“OPENING OUR HEART’S DOOR TO GOD’S PLAN”
TEXT: LUKE 1:26-38
Sunday, November 30, 2003
A gift at the right time. What is the word for that? A gift at the right time. Opportune, opportune. Thank you. It’s this little thing right here. I had to reglue it because I dropped it. It is a little door. I just love it because it fits so much with the theme. I want to keep it steady because it will fall over. Sorry. That’s the perfect gift to illustrate today’s message and actually the whole advent series, “Opening Our Heart’s Door.” Why are we opening our heart’s door?
A couple of weeks ago I got a call. I probably mentioned this to you. It was from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law. Actually, she made the call because he had asked her for a divorce and they wanted to talk to me. One, because I am the one who married them and I did their counseling, so I understood the dynamics of the relationship and the things that they would go through, and they went through everything that was predicted. In fact, the first thing he said was, “I know what you are going to say. Everything you said that would happen happened. I just didn’t think it would be this hard, and I don’t want to live this way anymore.” I spent a lot of time just trying to talk him out of it. After a time, I discovered there was no talking him out of it at the time, so I did the delay tactic. I said, you know what, you can get divorced anytime you want, but before you go through that door, think about it. Think about it as long as you thought about getting married. Think about it. Just take some time. Slow things down and make sure this is the door you want to go through, because know that once you walk through that door, your life changes.
That is true about a lot of the decisions we make, especially those ones that are pivotal decisions. Every decision we make and every door we walk through affects our life and affects our experiences in life. After I hung up I thought of an illustration that would have been so perfect -- you always get those great ideas once you hang up the phone. I remembered the movie, Castaway. They liked that movie. It really spoke to them. In the film, this guy who is climbing the corporate ladder has his own goals in his mind. He is engaged; he loves this woman, but he is following his life. He has plans for it, which are probably made up of his desires, his parents’ expectations, and cultural expectations about success. Once you get to a certain position, you do all you can to make it to the next stage. He is following his plans for his life and he gets this call. He works for Federal Express and they have been trying to develop markets. He gets this call on Christmas Eve. It is interesting that it falls on Christmas Eve. It is fitting for today. He has been asked to take this shipment of packages to South America and he has a choice. He knows that it is Christmas Eve and he wants to be with his family, but he chooses to go through that door. A knock came on his life and he chose to go through the door. He got on the plane, and when he got on that plane thinking it was for the success of his life, his plans ultimately led to the destruction of his life and the loss of everything he held dear -- in particular, his fiancé. Because when he got on that plane, it set in motion a chain of events. The plane crashed and he was on a deserted island for four years, and for four years they thought he was dead. His fiancé remarried and she was gone forever. His plans, that he thought were for his success, actually turned out the opposite way.
So I want to just tell Dan, you know you are at a Y in the road. There are two doors -- one leads one direction, and you already know where it leads, because everyone in their family has had a divorce. Do you want to go through that door? You know where it leads. Or, do you want to choose a different door. It will affect your entire life. I think this is fitting for Christmas and the Advent season because we are given many options all the time, doors to go through, choices to make that will affect our experience with the Christmas season, and our experience with Christ.
What doors are you opening in your life and what doors are you opening during this Christmas season? What is your Christmas experience like? Is it like the movie, “Christmas Vacation,” or is it like “The Little Drummer Boy?” Is it like the song, “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” or is it an “O Holy Night” type of experience? What are your Christmas experiences like? I wish I were a child again because as a child, Christmas for me was such an awed experience. There was a mystery and a magic to it which as an adult, I have lost. It is the tragedy of being an adult, because Christmas becomes, for an adult, a to-do list – stress, bills, expectations of the family -- instead of wonder and awe. How can we recapture that as adults and for our families? How can we recapture the awe of Christmas and its wonder? I think by following some examples we have in scripture, one example is in Luke 1:26-38. What are some doors we can open that will help us experience this awe, the wonder of the season, again? Well, let me read one, one door that we can open and here is what it says:
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, ‘Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.’
