May God help you if you are going shopping this afternoon! And may God forgive you if you woke up this morning and said, "I guess it’s about time I thought of something for her. “
The trouble is, most of us mere males are reduced to jelly by the trauma of shopping. In the first place, we don’t know what we want because we don’t know what you ladies want. You may have dropped hints all along the way from Labor Day through Halloween and Thanksgiving, but we didn’t get it. Start next year with the Fourth of July and we might have time to understand.
And in the second place, our idea of shopping is to decide what we’re looking for, make a beeline to the store, grab it up, pay whatever the price is – high, higher, or highest – and beat a hasty retreat. Easy came, easy go. We are not equipped for evaluating how it will look against the blue blouse … but then what about the burgundy coat she always wears this time of the year, and isn’t it a little too gaudy for her personality? We are not equipped, I say, for dealing with such subtleties, and we are certainly not going to tramp all across three malls to uncover the last scraps of Victoria’s secret. It can stay a secret for all we care; what’s wrong with getting the present at K-Mart?
Beyond all that, however, the thing that is going to snarl both men and women alike today is the discovery that too many things are out of control. Too many things we thought we were in charge of we find we are not in command of at all. We are going to be out of control, many of us, before this Christmas season gets packaged and ribboned and positioned under the tree.
My wife and I spent one morning this week getting the larder stored up for guests and for family meals this weekend. We went to one of those little private grocery stores where the aisles are jammed, the prices are allegedly low, the selection unusual, and the atmosphere, well, is different from your average Safeway. I found out that not only can you get good products at a reasonable price, but you can get many other things as well: you can get elbows in your ribs, you can get insults thrown in your face, and you can even pick up free abuse from the butcher. The whole place seemed out of control …chaotic, smelly, rushed, just out of control. No place to do your daily Bible readings, I’ll tell you that.
This is just an out-of-control season: the traffic, the money, the time, the expectations, all of it out-of-control.
But in the end I think you have to conclude that if you and I feel the tensions of Christmas and experience them as out of control, that is only a condensation of what happens to us much of the rest of the year. Christmas is not the only time you and I feel as though too many things are out of our control. It’s just that at Christmas, with the pressures of time and money and expectations and feelings, this out-of-controlness becomes more apparent.
The truth is that you and I are plagued with too many things, all of the time, that we cannot manage, too many things that are not the way we would want them to be and too many things that we thought we had nailed down, only to find out they’re coming up loose. Out of control. And that is why we need Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
First of all, we have too many feelings, out of control too much of the time; and that is why we need the strong Son of God, immortal love, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Further, there are too many circumstances, out of control, things people have done to us, the world has done to us, the economy has done to us; and that is why Jesus of Nazareth, born, dying, risen again, Son of God and Lord of history, is important to us.
And finally, we have made too many decisions out of touch with reality; too many choices we made, out of control or controlled by all the wrong things; too many wrong turns and bad moves, when we just about spun out on the road to wherever; and that is why no one else will do for us but the Son of God, in human flesh, the eternal Word incarnate.
In simplest terms, what I want to say to you this morning is that the Biblical title for Christ, "Son of God", describes what we need when we cannot stay in command of ourselves. We need a Christ whose life is strength; we need a savior whose example is consistent, whose word is sure, and whose presence is clear. We need for Him to be Son of God. Doesn’t that title convey strength and majesty? Doesn’t that remind you of His certainty and His power?
Tonight we will discover when and how we also need Him to be Son of Man, authentically human, allowing us room and space in which to experiment and fail and struggle and make mistakes, but that’s another message, that’s for tonight. Right now, focus on the Christ who is Son of God: strength, certainty, identity, confidence. We who are out of control need Him.
I have pulled out of Matthew’s Gospel three passages in which He is confessed as Son of God, curiously, not by His friends but by His enemies. There are many titles and metaphors used to describe Jesus in the New Testament, but these passages lift up the title Son of God. And in special and unique ways they illustrate how He as Son of God can be for us precisely what we need when life is going out of control.
I
The first passage is drawn from Jesus’ own temptation experience. It illustrates what it means for Him to be Son of God when feelings threaten to go out of control, what it is to have the strong and certain Son of God at our side when the temptation comes to forget who we are.
Matthew 4:1-7
One way, you see, in which we go out of control is to flounder, to lose our sense of direction and purpose, to find ourselves spending our days without getting accomplished anything that matters, to discover that the time is spent and the energies are drained, but there is nothing to show for it. No purpose, no direction, no identity; out of control, because we’ve just gone with whatever feels good at the moment. We’ve forgotten who we are.
I find that I have to remind myself of my calling and my purpose every day. I find that I literally have to reorganize myself every day. I’ve mentioned from this pulpit before that I am an inveterate list-maker. I make lists of things I have to do, lists of things I ought to do, lists of things I want to do, and sometimes I think I need to make a list of my lists. It gets kind of silly sometimes.
But I find that if I do not revise that list the last thing before I go to bed at night or the first thing when I get up in the morning, and if I do not set some priorities, I will flounder. I will lose sight of my real purpose. Oh, I’ll be busy, all right. But I will do a smidgen of this and a dab of that, and before long my day is out of control.
What is it then, that I am doing when I make a daily work list? It’s not just time management; it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s rediscovering who I am, it’s reinterpreting what my calling is. It’s redefining and renewing my commitment to the things that matter, because if I do not do that, looking to Christ the Son of God and His kingdom, His standards, I will soon spend my energies on a hundred good things, but not the best things, on a score and more of little tasks that somebody thinks should be done, but not on the priorities of the Kingdom. And pretty soon I will be out of control.
