1 John 4: 7 12 ** 7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us. ** I m going to start today with a sad story, but rest assured, we ll get to the Good News soon So, I m at home having a quick lunch last Sunday, between the last of our Sunday Morning services and the Remembrance Service, and my cell phone rings. It s Brad Kenney (our Director of Youth Ministries). He says, I have to tell you what I just saw He was in Party City, getting some stuff for the Youth Group activity for Sunday night. And he says that he was in a section of the store where there are apparently some Christmas costumes for sale some of them pretty borderline taste-wise, like Sleezy Santas and Elves as well as other more traditional ones and there was a mother with a little girl (about 8 years old) looking at them. And the little girl pulls out a costume and says to her mother, What s this? Mom answers, That s a Shepherd costume. The daughter then asks, What does a Shepherd have to do with Christmas? To which mom replies: That s a religious thing. We don t celebrate Christmas like that. When I hear things like that, stories of yet another Freedom From Religion fight trying to remove any mention of Christ from public displays (like this week in Pitman), or you see an ad that renames December 25 as GIFTmas Day, and the like, I know some people get angry, but my response is sadness. I feel sad for this little girl whose Christmas is doomed to be nothing more than asking for and getting presents, with nothing that will last past December 25 th. I feel sad for this mother who likely feels that she is doing the right thing in raising her child in a home that is totally focused on this world (which gets very small very soon). I feel sad for whatever bad experiences (or lack of good experiences) that she must have had that has turned her off to God at such a young age. I feel sorry for people who, in the pretense of intellectual freedom have rejected who they really are, and feel compelled to enlist others into their denial. Page 1 of 7
I hear things like this, and I think I can perhaps imagine (at least a very little bit) of what Jesus felt as ** recorded in Matthew 9: 36 When he looked out over the crowds, his heart broke. So confused and aimless they were, like sheep with no shepherd. -- (The Message) You know, when I decided to enter the ministry many years ago I held to a rather naive idea about the Gospel and human nature. And now, some, 32 years later, even though it is tempered with experience, I actually still hold the same belief. It goes something like this I believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not just Good News, it is the Best News ever proclaimed! And I ve always believed that if a person could just hear it, if they could somehow take their hands off their ears, step out of the bad contexts that they have accumulated like barnacles on a boat over the course of their lives contexts like bad experiences of people claiming to be Christians and doing anything but sharing the Love of Jesus Christ, contexts like contact with churches who demonstrate more judgment and hate, anger, and separation than love and grace contexts of their own misunderstandings about God and the Cross, Scripture, and the world if people could just hear this message, it would win them over. Because of that belief, my goal, my priority, in being a pastor was to work as hard as I could to make that message crystal clear every opportunity I had to proclaim it. Now, as I said, experience has tempered that belief, to a point. I still try very hard to make my messages clear, but I also realize now that there was some arrogance in my original theology(!) in thinking that I was actually capable of preaching a sermon so pure, so perfect, that people couldn t help but receive Christ. And, obviously, that hasn t happened; which is not surprising, because I kind of by-passed the Holy Spirit with that whole thing. I know now that our words my words are not enough to bring someone to Christ! Not in themselves. But I hold on to this basic concept that the Story itself is so good, so pure, it so resonates with our human condition that if a person really could hear it, they would believe. You might have seen the insert in this week s bulletin announcing our Epiphany series ( January at the Movies ). We re going to once again look at what our culture is saying about some topics that are significant in Scripture, and see how they compare. So, in preparation for this, I ve been in my movie Page 2 of 7
mode for the last few weeks. (I m not really a big movie guy, in fact, I hardly watch movies at all, except in preparation for this series. I just don t have the time, it s not that I don t like them!) Anyway, I had this thought recently what would you say is the number one topic or theme in movies, all time? No, not vampires although it seems like that lately! But actually, the vampire movies are a sub-group of this one BIG theme. The theme is LOVE. The first of our January films is really a love story how far will a person go to find love? Movies from the beginning have explored love love pursued, unrequited love, love that endures, love betrayed, the cost of love on and on and on. And some of the greatest films, the most moving films are those that portray love as a beautiful thing, a gift a film with a happy ending. ** The wise King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3: 11 [God] has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I think this is a very significant teaching. How has God set eternity in the human heart? There are a lot of ways to answer that question. Our human innate sense that there has to be something more than just this natural world is, to me, one of the evidences that God has placed eternity in the human heart. Humans are incurably religious. We often live as if this is world is all there is, because we are very short-sighted, but actually very few would claim to believe that. The smallness we feel when looking into a clear night sky, or even sitting at a beach and watching the waves roll and our minds turn to bigger questions eternity in our hearts. ** But I think that perhaps the strongest pull of eternity in our hearts is our longing for love. Those films that are so popular are just that because they are strumming the strings of something very deeply planted within us our need to love and to be loved. That central pull of our hearts is not just about us, as humans in relation with one another, it is deeper than that. It is about who we fundamentally are spiritual beings, made with a purpose. John wrote in his first letter: ** Page 3 of 7
