- Every family has certain Christmas traditions. I would imagine your family is no different. Some families like to open their presents on Christmas Eve, others wait until Christmas morning. Some families who come from Catholic backgrounds will huddle up in the car and head to Midnight Mass, I still like to do that when I go home for Christmas. Other families will spend some time reading the Christmas story before opening their presents. What is it for you and your family? What traditions do you have? I can see you thinking about them right now.
- You are thinking about that grandmother who always sends you underwear and pajamas for Christmas. Or maybe you are thinking about that delicious ham that is prepared on Christmas Eve. Or you are thinking about the Egg Nog everybody enjoys, it only tastes good one month a year. I’m sure you are thinking of something. Something that you treasure, that is close to your heart. Some of you have long-held traditions, others of you are starting new traditions. Some of you will travel great distances to be with family, others will have family traveling to you.
- It’s different for all of us in many ways. But in other ways, it’s really not that different at all? Because, no matter what your family tradition may be. For all of us, the best place to spend Christmas is at Home. Maybe not your house, but at Home. Somewhere you feel comfortable, where you can be who you really are. Where you love and are loved in return. All of us want to "Come Home for Christmas."
- But a couple of milleniums ago, God did something very unusual. It was outright strange, incomprehensible. Nobody in all the world, even those who knew God by name would have guessed that God would have done what he did. And to this day, some still don’t believe it’s true. Instead of coming home for Christmas, God left his home to come to ours. He left his place of comfort, and became uncomfortable. He left the cozy glow of the fire to breath the cold air of the night. He journeyed from the assuring presence of Dad, and entered the uneasy world of anxiety.
- My family had a certain tradition as I was growing up. Every year it was the same thing. Every year we would put up our Christmas tree, a fake one. We would string the lights, and place the decorations on the tree, the pretty ones and the ones me and my sister made at school. We would put the tinsel and the candy canes up, and hang the stockings.
- And when it was all said and done, my mom and dad would take out the manger scene. It was always the same one. It was a typical manger scene, with Mary and Joseph and the donkeys and the spanish moss. It was made of wood, and it always had a musky odor to it from sitting in the attic all year long. But out it would come from the old tattered cardboard box, and my mother and father would gently place it under the tree front and center.
- But every year there was always something missing in that old nativity scene. All the characters were in place, the mom, the dad, the shepherds, the wise men, the animals, but the lead role was not there, the star of the show was missing. He wasn’t there. And every year, my sisters and myself would ask, "What about the baby? Where’s the baby?" And every year, my parents would say, "not yet, it’s not time for him yet."
- But then on Christmas morning, we would wake up at the crack of dawn, some having gotten more sleep than others and we would barrel our way into mom and dad’s bedroom, we rush into the living room, where the bicycle was all set up, and the presents were neatly in order. Santa had taken a few bites of the cookies. And there under that tree, we would see him. We knew it was coming, but there was something thrilling about finally seeing him under our tree. The Baby Jesus had come to our home.
- I always wondered as a child, how did he get there? Where did he come from? It must have been quite a journey, coming to our home. But we know how he got there don’t we? And it was quite a journey.
- I suppose the journey started back in Nazareth where a young man, probably in his 20’s or 30’s was engaged to be married to a young woman probably a teenager. Typical for that day. And being engaged in that time was the same as being married, minus the fringe benefits, if you know what I mean. And one day, an angel came before Mary to let her know that she was pregnant.
"How could this be?" she replied, "I’m a virgin, it’s impossible."
"Oh not with God," the angel answered, "The Holy Spirit has placed a child in you, and not just any child, He is the Son of God, the Messiah."
- So she runs and tells Joseph, her husband to be. His anxieties are relieved when he too is visited by an angel who assures him that she is still, in fact, a virgin, that he is to marry her, that she will give birth to a son, and he is the Messiah, and his name will be Jesus.