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.’
‘How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’
The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.’
‘I am the Lord’s servant,’ Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.’ Then the angel left her.
[Let’s pray]
One of the things we can do to recapture the awe of Christmas is to open our heart’s door to God’s plans rather than our own plans, which sometimes can be quite frustrating in our lives. Put yourself in Mary’s shoes. Really put yourself there. You are 13, 15 maybe 16, and you have your whole life ahead of you. What are your plans? What are your goals? What are your desires? You have been there, some of you, most of you. You have been there. What are your dreams? What were your desires? What were your plans? Your hopes? Your imaginations? What would have been running through her mind? Some we know because some were recorded in scripture. We know that she was planning to be married. She’s probably planning the wedding at this time. It is only less than a year away because she is engaged. How do you picture your wedding? What do you imagine about it? Think about it. I’m sure she’s planning the honeymoon as well, because everybody who’s getting married thinks about the honeymoon too, and she’s been expecting, she’s been waiting for it. She has kept herself.
How about the first home? The setting up of the first home and what is it going to look like, and probably not having children right away, because you want to kind of develop a relationship with your spouse. You don’t want kids right away. You want to do some things you can only do when you are without children? Am I right? There are some things you cannot do with children. So you kind of want to do those things before you have children. I think they probably want to get financially settled. Kids some day, maybe complete her education.
There are some things we don’t know. We don’t know that she really wanted children. Not every woman wants children. We don’t know that she didn’t have a family business. We don’t know if she wanted to continue the family business because it happened then too. Maybe she wanted to live in a quiet town or maybe she wanted to be a modern woman. The town next to Nazareth was Lachesh, it was a booming, prosperous, modern city built by Rome. Things were happening, it was hopping. Maybe she wanted to be an actress on stage. You don’t know. What were her dreams? What were her plans?
What I am sure of is, I am sure she didn’t plan on a rushed wedding with the Justice of the Peace and a few family members. I am sure of that. I am sure she wasn’t planning on getting pregnant before she was married, because she had been trying to do the right thing her entire life, and it says she was a virgin. I am sure she wasn’t planning on not having a honeymoon, and I know Joseph, it wasn’t in his plans, because it said that even through her pregnancy with Jesus she was a virgin. No honeymoon, that’s not in your plans. Was that in your plans when you got married? I am sure that having kids right away wasn’t in her plans, being so young, or having her name dragged through the mud, being an embarrassment to her family, letting her family down, having to run to Egypt being separated from her family, being bounced around on a donkey in the ninth month of pregnancy, or having a madman chase you all over the country because he wants to take your life and your child’s life. Were you planning that? You have found your name on the scope of the political scenery, and of all times these were bad times. He was a violent man, you didn’t want to be known by this guy, Herod.
It was an ominous task being a parent. Think of this, the head game this plays with you, being the parent of the Savior of the world. How do you avoid screwing up the Savior of the world? It is on your shoulders – the salvation of billions of people – you need to protect this child, not just any child, the One. How do you do that? I am not sure she planned on being on the scope of the cosmic battle between heaven and earth. Read Revelations 12:1-5, because there is a spiritual event going on. Her name came up on Satan’s scope for the first time. She has been part of the spiritual battle for the world. The soul of every person, and now the head demon, the chief enemy of all mankind, is after you. I am sure that wasn’t in her plans.
