Our advent series is entitled "Why Jesus? "Why Christmas?" and we have spent two weeks asking, and answering, the questions regarding Jesus. This morning, we look at the second question - "Why Christmas?"
Last week we asked the question, “Who Was Jesus?” and one of the answers to that question, besides the correct one that he is the Son of God, was that He was a poet. And in that thought I suggested that words are powerful things that can make or break us just like Christ’s words could forgive or condemn.
My favorite Christmas poem is by T.S. Eliot. It is called Journey Of The Magi. It is the remembrance of at least one of the wise men, many years since their journey to visit the Christ child and his personal reflection on what that trip did to him.
He recalls the tough journey in cold weather and inhospitable conditions. At one point he wished for "the summer palaces on slopes, the terraces/And the silken girls bringing sherbet."
Finally, and "not a moment too soon," they come to where the baby Jesus lay. But it is the final verse of that poem that makes it a part of this morning’s sermon.
In this final verse, he makes it clear that he would make the trip again if he had too. But, then the veil behind the long years since the journey is drawn back and he asks, "Were we led all that way for Birth or Death?"
"There was a birth, certainly,/We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen Birth and Death, But thought they were different; this Birth was/ Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death./We returned to our places, these kingdoms,/No longer at ease here, in the old dispensation."
What is he saying? "The birth of this child changed us. We went home and our old ways were no longer satisfying to us. It was different." Now who ever would think that Christmas could change any one like that? Does it seem to you these days that Christmas is just a brief interlude in the business of living? A chance to have a day off and to relax. A chance to give, and get, gifts. What is the reason for the season? Is Christmas supposed to change us?
Hollywood seems to think so! For example, this past weekend there was a Christmas movie on TV featuring Rob Lowe. I cannot remember the name of the movie, and quite frankly I did not see it, but from the commercials for it, I can almost guess with a high degree of accuracy what the plot line was something like this:
Successful person is pursuing success at the expense of family. Wife reminds him that his presence is important to the kids and her.
He goes on headlong in pursuit of whatever it is he is pursing until a child in a desperate and lonely situation catches his attention. The encounter forces the man to look at what is really important. Am I correct?
This is a common theme for movies and novels and stories this time of year. Why? Why do these themes constantly reappear this time of year?
What was is that made such a profound impact on a wise man, considered by some to be an astrologer, a fortuneteller? Why are stories like Dickens’ A Christmas Carol holiday favorites?
In our main text for this morning, another group of people who were impacted by Christmas were the shepherds. They were a group not highly regarded in their day. They raised sheep. And those sheep had a very important purpose regarding the faith practices of that time and place.
When God gave the Israelites what we call the Law as recorded in the books of Leviticus and Deuteronomy, He laid down some rituals that were designed to help them maintain their relationship to God. And several of those rituals involved animal sacrifices. And of course the animal was what? A sheep or lamb.
There are two words used in the Bible for "lamb." One refers to a 1 to 3 year old male sheep and the second refers to a young lamb. The older lamb was used as a sacrifice twice daily, also on the Sabbath, and at certain major festivals throughout the year.
The biggest festival was the Passover festival that celebrated God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt. So, there was a large market for sheep in Israel. So many, many lambs were sacrificed to God as part of the Israelite faith.
But, then one night, angelic beings arrive to tell these shepherds, that the Messiah had finally come! The Lamb of God had arrived! Their salvation, the deliverance, was at hand. God was returning to Israel just like the prophets has said. And the shepherds’ lives would never be the same again because there would be a new lamb that would be sacrificed.
Then there is Mary and Joseph. Joseph, as we read in Matthew 1 and Luke 3, was an ancestor to King David, through whom the Messiah would come. And David, as we read in I Samuel 16, was from Bethlehem, and was anointed by Samuel at Bethlehem to be the second king of Israel.
Samuel’s presence in Bethlehem strikes fear into the heart of the town elders. "What’s he doing here?" "Do you come in peace?" they ask. Why the fear? They are afraid because it’s God’s prophet and sometimes his arrival meant one thing - something is wrong. In fact, as we read in part of verse 4, the elders ask Samuel, "What’s wrong?"
