On Sunday I offered the opinion that I was probably the only preacher in town who was using the Old Testament on the Sunday before Christmas. Well, maybe some used those Isaiah passages about a child named Immanuel and the Prince of Peace. But Elijah? Who would have thought that Elijah and his Mt. Carmel encounters would have led us to the cradle in Bethlehem? You have a strange pastor!
And so tonight, when we should be reading about angels and shepherds and other sweet things, here I am over toward the end of John’s Gospel, with Jesus on Pilate’s porch, taking Him to trial. Sounds like it belongs on Good Friday, doesn’t it? Pastor just can’t get things right.
Or maybe he just sees connections all over the place! The key verse for me is the 37th, where Jesus answers Pilate’s frenzied question, “Are you the King of the Jews?” with a statement that takes us back to His birth. At the moment of Jesus’ rendezvous with destiny, He is thinking about His birth:
“For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
And Pilate, like many of us, grown old before our time, grown cynical and stubborn and callous and cold – Pilate flings off a snarl, “What is truth?”
I
“For this I was born” In Jesus’ most difficult moment, He remembered His purpose. He reaffirmed the reason why He was here. He knew that the Father had put Him here for a purpose, He had discovered that purpose, and He had hewn the line on that purpose for the last three years. Jesus knew why He was here, and so was able to fulfill His mission. If you cannot remember what you are here for, you will never be able to accomplish it.
My wife sends me to the store for five items. I am not really listening when she packs me off, and so I forget what two of the five are, get two more of them wrong, and succeed only in bringing back the ice cream! If I do not remember, do not pay attention, I will never fulfill my mission.
We forget why we are here and why we do what we do. The Christmas season brings this out in us as no other. We rush, we run, we grab and buy, just to fill up somebody’s stocking, just to make a decent showing. We have forgotten what this day is all about – that it is about love and peace and connecting and family and nearness. But we have been snickered into thinking it is about spending and showing off. I remember a cartoon I saw once, in which a man said to his wife, “Christmas is the only time of the year when we send cards to people we don’t know, read newsletters from people we don’t care about, and spend good money on people we don’t like!” We throw away a lot of time and money and energy at Christmas-time, for reasons that often just escape us. We have forgotten its purpose, we have forgotten our own purposes.
Doesn’t it intrigue you that many people today are doing just as we did back in August and September – looking for what it means to live a purpose-driven life? We are a generation who have forgotten, maybe because we have so many opportunities, why we are here, why we were born. But Jesus remembers His purpose, even in the time of trial.
II
More than that, Jesus is able to tell others about that life purpose. He is able to speak up and define Himself in a way that calls from others a response. Jesus demonstrates for us that when you know why you are here, you can share that, and it will bring forth a response from others. Jesus says that some listen to His voice; why wouldn’t we? The world listens to people who know what they are about. But many of us, even if we do know why we were born, are far, far too silent about it.
If you were to come with me to my study, you would see shelves lining the walls, carrying the weight of nearly 3000 books. If you were to see that, likely your next question would be, “Have you actually read all those books? When did you find the time to read these?” And sadly, I would have to tell you that I have read only a fraction of them. I would have to admit that it was easier to purchase them on sale or pick them up from library closeouts or in many cases to inherit them from others than it was actually to study them. And so they are silent witnesses, cooped up in a basement room on Glenwild Road, doing nobody any good. I will change that some day; I do have a recipient in mind. But before I worry too much about the books being cooped up in a basement room on Glenwild Road because their purpose is not being fulfilled, maybe I should worry more about the guy who inhabits that room. Maybe I should worry more about my own silence, my own failure to develop my voice, my own lack of discipline that would have, could have brought more of that wisdom to the world. Do you see? Even if we know who we are and what our purpose is, we are criminally silent before a waiting world.
Not so Jesus. He testified to the truth, He made sure others listened to His voice. He got a reaction, a response. Just as the author of Hebrews says about the birth of the Christ, that God has spoken in various ways through the prophets, but now in these latter days has spoken to us through a Son. And that clarion voice we must hear, we will hear.
III
Ah, but brothers and sisters, look again at the scene. Look at what time it is in Jesus’ life. He is no longer an infant, adored by shepherds, doted on by His mother. He is no longer in a cradle, with “Gloria in Excelsis” shouted in the heavens. Now He is in the judgment hall; now He is arraigned. Now He is condemned to die, and for us. For us and for our salvation.
We do not want to think of death at Christmas-time. We shy away from anything so terrible and threatening. And yet we cannot avoid it either. We know in our own pain about death in the midst of all this joy, all this celebration. I reminded you Sunday of my father-in-law’s death a few days before Christmas in 1991; my mother died the day after Christmas the next year. And I have found myself standing at December grave sides all too often for members of your families and for brothers and sisters in this body of Christ.
Oh, let’s get off of that, we say. Let’s not focus on that right now. Too morose, too painful. Let’s focus on the children. Let’s laugh with the little ones and shriek with delight with the youngsters. Yes, that’s right. But –
Monday and Tuesday we kept the granddaughters. If you come to our house and see that most of our Christmas tree ornaments are about two feet off the floor, you’ll know why. I took Olivia for a walk up our street and around the corner, and we ran into some neighbors who attend this church sometimes. They said, “Who’s this?” and Olivia piped up with her name and announced, “Im two!” I reminded her that she is almost three, and when we went home she said, “I’m almost three? I’m not a baby any more. I just grewed and grewed.”
Yes, she did, she grewed and grewed. And she will grew some more. But the day will come when she will face her death. Oh, I want that to be long, long after I have faced mine. But it will come. And the question is, will she know why she was born? Will she be able to tell others about it? And will she be ready to die? So ready that she might live again? So ready that she might have everlasting life? So ready that someone else might gain life from her life? I hope so. I truly hope so.
Jesus knew who He was and why He was born. He spoke out about who He was and about His mission. And when the ultimate moment came, He was ready to give Himself a ransom for many and to teach you and me that whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever will give His life for the sake of the Gospel will find it.
Go tell it on Mt. Calvary, the place of the Lord’s death, that He knew who He was, that He was our savior. Go tell it on Mt. Calvary, the mount of His redeeming love, that He was and is Immanuel, God with us. Go tell it on Mt. Calvary, the place of His bitter pain, that beyond death there is life, beyond defeat there is victory. And beyond drifting there is purpose, beyond aimlessness there is direction. And beyond Pilate’s snarling question, “What is truth?” there is this: Truth forever on the scaffold, right forever on the throne? Standeth God within the shadows, keeping watch above His own.
Go tell it!