One day a knock came on the door and God had different plans for her life – better plans, and she had a choice. She had two doors to walk through, her plans or God’s plans, and Mary chose God’s plans. When that happened, a chain of events was released in her life and she experienced everything we read about, because she said yes to God’s plans. Think about what she experienced. She experienced, first, the miracle of God, of a baby, the awe of being a mother, and then, being the mother of the Messiah, and unpacking that. What does it mean to serve a God who comes down in human flesh because he loves people? Just begin to unpack that and the meaning of that event, and being part of world history, all of time will be dated by this event, and to know that you have been part of the salvation of billions of people and all of the miraculous things, the visitation of the shepherds and these coincidental events where you saw the hand of God working in your life -- the Magi, the prophecies of Simeon, Anna, Elizabeth and Zachariah, the angel’s visitation, watching the Messiah ministering his words, and you were part of that, you made that happen. What a wonderful awe-filled experience that had to have been, and that was made possible because she said yes to God’s plans and no to her own.
I think that is key to our own experiences at Christmas time. What are your plans, things that you just do? You don’t even question it. All those things are usually a montage of our own desires or family traditions, the expectations of the in-laws, the expectations of your children, cultural things that we have learned that have been embedded in our minds. You have got to do this in order to experience Christmas. What are your plans? Have you thought about them? What are they producing? Are they producing a sense of wonder, awe, a spiritual presence, a depth in your Christmas celebrations, or is it misery?
I challenge you to perhaps rethink your Christmas holidays and traditions and maybe ask God, “God, I know what my plans are, but I never thought about what your plans are. What are your plans for my holiday?”
Let me read you a story about a woman who is making a pie. She got a phone call. Her son is ill and he is at school and she says, gosh what am I going to do. She is in the middle of baking here so she calculates the time it will take for the pie and the time it will take to get to the school and pick up her son. She pops it in the oven and she runs down to the school, and when she gets to the school, she discovered he is much more ill than she thought and the nurse thought, that he really needs to go to the doctor. As she looked at him, her motherly instincts kind of kicked in and she stopped thinking about anything else but his health. So she takes him down to the doctor, and the doctor gives him a prescription and tells her she needs to get him in bed right away and get some sleep. She takes him home and runs out to the shopping mall to get the prescription, and by this time she is frayed, she is frantic, she is frazzled, and she has forgotten about the pie in the oven. She gets to the pharmacy, she gets the medication, she runs back to the car (this is a true story) and what happens? What does she discover? Her keys are locked in the car. She calls her son on the phone. Her son finally gets to the phone and kind of groggily tells her, you need to find a wire coat hanger and pop the locks. She runs to the mall. Where do you find a wire hanger in the mall anymore? There are plastic ones, there are wooden ones, there are no wire hangers anymore. She finally finds a wire hanger, she runs out to the car, and she looks at it and she can’t figure it out. How do you use this thing to pop the lock? She can’t figure it out. By this time she is just frustrated so she prays, “Dear Lord, my boy is sick and he needs this medicine, my pie is in the oven, the keys are locked in the car, and Lord I do not know what to do with this coat hanger, please God send somebody who does know what to do with it, and I really need that person now.” By that time an old, beat-up car pulls up and a young man in his 20’s, with a t-shirt and cut-off jeans, kind of ragged looking with long stringy hair, his mustache is quite south of his mouth, is coming toward her, and she approaches him and shows him the hanger and says, “Young man, do you know what to do with this? He studies it and looks at it and after a couple of bends and twists, a couple seconds later the lock’s unpopped and she is so excited. She through her arms around him and says, “The Lord sent you, you are such a good boy, you must be a Christian.” He awkwardly said, “No maam, I am not a Christian and I am not a good boy either; in fact, I just got out of prison.” The woman jumped and hugged him again and said, “Bless God, he sent me a professional.”
I think this woman represents a lot of us. You know what was really the most important thing in her life? For a while she thought it was the pie. She was trying to juggle everything, the pie and getting the pie in the oven, and she lost focus on what is really important: her son, the health of her son. She is frantic, she is frayed, she is frazzled and that represents a lot of us and our traditions. We find our traditions so important, but they cause us to lose focus on what is most important, and the most important thing there is about Christmas is Christ, isn’t it? I mean, that is why it was created. I think it is ironic. The irony is thick when people say to me that they are so busy, so busy they don’t have time to go to church during December, during the celebration of Christ. I can’t believe that is in God’s plans. What are God’s plans? Is it in God’s plans that we be financially in debt because of his holiday, that we write 75 Christmas cards? Is that really his plan, that we give a gift to everyone in the family? That we have 9 types of cookies? That we have the best light display on the block? Is it really that important? What is most vitable and is it getting in the way of our experience of the wonder of Christmas?
