God Bless Us... Everyone Luke 2:1-15; Isaiah 9:2-7 Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. For one thing, growing up it was the one day of the year that our entire family would be together the entire day. We d wake up in the morning and my dad would already have the patented Phillips appetizer trey consisting of cheese and crackers, sweet pickles, black olives, carrots, chips, some kind of dip, and homemade caramel popcorn sitting on the table. And we d snack on this throughout the day while watching the Twilight Zone marathon and football taking breaks from time to time to go outside and actually play football. Then around three o clock we would sit down to eat our Thanksgiving meal with football still on in the background. After being fully stuffed, we d clear the table, pull out some cards, and play games for several hours until we could stuff ourselves even more with desert. But for me, Thanksgiving was never complete until I watched my first Christmas movie of the year. Much to Amy s chagrin, not only do I still watch my first Christmas movie of the year on Thanksgiving, but that is only the beginning. From Thanksgiving on I watch at least one Christmas movie every night until Christmas morning when the movie marathon begins. I call it a movie marathon, but rarely do I even make it through the third movie before Amy simply stands up, walks to the TV, and turns it off. I enjoy Christmas movies because, even though they don t all talk about the birth of Jesus, each still, in its own way, wrestles with the meaning or the spirit of Christmas. Christmas movies tend to tell stories of women or men or even green monsters who are changed throughout the course of the movie and they learn about family, forgiveness, love, and caring for those in need. In my opinion no movie does this better than A Christmas Carol which is based on the Charles Dickens book of the same name written in 1834. In fact, the story is so popular that just about every year a new movie based on the story comes out. For those who don t know the story, Ebenezer Scrooge is both the wealthiest and the greediest man in town. When asked for money to help feed the hungry and the poor, he declares that it would be better if the hungry and the poor were locked up in jail or dead rather than allowed on the streets, and as becomes clear from the start, Ebenezer Scrooge hates Christmas and all that it stands for. Well one Christmas Eve the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley, comes to visit Ebenezer warning him that he will be visited by three more ghosts: the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future, with the hope that they can get him to change his ways.
Now no matter which version of the movie you watch, there are certain things that are always the same. One of these is that after being visited by all three ghosts, Ebenezer wakes in his own bed, and to the first person he sees he asks, What day is it? To which the reply is always, It s Christmas. And with a big smile on his face he says, Then I haven t missed it. When we read through the Old Testament, we find that no matter how bad things got for the Hebrew people, they remained hopeful because they knew that one day the Messiah would come and make all things right. Their expectations were that the Messiah would enter into our world and conquer it. Their expectations were so grand that when the Messiah did come in such a humble, quiet, unexpected manner, virtually everyone missed it. We are told that a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world was to be registered, and so this peasant couple travels to Bethlehem, and while they are there, the time comes for the woman... Mary... to deliver her baby. With no room in the Inn, the two take shelter in a stable, and after giving birth, they wrap their baby in bands of cloth, and lay him in a manger. In other words, they put baby Jesus in a trough, which was used to feed animals. The people had been waiting for hundreds of years for the Messiah to come, but when Jesus is born in the silence of the night. There is no parade, no late breaking evening news, and not one person posts it on Facebook. God enters into our world, and the world simply goes on as if nothing has happened. Maybe even more puzzling than the silence into which Jesus comes into our world is God s choice in who he decides to share this good news with first. God sends his angels not to an emperor or to a King or to the religious leaders of the day, but to shepherds in a field keeping watch over their flock by night. Edwina Hunger an American Baptist Minister talking about the differences in the Gospel accounts of Jesus birth says, The Gospel of Luke tells us that the most wonderful announcement ever given to the world is given to shepherds in the field. Shepherds who were rough, dirty, uncouth men for the most part. And we are told that more than likely they were out in the fields and not on their way to register because they were not even considered full-fledged citizens worthy of being counted in the census, and because they spent all their time driving the sheep across the land of so many different people and provinces, they could not really call any place home. The writer of Luke wants to tell us that these were the people to whom that message above all messages was delivered. Read through the Gospel of Luke and it becomes evident that the writer had an overarching purpose, and that purpose was to demonstrate clearly that Jesus cares about the poor, the disenfranchised, the outcast, all people! Luke s theology required that he let us see from the beginning of his Gospel the wonderful inclusiveness of God s love. So it is the shepherds, the poorest of the poor, with no place to call home, who find 2
themselves in a field blazing with the light of God, and the glory of the Lord shining on them. 2,000 years later the question is did Jesus... the Messiah... do what he intended to do? I get that Jesus came to bring us forgiveness from our sins. I get that he came to bring eternal life for us all, but I also have to believe that Jesus came to make our present lives better. And if we are to believe that Jesus cares about the poor, the disenfranchised, and the outcast, then why when we look around the world do we so many people without jobs begging in the streets, why do we see so many families with no home or shelter, why do we see so many children without clean drinking water and dying of starvation? In our call to worship this morning, we hear one of my favorite Scriptures which is taken from the first chapter of the Gospel of John where we are given a vision of who God is and what God is up to in Jesus Christ. John says, The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Scott Black Johnston who was the professor of preaching at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary when I went there says, I struggle with these words because they do not say what I want them to say. I want them to declare that when the light comes into the world it obliterates the darkness. It takes the bleak mid-winter with every sadness, every despair, every raw deal, every horrendous tragedy, every evil plan, every godawful, life-sucking disease, and tosses the whole mess into the cosmic trash bin. I want the light to arrive and to win, and I want it to win big. I mean I want the light to deal with the darkness in a way that is so overwhelming, so completely