As I reflected on the theme on this morning’s bulletin cover, I decided to re-listen to the audiotapes of both Jonathon and Daniel’s births. As I did so, I heard voices of joy, of business, of pain, and of life.
Both boys happened to be born in the same birth room, a little more than two years apart. Though they were born in the same room, to the same parents, that is where all similarities end!
One took his time coming into this world and the other one did not. One was born in the late afternoon and the other at 1 minute until midnight.
Both responded to the new world in the same manner – screaming loudly and doing other things. But, right away you could see that they were two different people.
Mary had the same experience that all mothers have had except that the baby she gave birth to was the Son of God, the Savior of the World! And I don’t think that it was all ‘meek and mild’ as we read in the hymns!
I like how JB Phillips who wrote what became a popular paraphrase of the New Testament, (now known as The Phillips Translation), translated John 1:1: “At the beginning, God expressed himself.” In a commentary on today’s passage, Arden Mead shares the ‘translation’ of a Bible student, “From the beginning, God has something to say.”
I prefer to say this Christmas Day, ‘God makes a statement!’ with the birth of the Christ child; with the Word made Flesh. Furthermore, He makes a statement about faith, hope, and love because this day is a day about faith and the object of our faith. It is also a day about hope and the object of our hope. Finally, this day is a day about love and Who loves us! (Overhead 1)
The Magi brought three gifts, ‘gold, frankincense, and myrrh’ or, as we heard a few weeks ago, ‘gold, common sense, and fur,’ to the Christ child sometime after His birth. I suggest this morning that love is like gold because love is golden and God’s great love expressed for us at the manager. I also suggest this morning that frankincense is about hope because it is a gift for deity and we have a God who has given us hope through salvation made possible by the baby who is fully God and fully human. Finally, I suggest that myrrh is about faith because it is a burial spice and it is in the death and resurrection of Christ that we can have faith and trust in God and the hope of eternal life.
God made a great and wonderful statement on this day because through Jesus Christ, we have faith, hope, and love. It is no coincidence that Paul said at the end of I Corinthians 13, ‘There are three things that will endure—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.’ It is rooted in the act of the ‘word became flesh,’ and what we now call John 3:16 and 17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.’
God made a statement about faith because faith is an essential part of our human existence. We have been designed and created to believe in something. Worship and faith go hand in hand. We gather here Sunday after Sunday to worship a God we believe in.
We cannot live without faith. We have to believe in something or someone. The Bible points out the value of faith in Hebrews 11 ‘What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see…it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
I am reminded of the power of faith from an insightful quote in the movie Santa Clause 2. It is one that I have shared before but it is worth repeating, ‘Believing is seeing!’
Here Hollywood agrees with the Bible for once! For as we read in Hebrews 11, ‘[faith] is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.’ What or who do you believe in this Christmas morning? Let each one of us open this wonderful gift of faith; not in some unclear and fuzzy deity, but in a God who took human form – Jesus Christ. For the gift of faith is essential in a world of multiple choices that offers us the world, but not a life as God has created us to live.
Last week the people of Iraq voted for leaders who will help them move closer to a full democracy. I was moved by the emotions of joy in the faces of the people and especially in the dancing jig of an old man who smiled broadly after casting his vote.
When was the last time you and I felt joy in the voting booth? How often have we not expressed more of a moan than of joy?
What I saw in the faces of those Iraqis, long tortured and imprisoned by a ruthless dictator, was hope. Now we do not know how the next year will go and if the elections will create meaningful and lasting change. But hope has found a voice in many hearts.
Hope is a very important gift that we find from the child in the manger. Hope is critical to life for a life without hope is one filled with anxiety and care. We hope that she will wait for us. We hope that the surgery is successful. We hope that he will come home.
Have you ever considered that hope was a key motivation in the Prodigal Son’s father? I firmly believe that Jesus hit a raw nerve with his audience when he told that story because there were fathers in that crowd of questioning people who had such sons or were such sons themselves. (Remember the opening statement of Luke 15: his audiences were both ‘sinners’ and ‘religious complainers.’)
I do not think that the father ever gave up hope that his lost son would come home. I think that he looked down that road often and wondered if the silhouette that appeared on the horizon was his son’s. And I believe this to be true because the father in the story is God the Father, the one who sent Jesus to earth. He has not given up on humanity! He is full of hope!
When we lose hope, we find life bitter and painful. We need hope to keep us going. Let us gladly receive this great gift from the Christ child because the gift of hope is essential in world that all too often fractures our hopes and expectations.
And let’s remember that this gift of hope is a hope in God! Not in circumstances but in the One who stands with open arms and invites us home! One who empowers us to live above our circumstances.
Finally, we need to give the gift of love. I must confess to you that as I get older I understand love less and less. However, I see its power and its importance more and more clearly in my own life and in the lives of others as time and life moves on.
I would remind us this morning that love is more than romance and passion, important as they are. Love is about a deep commitment to those who matter to us and to the Lord. It is about the sacrifice of one’s own agenda for God’s agenda.
In his book, ‘The Four Loves,’ CS Lewis links love and the birth of Jesus in an interesting and insightful way. Writes Lewis, ‘As God becomes Man “Not by conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God,” so here; Charity (or love) does not dwindle into merely natural love but natural love is taken up into, made the tuned and obedient instrument of, Love Himself… Thus in our very instincts, appetites, and recreations, Love has prepared for Himself, “a body.”
In other words, the coming of the Christ child creates a transforming gift of Love that, as we allow it to work through us as well as in us, and all of our other loves as well, stands the chance of becoming transformed and therefore transforming us as well. And it is this transforming love, which Jesus would clearly speak of in John 3, and which makes possible the reality of tremendous change in our hearts and lives that His coming was designed to do in the first place.
Let us gladly receive and give this golden gift of love because it is the gift that all of us desire the most. It should be the motivation behind our gift giving of today and tomorrow.
As I conclude this morning, I want each one of us to close our eyes for a few moments. (No snoring please.) And I want us to imagine ourselves leaving the manger. We have just observed the birth of the baby Jesus.
We have seen the sparkle in Mary’s eyes. We have seen the smile on Joseph’s face. There is great joy. We have seen new life enter the world.
What do you take away from your time at the manger? What do you ‘get’ from the Christmas story?
I well remember the overwhelming feeling of excitement and being awestruck when Jonathon was born. It was the first time I had experienced a live birth (and thank God it would not be the last) It was one of the most spiritual experiences in my life. I can remember feeling a pleasure and an amazement that I had helped bring new life into this world. It transformed me and gave me a new role – father. And life, I am very grateful to say, has never been the same since. (Neither have I been the same since, too.)
Merry Christmas and Amen!
Sources:
Lewis quotes are from The Four Loves. © 1960 Harcourt.
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