Look at the Son of God confronted by the tempter. Look at Him there in the wilderness scanning His identity and determining, once and for all, what kind of Messiah He would be. Satan says to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God … command these stones to become loaves of bread." "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the Temple." With subtle cunning and with the kinds of turns that twist the mind, the tempter tugs at Jesus to get Him to forget why He has come and what His mission is.
But because He is in fact the Son of God, because He does know who He is and what He is about, because this Jesus is begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, sure and certain, clear and crystal, He keeps control of His destiny. He maintains control of His life. "Man shall not live by bread alone … by self-gratification … but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God".
I’m trying to say this morning that if you are floundering, remember Christ who as the Son of God focuses on His Kingdom purpose and will not let go. I’m reminding you today that this beautiful savior has a purpose for you, He has a direction for you, He has ways in which He would ask you to invest you energies, and if it seems as though your days and weeks and years are out of control, then ask Him what use He can make for you in the Kingdom. Find out what role you can play in His redeeming purpose, and stick to that.
Visiting with one of our older members this week, I heard her say, “I know I’m here for a purpose, but I don’t know what it is right now.” But before I could leave she asked me to pray with her for guidance and for a sense of that purpose. And I say that’s right on target, that’s exactly right. The beautiful savior who is Son of God has an intention for you; seek and you shall find. And He will be Son of God, strength and direction, for those whose lives are out of control because they have forgotten their purpose.
II
But now there are also those whose lives are so buffeted about by circumstances that they feel out of control. There are many whose lives have been changed by circumstances not of their own making, by other people’s decisions, by changes in their health, by a good many things they never did, never planned, never intended. And to these too it feels as though life is going out of control
Some of you have had a year in which the circumstances of your lives have changed so remarkably that you felt and maybe still feel as though you cannot get a grasp on it all. The companion of many years passed away, and no matter how much you knew it had to come, you were not prepared for its finality; and you still have a hard time dealing with the impact it’s had on you. Life is out of control through no fault of your own, just the circumstances changed.
Others of you went to work one morning and found the proverbial pink slip waiting for you: we don’t need you, we can’t afford you, you’re too old, whatever. And from being a purposeful, accomplishing human being you went in a few hours to someone whose career was on the skids and whose ability to pay the bills went out of control.
Still others found that your health broke down; something that you had dealt with successfully over the years finally gave way, something you never dreamed would attack you just put you to bed, and just the inexorable grind of the calendar means for others that you cannot keep up with what you believe, under God, you need to be about. Now you’re out of control.
Then I want you to see the incomparable Christ, as Son of God, endowed with all the power of the Creator, as He acts on your behalf:
Matthew 8: 28-34
The heart of this little story is that the Son of God commands the demons to go and they go. He commands the demonic forces that threaten to take over our lives and take us out of control, and they disappear. We need a savior like this; we need a beautiful savior who is in command, who as the Son of God is in charge and can remove from us those things which keep us from being what we know we ought to be.
When our behavior goes out of control, it is the strength of the Son of God who can bring us back on track. When, under the pressure of the holidays, the demon of alcohol is about to take over, it is the commanding presence of the Son of God that can eliminate that threat, reminding us that there is more power in the Spirit than in spirits.
When impulse and insecurity drive some into compulsive shopping and spending, it is the beautiful and glorious Son of God who can say "Go" to that demon and can teach us that we don’t need to buy anybody’ s love.
When unexplained depression and unresolved grief come out of nowhere, it is the beauty of the Son of God that silences our mournful song, "Once upon a midnight dreary" and gives us instead, "It came upon a midnight clear, that glorious song of old".
When someone you love does something so bizarre, so hateful, so inappropriate that it robs you of your time and your emotions, then you need the power of the commanding Christ to give you back your wholeness.
For those who find that the circumstances of their lives have so changed that life is going out of control, Christ the Son of God stands above all the disappointing circumstances, commanding the forces of destruction to "Go".
III
But finally there are those whose lives have gone out of control because of their own sin. There are those, many of us, perhaps, who cannot blame anyone but ourselves for the out-of-controlness we feel. We have chosen to go out of control.
Oh, we didn’t know at the time what the consequences would be. We didn’t understand when we chose the wrong way that it would lead to such unhappiness and such disaster. But at some point the chickens have come home to roost and something is happening to us that we cannot master. We are out of control because of our own sin.
Life had gone out of control for two young men who had made some terribly wrong choices. It had gone out of control and the justice of Rome and the judgment of God had caught up with them. Jesus the Son of God made no excuses for them, nor did He condone their sin. Listen to the story:
Matthew 27:38-44; Matthew stops the story at that point, but if we turn to Luke, there is something more: Luke 23:39-43.
But even in the last moment, in the fartherest extremity, when it all seems lost, when we’ve made about as bad a mess as we think it’s possible to make, He as the Son of God has the authority to say to a thief who confesses Him, "This day you will be with me in paradise". His commanding, judging presence is also His redeeming presence, and into those moments in our lives when we think the jig is up and there is no saving this mess, He will step in. He will still be able to save us from ourselves. And He will forgive, if we but submit ourselves to Him, He will forgive all our wrong-headedness, all our lostness, all our misguidedness. He will forgive our out-of-controlness.
Christmas is good news indeed. Christmas is good news because it means that He who is both Son of God and Son of Man has come and dwelt among us. As Son of God He represents all that God is, all that God stands for, all the creative energy and power of the Almighty, all the beauty of God’s own ordered, directed, disciplined life.
He is the beautiful savior. Beautiful not only as a lovely child in shimmering surroundings, crowded into a manger by chorusing angels and worshipping shepherds, but beautiful also as one who by His life, His death, and His living again can make sense of our chaos and make beauty of our out-of-control messes. "Drop Thy still dews of quietness, ‘til all our striving cease. Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives … our ordered lives … confess the beauty of Thy peace." Strong Son of God.