Jesus talked to someone who did that very thing. He went to a person’s house, and they got so busy in the details, that they forgot their guests in the living room. In the story, there is Mary and Martha, and Martha is so busy, she is frayed and she is frantic and she is frazzled trying to do things for Jesus, to the point that she forgot that he was there. She spent no time with him. Jesus confronts Martha after she blows up at him and at Mary and says, “Martha,” and he is talking to all the Marthas out there, including me. “Martha, you are worried about many things but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better.” And Jesus isn’t saying that our traditions are bad, but what he is saying is that there are some things that are better. And what is better is spending some time to sit at his feet to listen to him and get caught up in the story in a fresh way. That is why we provided the advent calendars. You don’t have to use them, you can do something else, but use some tool. It is just a tool to help us slow down, to see that Jesus feeds afresh. Get caught up in this season of wonder. The advent calendar has daily devotionals, it has a weekly activity, it has an advent wreath. Use whatever will help you slow down, refocus and sit at his feet, and let the original Christmas and its events become absorbed in your heart so it becomes a soulish experience. That is my prayer for you.
Let me close with this one story. It is about Ben Patterson. He is going on a rock climbing expedition up to Yosemite, the highest peak, Mt. Lyle. I will just read it. It would take him all day from their camp to the top of the peak so they started out chattering and cracking jokes. As the hours passed, he writes, the two mountains opened up a wide gap between me and my less experienced companions. Being competitive by nature I began to look for shortcuts to beat them to the top. I thought I saw one to the right of the outcropping of the rock so I went deaf to the protests of my companions.
Soon he discovered why the two experienced climbers of their group had not chosen that path. Half an hour later Ben was trapped in a cul-de-sac of rock looking down several hundred feet of a sheer slip of ice up only about ten feet from the safety of a rock. He couldn’t move just one little slip and Ben wouldn’t stop sliding until he landed in the valley floor about 50 kilometers below.
I was stuck and I was scared, he admits. It took about an hour for my experienced climber friends to find me standing on the rock I wanted to reach. One of them leaned out and used an ice axe to chip two little footsteps in the glacier. Then he gave me the following instructions, Ben you must step out from where you are and put your foot where the first foothold is. When your foot touches it, without a moment’s hesitation swing your other foot across and land it on the next step. When you do that, reach out and I will take your hand and pull you to safety. That sounded good to Ben, but then his friend continued. Listen carefully, as you step across, do not lean into the mountain. If anything, lean out of it, otherwise, your feet may slip out from you and you will start sliding down. This sounded a bit too crazy. As Ben puts it, I don’t like precipices when I am on the edge of a cliff, my instincts are to lie down and hug the mountain to become one with it, not to lean away from it. Yet his good friend, the experienced one, was telling him to lean away from the mountain. Why should he? He writes, for a moment based solely on what I believe to be the good will and good sense of my friends, I decided to say no to what I felt, to stifle my impulse to cling to the security of the mountain, to lean out, step out and traverse the ice to safety. It took less than two seconds to find out my faith was well founded, and it was.
That is really what I am asking you to do, challenging you to do. Go against all of your impulses, all of your natural plans for the holiday, all the things and expectations that people have for you, maybe your own desires and even our cultural desires or teachings, and listen to the Master, the people who know about Christmas, the founder of it, Mary’s mother, and go against those instincts. Do it differently. Follow God’s plans and discover, maybe rediscover, just how wonderful the season can be.
[Let’s pray]