- So that’s how the journey started. Of all the places for God to begin his journey to our home. It started with a young innocent couple, a poor carpentar and his soon to be wife. Seems odd, doesn’t it? That God would begin his journey this way.
- I want us to feel the irony of this. Don’t miss it. God since the creation of the universe, for thousands and thousands of years has been working his way up to this point. Everthing that has happened has been leading to this moment in history. And now God is ready to visit us, to come to our home, and it all comes down to this, a teenage pregnancy.
- In 1969, Nikita Kruschev the famous Russian communist leader visited America. One of the most powerful men in the world. Leader of one of the largest countries in the world. He came to America, and do you know where he visited? Do you know where his journey began? You would guess New York City or maybe Washington D.C., but his journey began in Coons Rapids, IA. My guess is you’ve never heard of Coons Rapids, IA. He came to learn about American Agriculture so he went to Rural Iowa. An odd place to begin a journey.
- Well the King of the Universe came to visit our home, and his journey didn’t start with a parade, or a banquet, it didn’t begin in a castle or a mansion. God began his journey in the womb of a poor teenage girl who would be ridiculed and scorned.
- And the journey would take this young couple to the city of Bethlehem. You heard why earlier, Augustus ordered a census, and the government loves to make its people wait in lines, so off they were to Joseph’s hometown in Bethlehem. Mary is 9 months pregnant, riding on a donkey, going to the bathroom every half an hour. I suppose he didn’t feel comfortable leaving her at home all alone. So she made the long journey. When they get to the city, all the hotels are booked up. The Days Inn, the Holiday Inn, even the Motel 6. No Vacancy. One last effort, the Super 8, the hotel owner says there’s no room. Joseph pleads with him.
"My wife is pregnant, 9 months pregnant. And the contractions are getting closer. Don’t you have something, anything available."
"Well, I suppose there’s the animal shelter out back. It’s where the donkeys, and the cattle sleep at night to keep warm. I suppose it would be all right for you to rest there if you don’t mind the smell."
- What could they do? Where else could they go? It would have to do, desperate times call for desperate measures. And there in that shelter, God visited our home. Umbilical cord and all. After hours of agonizing delivery, they didn’t have epiderals back then, and they didn’t have ob’s, Joseph was the midwife. After hours of agonizing delivery, as Lucado puts it, "God came near," in the form of a baby, a crying baby.
- They cleared out the feeding trough, wrapped him in cloth, and gently laid him down. God’s first bed. His first crib. His first home.
- What a strange journey it must have been for God? What an odd way to visit our home? George Herbert wrote a poem, I’m not sure the name of it, it goes something like this...
The God of power, as he did ride
In his majestick robes of glorie
Resolv’d to light; and so one day
He did descend, undressing all the way.
(Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew)
- The King of Glory, the Almighty God, with a crown on his head, and robes on his back, with streets of gold beneath his feet. Decided that it was time to come to our home. And on his way, he took off his crown, he threw off his robes, and instead of gold beneat his feet, it would be dirty straw between his toes. John put it this way, "The Word became flesh."
- J.B. Phillips wrote of a conversation between two angels. The conversation takes place while the Senior Angel is showing a very young angel all the splendors of the universe. They see majestic galaxies and blazing suns, and they enter one galaxy of 500 billion stars. Phillips writes,
As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.
"I want you to watch that one particularly," said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.
"Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me," said the little angel. "What’s special about that one?"
- To the little angel, earth was not all that impressive. And he was rather stunned when the senior angel told him that this small, and insignificant and not very clean planet was visited by God almighty.
"Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince... went down in person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should he do a think like that?"
The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust. "Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"
"I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ’creeping, crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may see to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him."
The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.
(Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew)
- Every Christmas there he lay. Under my tree, in my home. How he got there, it’s almost beyond comprehension. Why would God come here? Why would he visit us, become one of us? What a strange journey?
- But don’t let it slip your mind this Christmas season, don’t miss what it’s all about. God came to our home, so that we could go to his.
