Rediscover Christmas
Beginning Again
Luke 1:5-23
December 2, 2007
This morning we are going to begin our advent series, “Rediscover Christmas!” As we prepare for the arrival of the Messiah of Christ of Jesus, this is a season of preparation. It is the season of getting ready for the coming of Christ both in remembrance as a babe in a manger but also with great anticipation when Christ comes again.
So let’s rediscover what Christmas is truly about. In the midst of all the chaos and the parties and the decorations and shopping, let us take time to reflect on what the season is really about. Let us take time to truly worship with a new found wonder of this season. And it begins before the beginning with a couple that is going to have a new start, a new beginning. They are going to begin again. Turn to Luke 1:5. It is the story that was read earlier in the service.
As you find your place, I’ve been showing some sometimes funny and interesting pictures. This one is bound to make you smile. It is a one in a million shot (if not one in a billion). There was no title to this but I call it, “God’s Smile.”
Before they began again…
• They were disgraced
In the culture, children were a sign of God’s favor. If you had no children then God didn’t really love you. And it was often assumed that there was some deep sin either in their lives or in their parent’s lives. “He has taken away my disgrace.” Even though Zec was a priest, he was disgraced. They both were.
• They remained obedient
Yet they remained obedient. They kept the commands and the rule and the regulations and they didn’t let it go to their heads. The impression here is that they lived simply and unassumingly. “Together they lived honorably before God, careful in keeping to the ways of the commandments and enjoying a clear conscience before God.”
• They were old school
They were both well beyond the years of having children. There really was no hope for them. Just like Abraham and Sarah. In fact, Luke is very intentional about using Zec and Lizzy’s story to show the connection to Abe. Just as the nation of Israel begin with this birth, a new Israel was being born through this wondrous sign.
Now we don’t know for certain how old Zec and Lizzy were. The scripture doesn’t say. Sometimes we say that they were 100 but the scriptures only say Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born. Zec and Lizzy were just well along in years. Can you imagine? Can you imagine starting your family when your supposed to be retiring? Could you imagine being sixty years old with two artificial knees and just now starting to raise kids?
“What was that honey?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Better check. Maybe that was Johnny crying.”
“What did I come in here for? Oh, the baby.”
Can you imagine chasing around little Mason or little Melody except you’re forty years older? Then I begin to wonder some other things… Did Elizabeth really breast feed? Maybe that is why John had such a bizarre diet when he was grown.
Here were Zec and Lizzy beginning… again! It was like starting over again. And that is exactly what God was trying to show us. It was a new beginning. It was a fresh start for Israel. With the coming of Jesus it is a fresh start for each of us.
Then Zec gets an incredible honor. He is called upon to burn the incense in the temple. And it was in there that an angel appeared to inform Zec that God has heard their cries and heard the cries of his people and that he and Lizzy would bear a child that would pave the way for God!
But Zec doesn’t quite believe it. Maybe he was just too hard headed. Maybe he was too much in shock but he goes and asks the angel, “How could this be?” Because he doubted and because he didn’t really believe that all things are possible with God, he lost his voice. And we are not talking about laryngitis. He couldn’t speak for about nine months!! The people outside the temple were getting kind of worried because Zec was taking too long. They probably were thinking this old man might have keeled over dead. They probably thought that God killed him and God was going to be unhappy with them for sending Zec in when everyone knew that there was something dreadfully wrong since he had no children.
But Zec came out and they figured out through a game of charades that he had had a vision. Zec was beginning again.
Zec went home. Lizzy got pregnant. And everything happened just as the angel had foretold and when at the circumcision Zec was asked about naming the son since everyone figured that the first born son would be a jr., Zec wrote down in obedience to God that his son was to be named John. Then God loosed Zec’s tongue and he begin to shout and praise God for everything that God had done and would be doing soon.
We serve a God of new beginnings. You can begin again and again. It doesn’t matter how old or young that you are. It doesn’t matter what you have done or haven’t done that you should have done. The coming of the Christ-child points us to the grace to begin again.
Zec was priest. Yet he doubted God. He needed to begin again and he was a priest. He doubted God. He doubted God’s power. Yet, he began again. He wrote, “His name is John” and he began again.
Everyone needs to begin again and again. We stop seeking to be perfect and seek God. We stop making excuses and make amends. We stop blaming others, confess our mistakes and yes our sins, and begin again.
Anne Lamont was addicted to coke and alcohol, involved in a messy affair that produced a child whom she had just aborted, and she watched her best friend die of cancer. Sometimes Anne would visit a small church nearby sitting in the back listening to the singing but always leaving before the sermon. Immediately after her abortion, she became disgusted with herself and drowned her sorrows in drugs and alcohol. After bleeding for several hours from the abortion, she fell into bed, shaky and sad, smoking a cigarette. She reached up and turned off the light. Listen as she describes in her own words her experience.
After a while, as I lay there, I become aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there—of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.
And I was appalled… I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, “I would rather die.”
I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.
Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.
This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in. But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it stays forever….
And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the existence of extraterrestrials, but the last song was deep and raw and pure that I could not escape. It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling—and it washed over me.
I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat funning along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, … “I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”
Advent is about the coming of Christ. Coming in to your life so you can begin again and again. In order to symbolize as an act of worship, I want you to take the beach glass that you received early. Feel it. Feel it’s hardness. Feel it’s roughness. Let this be a symbol of your past. Your sins. Your mistakes. It is your doubt. It is your unbelief. It the burden that you have carried this week. It is the burden that you’ve carried the last several weeks. Maybe even your entire life.
I invite to come down to the front and wrap the beach glass in a piece of red cloth. Let the cloth symbolize the blood of Christ. His grace. His strength. Enfolding you. Covering the sin. Covering the burden so that you do not see it any more. Then leave it, still covered, on the altar. Let Jesus have it so that you can begin again. You can pray, if you’d like. You can meditate. You could pray a few simple words like Anne Lamont, “I quit. You can come it.”
