WISE MEN STILL SEEK HIM, PART 2
FRANKINCENSE FOR A HOLY SACRIFICE
MATTHEW 2:1-12
DECEMBER 4, 2016
SECOND SUNDAY OF ADVENT, YEAR C
FARM HILL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH, HARRISBURG, AR
INTRO. Dave Barry, the well-known humorist, has this take on the wise men and Christmas:
“Although this is a festive time of year, it can also be a difficult and stressful time for a certain group - a group whose needs all too often, are overlooked in our society. That group is men. Why is the Christmas Season so hard on men? There are many complex reasons, by which I mean: women.
“This problem dates back to the very first Christmas. We know from the Bible that the Wise Men showed up in Bethlehem and gave baby Jesus gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Now gold is always a nice gift (especially these days), but frankincense and myrrh - at least according to my dictionary - are gum resins (from a tree). Who gives gum resins to a baby?
“The answer is: men. The wise Men, being men, didn’t even START shopping for gifts until the last minute, when most of the stores in the greater Bethlehem area were closed for Christmas Eve. The only place still open was Big Stu’s House of Myrrh. So the Wise Men showed up at the manger, handed their baby gifts to Mary, and headed for the eggnog. Mary looked at the gifts - which were not wrapped, nor where they accompanied by cards - rolled her eyes, tossed the gum resins to the goats (which ate them) and said; “Next Christmas, we are going to have some gift-giving RULES.” But the Wise Men didn’t hear her, because by then they were over by the crib trying to teach the Baby Jesus to pull their finger.
“In contrast, your standard man, at this point in the Christmas season has purchased zero gifts. He has not yet gotten around to purchasing an acceptable gift for his wife for LAST Christmas. He did give her something last year, but he could tell by her reaction to it that she had not been dreaming of an auto emergency kit, even though it was the deluxe model with booster cables AND an air compressor. Clearly this gift violated an important rule, but the man had no idea what this rule was, and his wife was too upset to tell him.
“And now ANOTHER Christmas is looming, and this man, terrified that he will screw up again, has been wracking his brain for gift ideas for his wife. Nothing automotive this time. He won’t make THAT mistake again! He’s thinking Weed Whacker, but he’s not sure. He’s a nervous wreck. A lot of us men are. That’s why we buy gifts at the very last minute, or, optionally, never. It’s not that we’re thoughtless jerks!”
(Posted at http://www.searchamelia.com/dave-barry-questions-the-wise-men)
And so it goes! Men, I feel your pain, because I am there every year, in one way or another. For most men, we just have a hard time picking out the right gift. It causes a lot of stress and tension.
But God does not seem to have that problem. We think about frankincense today because it reminds us that Jesus was a holy sacrifice. He was the perfect gift, for that Christmas and any Christmas. “Frankincense is a symbol of holiness and righteousness. The gift of frankincense to the Christ child was symbolic of his willingness to become a sacrifice, wholly giving himself up, ...(comparable) to a burnt offering” (posted at https://gotquestions.org/ gold-frankincense- myrrh. html). Caspar from India gets the credit for bringing frankincense to Jesus, and his was the furthest journey, perhaps the greatest sacrifice. How is it that Jesus is making a holy sacrifice?
I. HE GAVE UP BEING GOD. In all of the rush to Christmas, to the presents and the family time and all the wonderful things, it is so easy to ignore this signpost and blast right past it. Jesus laid aside all there was of God in him so that he could become one of us. Maybe a rough human comparison would be with the situation of Stephen Hawking, who is the Einstein of our generation. He was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease his final year at Oxford and was given two years to live. By the end of the 1960s, he went to crutches and then a wheelchair. By the end of the 1970s, his speech was understandable only by family and his closest friends. In 1985, pneumonia led to a tracheotomy, which took away all his remaining speech. He ended up with a computer on his wheelchair that he used to produce up to 15 words a minute. By 2005, he had lost the use of his hand and now uses his cheek muscles to speak through his computer (www.wikipedia.org). His body is withering around him, yet he soldiers on.
But what of Jesus? How must it have felt for him? To lay down his deity, to step aside from his Son relationship to God the Father, not because of disease or disability, not because the Father pushed him away, but because he chose to do this, he wanted to do this, in order to offer the perfect gift of salvation to you, to me, to the world. God was in Christ, but Christ was in the world and separated from God for a time. Do I understand how all this works? No, but the Bible says it happened, and that’s good enough for me. Jesus gave up all that being God meant so that we can experience the knowledge and forgiveness of God.
I was talking to a lady in Osceola the other day and she mentioned having an 83-year old friend who is the caregiver for her husband, who is having dementia, and her son, who was a successful engineer until a stroke wiped out much of his intellectual ability. He can remember graduating from college and some of the things from his career, but his reasoning these days is on the level of a child. I wonder if it was something like that for Jesus as he lay in the manger. He was a baby now, but he did he remember being God the Son, at the right hand of the Father? In order to come to earth and die for our sins, he gave up being God. What a sacrifice! What a wonderful Savior!
1. He gave up being God
II. HE GAVE UP BEING IN CHARGE. We all know people whose nature is to be in charge. Put them on a committee and they drive everyone else crazy. Put them in a corner and they drive themselves crazy. Put them out front and they have everybody rolling in the same direction. Donald Trump strikes me as someone like that. We will see how it works for him. Now, Jesus was not the kind of leader who did not play well with others or could not be trusted, but he was definitely used to being in charge. Jesus had it all!
