons why the Christmas story that we celebrate each year is not only true, but why it matters, and why all this worship and church stuff that Christians do and why it all matters. Here is the first reason, because we re all worshippers. We all make something or someone the ultimate reason for living. We re all worshippers. We all live for something or someone. The only question is who or what will you worship? If you don t worship Jesus, it is not like you worship nothing. Something or someone will fill the void. In the 21 st century the movie industry tells us that instead of worshipping Jesus, what you ought to fill the void in your heart with is falling in love. We ve built a culture in which we say that romantic love is a great substitute for putting your faith in God as movies and television have less and less space to talk about God. We look to sex and romance to give us that sense of ultimate meaning in life, the sense of being taken outside of ourselves. The feeling that we used to get from God we now look to romantic love to give us that same feeling. What are we looking for by romance, by the feeling that I would do anything and everything for this person I m in love with? We re looking to be saved to be saved from our loneliness. We want to be saved from boredom. We want to get outside of ourselves, merge into something else, someone else. Put in different terms, it is like the old popular song: You re nobody til somebody loves you That s the message of modern movies. That s the message of most of the magazines that are sold to women in America. You need to be saved; the only way you are ever going to be saved is by finding your soul mate. You will be completed when you find the love of your life. Now, there is always a problem with substituting romance for God. It is the problem of thinking that another person can fill the hole in your life that only God can fill. We fall in love and then sometime later, a month later, maybe a year later, maybe five years later, you wake up and discover the hole in your life is still not filled, that nothing in this world can ever satisfy, that God created need for eternity in our souls. Or as the great St. Augustine said: You, have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 9

10 We re always going to be restless and always dissatisfied with anything else in this world. No matter how good the thing is other than God that we re worshipping, we re never satisfied by it. And here is the second reason why the Christmas story matters and why we get involved with church, worship and all of this. Worship changes us. So often really good people try on their own to rush out and change the world. We re going to protest; we re going to march; we re going to fix this or that problem out in society. We re filled with moral indignation. So often we go out and we end up doing more harm than good because we adopt this position of moral superiority and those who disagree with us become our enemies. We have to fight and destroy. But when we begin to worship, we take time to pray and to sing praise songs to God, we gain perspective. We see as we come into the presence of God our own corruption, our own selfishness. We see that only God is perfect. In worship we begin to realize that only God knows everything, that our knowledge is limited, that our knowledge is partial, that our knowledge isn t perfect. I wish before anyone ever engaged in political activity that they would spend time worshipping God. Because if we did, we would approach so many of our engagements with greater humility. We would allow for more disagreement. We would be far more open to listen to perspectives other than our own. If you want to be a good person, spend time with God. And finally, for those who say, I don t understand taking the time to celebrate Christmas, reading through the Christmas story, going to church and worshipping, all of this religious stuff seems like a waste of time because I m not doing anything. I m not being productive. Let me let you in on a little secret. You are right. You are not being productive being here in church. And by being right, in part, you ve totally missed the point. Spending time with God alone, spending time with God in church and with other Christians forces us to pay attention to the truth that our activity and our great moral energy and our achievements are not ultimately what matters. That what ultimately matters is the activity of God. See, taking time each week to intentionally focus your attention on God is central to your emotional and spiritual health. Why is that? What do the angels say in Luke 2? Luke 2:10 11 (NIV) 10 But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 10

11 What is necessary for a human being to be saved? To be saved you have to stop relying on your own activity. To be saved you have to stop relying on your own accomplishments. To be saved you have to be willing to be unproductive at least in terms of your ability to fix your own life or to get right with God. To be saved you have to rely on the productivity, the activity, the accomplishment of someone else, namely Jesus, who is the Savior. You have to pin your faith utterly and completely on what God has done in and through his Son Jesus. Instead of relying on what you can do to fix yourself, you ve got to rely on what Jesus has done in dying on a cross to pay for your sins, in rising from the dead to give you power to change. You ve got to wrap your heart and your life around Jesus. The Christmas story is true. It is historically true. It is experientially true. And the Christmas story matters because as we get absorbed in what the story is about, namely God entering the world through Jesus, as we worship him we become the kind of people we ve always wanted to be. Let s pray Rich Nathan VineyardColumbus.org 11