devastating, that I can switch channels at half-time because there is no way, no possible way, that the darkness is even going to come out of the locker room to play the third quarter. But instead of total victory, we get something much more "modest". The light came into the world, and the darkness did not extinguish it. The darkness was not able-at least, not immediately-to reach over and pinch out the flickering wick of the light. Now, while I may not like the perspective on the light given by this text in the Gospel of John, I do have to admit that it strikes me as being true. In the 2,000 years that have unfolded since that night in Bethlehem, can anyone argue that the darkness has diminished? Is there any less pain, any less meanness in the human spirit, any less heartache? If anything, there is more-more suffering, more nastiness, more agony, more vulnerable souls for the darkness to damage. In fact, there is so much suffering that it may seem as if the darkness has already won... that its victory is assured. When the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Ebenezer to the house of his employee Bob Cratchit, Tiny Tim who is crippled prays, God bless us, everyone. When I look at my life, I can truly say that God has blessed me... but everyone? Dicken s story has a happy ending and so we often forget that when the ghost of Christmas future shows Ebenezer what is to come, Tiny Tim is dead. 3
Ebenezer Scrooge was so caught up in the things that he felt he had worked for... the things that he felt he deserved... that he never stopped to look and see the needs around him. He never stopped to consider what he could do to change the lives of those around him because they weren t his concern. He was so consumed with wanting more money and more stuff that he didn t consider that those around him simply wanted clothing, shelter, food, a healthy child. With the money that Ebenezer had, he could take care of virtually all of the town s needs including paying for a surgery which would save Tiny Tim s life, but the people of the town would suffer and Tiny Tim would die because Ebenezer, the wealthiest man in town, wanted more. Every day you and I are bombarded with messages telling us that the things that we have aren t good enough. There is something that is bigger and better waiting for us. And before we know it, we are weighing our own wants and desires to have more against our concerns for the lost and the lonely; the broken and the poor. And then we wonder why God doesn t step in and fix all of the world s problems. Rabbi Jack Reamer once wrote, We cannot ask God to do something which is in our own power to do so as to spare us the chore of doing it. We cannot merely pray for God to end war for we know that God made the world in a way that we must find our own path to peace within ourselves and with our neighbor. We cannot pray for God to end starvation for God has already given us the resources to feed the entire world if we would only use them wisely. We cannot pray for God to root out prejudice for God has already given us eyes to see the good in all people if we would only use them rightly. We cannot pray for God to end despair for God has already given us the power to clear away slums and to give hope if we would only use our power justly. We cannot pray for God to end disease for God has already given us great minds with which to search out cures and healing if we would only use them constructively. Therefore we pray to God instead for strength, determination, and will power to do instead of just to pray... to become instead of merely to wish. The problem as I see it is that I believe that assumptions were made long before the Messiah ever came, and we still haven t been able to let these assumptions go. When the Messiah comes into our world, when the light comes into our world, when God comes into our world, we expect things to change in a dramatic way. We expect God to not only turn over tables but to turn over the entire system. No more hunger, no more corruption, no more abuse, no more pain, no more suffering... but that isn t what we get. Even when Jesus walked the earth as a human, while he performed several miracles: feeding the 5,000, healing lepers, raising Lazarus from the dead, and so 4
on and so on, people still went hungry, people still suffered from diseases, people still died. Jesus did not come into the world to solve all of our problems, but he came to create a community and he taught this community how to care for each other with the hope that we might take up his mission to the poor, the disenfranchised, the outcast, to all those in need. I believe that when Jesus performed a miracle it was for a specific reason beyond the healing or miracle itself. When Jesus touched and healed lepers, he did so because nobody else would even go near them. Everyone else treated them as outcasts. When Lazarus died, Jesus goes to those filled with sorrow and he weeps with them and then he raises Lazarus from the dead, teaching us the importance of being with those who are hurting, but also teaching us that he holds the power over life and death and that death is not the end, but it is only the beginning. When Jesus fed the 5000, he did so to remind us that we can. Jesus said, The hungry don t have to leave. You feed them. And they did. After being given the vision of Tiny Tim s death, Scrooge asks, Have these things already happened or can this be changed? It is shortly thereafter that Ebenezer wakes and asks, What day is it? There is something about Christmas Day... there is something about the birth of Jesus that gives us hope and inspires us to go out and care for those in need. At Christmas time we buy presents for children that we don t even know. We work in soup kitchens and bring food to places like the Samaritan House and United Ministries. We buy coats and blankets for the homeless. We continually put money into Salvation Army buckets as we walk into stores, and so much more. But too often when Christmas ends, so does our care for the needs of our neighbor. What I love about the story of Scrooge is that while it is so important for him that he not miss Christmas, the good that he does extends beyond Christmas day. For Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is a day of redemption. Scrooge is given a vision of his life, and he realizes what he can do and mean for so many in need around him. On Christmas day Scrooge becomes a new person, but Christmas is only the beginning. "The light shines in the darkness. Maybe that's the point. It is not that the light obliterates the darkness; it is simply that the light is there. The baby in the manger reminds us that instead of choosing to dwell in the heavens above, a safe distance away, and watching the drama of our lives play out, God enters into the darkness with us. (Paraphrase from Johnston) But it is the life of Jesus that reminds us that God did not come to merely comfort us in our brokenness nor did God come to fix all the world s problems for us, but rather God came with a promise. God tells us that he will continually speak to us with the hope that we might listen. God will continually guide and lead us with the hope that we might 5
follow. God will continually teach us to care for those in need with the hope that working together, the world... everyone might truly be blessed. Steve Phillips Westminster Presbyterian Church December 12, 2010 6