Isaiah 40:26 says, “Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of his great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” And Paul puts it this way in Colossians 1:16: “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.” There was nothing that was not under the rule of Christ, yet there he lay, in the manger, in mortal danger of being squashed like a bug under the heel of Herod and his soldiers! What would bring the Lord of the universe to such a state?
He had found power in being powerless. And what an example that is for us! David Mathis quotes 2 Corinthians 8:9 - “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” - and then states,
“Christianity is not for the self-sufficient. It’s not a religion for the rich and the strong. Jesus didn’t come to comfort the well-to-do and rally those who have their lives all in order. He didn’t come to gather the good, but the bad. Jesus came not to call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:17).
“This is one of the great paradoxes of the gospel. It is the poor he makes rich, the weak he makes strong, the foolish he makes wise, the guilty he makes righteous, the dirty he makes clean, the lonely he loves, the worthless he values, the lost he finds, the have-nots who stunningly become the haves - not mainly in this age, but in the new creation to come” (www.desiringgod.org). And this was accomplished by a Christ who came to this earth to no longer be in charge, to lay down his life as a ransom for all who would believe. What a sacrifice! What a wonderful Savior!
1. He gave up being God - 2. He gave up being in charge
III. HE LIVED A LIFE FOR US. Coming to this earth was not a joyride for Jesus. It was not a victory lap, like you see athletes and politicians taking. Jesus was not in the taking business, he was in the giving business. I have been a member of the Rotary Club since 1999. One of the things I like about that organization is its motto - Service above Self. If that is not a description of Jesus and the way of the Cross, I don’t know what is!
“Why aren’t people disturbed by Christmas? One reason is... we romanticize the story of Mary and Joseph rather than deal with the painful dilemma they faced when the Lord chose Mary to be the virgin who would conceive her child by the power of the Holy Spirit. We beautify the birth scene, not coming to terms with the stench of the stable, the poverty of the parents, the hostility of Herod... There is something truly comforting and warming about the Christmas story, but it comes from understanding the reality, not from denying it.
“As long as we can keep him in the manger, and feel the sentimental feelings we have for babies, Jesus doesn’t disturb us. But once we understand that his coming means for every one of us either salvation or condemnation, he disturbs us deeply.
“What should be just as disturbing is the awful work Christ had to do to accomplish the salvation of his people. Yet his very name, Jesus, testifies to us of that work. That baby was born so that ‘he who had no sin’ would become ‘sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ The baby’s destiny from the moment of his conception was hell - hell in the place of sinners. When I look into the manger, I come away shaken as I realize again that he was born to pay the unbearable penalty for my sins.
“That’s the message of Christmas: God reconciled the world to himself through Christ, man’s sin has alienated him from God, and man’s reconciliation with God is possible only through faith in Christ…Christmas is disturbing” (C.J. Mahaney, www.crosswalk.com).
Jesus lived, and gave, his life for us, and Christmas should be a striking reminder of that fact. What a sacrifice! What a wonderful Savior!
CON. Ann Voskamp writes, “Christmas cannot be bought. Christmas cannot be created. Christmas cannot be made by hand. Christmas isn’t a product to wrap, but a person to unwrap. Christmas can only be found in the creche, in the cradling trough, in the mire and the stench and the unexpected and unlikely and only in the person of Christ. The mystery so large becomes the babe so small - and infinite God becomes infant. Christ, the babe, comes in Christmas as Christ the Savior comes on the cross - seeking only our embrace” (annvoskamp.com).
And I guess it is only when we get the smell of frankincense in our nostrils, the shadow of the Cross over the manger, the thought of sacrifice on our hearts, that we really get what Christmas is all about. It’s not about us. It’s about Jesus. And because it’s about Jesus, it’s about others.
A merchant living around 300 AD had three lovely daughters, but had no dowry to give so they could be married off. His daughters did not have much of a future without his help. The father prayed and prayed for the help of God. His pastor, who was also a bishop, discovered his situation. This bishop was a wealthy man, having received a large inheritance when his parents died. One evening, in the middle of the night, the bishop secretly slipped a sack of gold through a window into the merchant’s house. This gift saved the oldest daughter from a life of slavery or prostitution and allowed her to marry. Later, another sack saved the second daughter. Thinking a third gift of gold might show up, the father determined to discover who was helping his family. He stayed up all night and when the sack was dropped through the window, the father ran down the road and apprehended the mysterious benefactor. The merchant immediately recognized the young bishop and tried to give thanks to him.
The humble pastor deflected the praise. “No, all thanks go to God, not to me.”
The father answered, “I need to let everybody know you did this.” The bishop responded, “No, you must promise me that not until I’m dead will you let anyone know how you received the gold.” This compassionate bishop believed literally Christ’s injunction that when we give, we should do so in secret, sacrificially in Christ’s name and not our own.
The merchant promised that he would tell no one of the way his pastor helped save this family. And it wasn’t until after his death that the world learned the numerous stories of the generosity of this bishop of the early Church, Saint Nicholas (www1.cbn.com). We know him today as Santa Claus. In a small way, he gives us a picture of the holy sacrifice of Christmas. What about me? What about you? What can I sacrifice for Christmas? What WILL I sacrifice for Christmas?