7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Love comes from God, who is love. All love is derivative i.e., any time we see love in action we are getting a glimpse of God. No wonder love stories are so popular! But of all the love stories ever told, the greatest one is what C. S. Lewis called The Grand Miracle the story of the Incarnation. Christmas on Christmas we contemplate what it means that the awesome, limitless, Holy, fearful, infinite God became one of us. A human being. A baby. This God came to us weak and helpless, in the form of an infant out of his love for us. It is mind boggling. One of the ironies of modern history is that the majority of people who celebrate around Christmas have never really heard the true Christmas story. I don t think they have. Oh, there are many who do not intentionally reject it, like that young mother (although it seems that this is becoming more and more prevalent), still, there are many people who have heard the storyline of Christmas, and can even name characters in that storyline Mary, Joseph, an angel named Gabriel, some shepherds, some wise men from the East, Caesar Augustus, Herod the king, and of course the infant Jesus. But I would still say that the majority of people who benefit from this storyline have never truly heard the real story. Because if we really heard it, it would change us forever. A Pastor named Darrel Johnson from Vancouver Canada, put it like this: So here's what really happened. The One who made the world entered the world in person. The One who created the world became a creature, a human being. God became a Man. That is the real story that seldom surfaces above the holiday celebration. That is the good news that is worth printing on the front page of every newspaper. That is the arresting news that ought to be sweeping through the Internet tonight. Every person on this planet ought to hear this news at least one time. Twitter it throughout the globe: the living God has become one of us. John begins his Gospel on this mind-boggling note to make sure that we read the rest of the story correctly. He wants us to understand that Mary's Child, the Man from Galilee, who walks with, eats with, and plays with real flesh and blood humans is none other than the Creator of the Universe. 1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him Page 4 of 7
nothing was made that has been made. The Man who attends wedding receptions and laughs with the other guests so hard that the religious establishment concludes that he s a drunk, the Man who weeps so deeply at the grave of his friend Lazarus, is none other than the God of Creation. The Man who gets so tired and thirsty he has to ask a hated Samaritan woman for a drink of water is the One who in the beginning determined that two hydrogen and one oxygen atom would make water. Nothing in all human literature, nothing in all the myths that we use to make sense of human experience, can compare with the real Christmas story. If people could just hear it ** I read that by conservative estimates there are 10 billion trillion stars in the known universe 10 billion trillion. (That's 10 followed by 15 zeros.) Can you say Big? John s prologue says that it was by him, by Jesus, that all those stars were designed, and flung into space. This baby in a manger! At the center of our solar system is a star we call the sun. Every minute the sun pours out six billion quadrillion calories of heat. That s six followed by 27 zeros every minute. I can t contemplate that number! (Can you say, Hot? ) By him all things were made. And yet the energy produced by our sun is nothing compared to that of a recently discovered galaxy. Three hundred million light years away it shines with two trillion times greater energy than our sun two trillion times greater! The numbers stagger the imagination. ** This is the God who took on human flesh why? Out of his love. His love for you. His love for the people he created, even the people who would reject him, ignore him, even those who would turn the celebration of his birth into a national greed fest he came in love for all of us. He came to show us a better way to live. He came to give us peace, and hope he came to show us the very nature of God, and to provide a way that we could know, personally know, our Creator. Love came down at Christmas. It s an incredible story with incredible implications The same John as the one who wrote the Gospel wrote in a letter Page 5 of 7
** Love Came Down at Christmas This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The depth of God s love God changed who he is, the second person of the Trinity becoming human, forever, so that we could become more fully human, and live in relationship with our God. Can you grasp that? We can try! This story means that there is truly Comfort in our suffering God can not only sympathize from a distance, but God can emphasize with us. Because the Word became flesh and dwelt among us! God knows what it is to be human. The ground of all being cares for us. If only people could hear that story! This story means that there is Hope for our future it means that the promises of God, the teachings that Jesus left with us have become magnified because none of these are simply the words of men and women, they are the promises of Almighty God to us, underscored and backed up by the very presence of God with us Emmanuel. **If the real story is ever told told, and heard, we would realize how unbelievably right it was for shepherds to fall down before this baby and worship him. If the real story is told, and heard, we would know how absolutely right it was for wise men in the East to leave their work and travel thousands of miles across the Desert in search of this Child so they could fall down to worship him. If the real story is told and heard, we would realize how appropriate it is that millions and millions of people in the world today are worshiping Jesus. Filled with joy, and doing their best to live a life of love after the example of Christ Jesus. I can t preach a sermon that is perfect enough to convey all this. I know that. I know too, that some people simply choose not to hear. I hope you join with me in praying for them, that God would break through where human ability fails. Jesus died for them, too. But I hope as well that we all here in this congregation consider the implications of this story to our Mission we are committed to sharing the love of Jesus Christ with a hurting world through words and actions. Page 6 of 7
We need to earn a hearing for our words and that happens though our actions. As we worship, serve the poor, care for the cast aside, love the unlovable we are preparing hearts to hear the words. As we turn the other cheek to those who make fun of us and misunderstand us, as we forgive one another when we conflict, as we willingly give up our rights and entitlements, we are creating the possibility of telling the story to someone who just might hear it. As we exemplify our reliance on God through holding our possessions loosely, becoming known as a people of humility and generosity, God will open doors and we may be given the privilege of sitting down with someone and asking them Can I tell you a story? It s the greatest story ever told. And they will hear. Page 7 of 7