Samuel says, "Nothing is wrong, I’ve come to worship." (Which is what God says for Samuel to do). "Worship with me," he says. So they prepare themselves to worship and Samuel invites Jesse and his sons to worship as well.
As the sons arrive Samuel begins to look closely at them. There is the oldest, Eliab. "Wow, God! A first round draft pick!" No, you are looking at them all wrong, Samuel.
Well soon, number 2 comes by, Abinadab. "Nope." Number 3, "nope." Number 4, "nope, not him." Finally all 7 of the sons present with Jesse walk by and God says "no" to all seven.
I wonder if Samuel was puzzled and a little bit nervous by this time. "Are these all the sons you have?" he asks Jesse with perhaps a bit of hesitation and nervousness in his voice. "No, my youngest is out in the fields, watching the sheep." "Call him in." Where is David? Out watching the sheep. But where is he watching the sheep? Around Bethlehem.
And now, centuries later, a descendant of David, who has a very pregnant fiancée, enters that same town surrounded by sheep and shepherds just like a distant ancestor who became the King of Israel. But they are concerned about one thing: How will family receive them?
In the customs and culture of that day, a pregnancy before marriage carried the risk of rejection by the man’s family and that is who would be waiting for Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem. They faced possible rejection.
But, the trip and the subsequent birth of the Christ child changed Joseph and Mary forever. In many ways it already had changed them. Mary was chosen by God to bring Jesus into the world. Joseph was to be Jesus’ earthly father. Their lives were forever changed by this action of God. For what reason?
In the book of Micah, chapter 5 and verses 2 and 3 we read, "But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past. The people of Israel will be abandoned to their enemies until the time when the woman in labor gives birth to her son. Then at last his fellow countrymen will return from exile to their own land."
The reason for this season is deliverance. It is salvation; our salvation, our salvation, my salvation - the whole world’s salvation!
It was for the Magi’s salvation. Granted, Eliot’s poem is not scripture and the Bible does not indicate what happened to them after they left for home another way than the way they came. But, the experience of following the star and seeing the Christ child had to have changed them. Three of the final four lines of Eliot’s poem given evidence of this change: "We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, /But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, /With an alien people clutching their gods."
They had encountered God, with a capital "G" not the gods of which the one speaks, with a small "g." The experience made them feel no longer at home. They had seen God! Not the pagan idols that their neighbors and family and friends clutched but the true and living God. And Life would never again be the same for them. They had seen a birth, with a capital "B" but they also had experienced a death – a death to their old way of life –, which is what salvation, is!
Life would never be the same for the shepherds either. The angelic visit announced to them that the Messiah, the long awaited redeemer and King, foretold by Micah and the other prophets, who would become the Good Shepherd and who would lay His life down for the sheep, was finally here. Now I don’t know what kind of range those shepherds had to their shepherding, but I think that they would either hear or see of or both that baby they saw in the manager.
Then there was Mary and Joseph. The birth of Jesus changed their lives. They became the earthly parents of God. They became parents of One who, even as a boy of 12, had maturity and insight and wisdom and power and authority that would led Him to the purpose for which He came - for the reason for the season - our salvation. Our transformation. A new, a better, and a direct way to God!
And it would be different also for a group whom we perhaps never have given much thought to - those sheep on the hillsides around Bethlehem and everywhere else - no longer would their services be needed. No longer would they be needed to make humanity right with God. The Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd, would make that possible.
In this year’s hot holiday film, "The Santa Clause 2," there is a line that made me sit up and take notice. Charley, Santa’s son, says to a cynical principal who later in the story becomes Mrs. Claus, something to the effect, "It’s not see it to believe it, it’s believe it to see it!"
When we look at this holiday called Christmas what do we see? What do we believe? A maddening rush filled with too much? Or a type of cheer that does not truly relieve the fear?
Or do we see the baby in the manager? Do we see the journeying rabbi who speaks and does amazing things for people? Do we see the Son of God who came to give us the kind of life that we have been created to have?
What is the reason for the season? It is nothing less than letting go of those things (those idols) that we desperately cling to in the hope that they will deliver us from all that is wrong and evil only to be embraced by the baby - the Christ child - who has delivered us, who is our savior, who has come once and for all to make us right with God. That is the reason for the season. Let’s unwrap that gift this morning and let’s celebrate God’s great gift to us. Amen.
