Christmas Eve 2017
Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke
2:1-20
The latest
Marvel Comics superhero movie is the third Thor movie, Thor: Ragnorak. It received significantly better reviews than the
previous two Thor movies, which were not very good. One reason that this Thor
movie was better was that for the first half hour or so, Thor isn’t invincible.
He loses his mighty hammer, which means he doesn’t have a lot of the power he’s
used to having available to him. Thor’s still strong, but so are other guys.
He’s captured and pitted in a Roman gladiator type contest, which he loses.
Thor, this great Norse god, is weaker than his opponents, for the first time in
any of the Marvel movies. It makes him a little more relatable, because it
makes him a little more average, and it’s part of what made this Thor movie
better than the previous ones. We see him lose. We see Thor as if he wasn’t a
superhero, as if he wasn’t one of the Avengers.
Christmas is
similar, in that at Christmas is when
God took on human form, that’s what the word ‘incarnation’ means. God loves
us so much that he sent Jesus, who was both fully God and fully man. Jesus
wasn’t your average person, but he was a little more relatable than some God
whom you couldn’t even look at face to face or you’d die. Jesus was here, among
us. Walked the earth, ate food, loved people, got upset, forgave people, fed
people. Physical, tangible, material. That’s what Christmas is about: God becoming
material. Not exactly the sort of materialism one typically associates with
Christmas. Christmas isn’t about things and decorations and presents under the
tree. Christmas is about God becoming material in baby Jesus. That’s the
greatest gift of Christmas. God came down in the person of Jesus Christ.
The early
church had to flesh out this doctrine and just what we believe about Jesus. A
clergy colleague of mine refers to this as the “first war on Christmas.”[1]
You see, in the 4th century, there was a prominent church deacon named
Arius who taught that Jesus was not fully God, that Jesus had not been around
since the beginning. This teaching was in spite of the very first verse of the
Gospel of John saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God and the Word was God.” And Arius gained quite a following. Well, the 4th
century was also when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity
and made it the state religion. Constantine didn’t want division in the church
and so he convened the first Council of bishops at Nicea. One of those bishops
was the gentleman we know as St. Nicholas. While we are familiar with the
legend about St. Nicholas secretly giving gifts, another legend says that at
this Council, St. Nicholas became so enraged by Arius claiming that Jesus
wasn’t fully God that he punched Arius in the face! The other bishops deemed
such violence inappropriate for a bishop and they stripped him of his title and
put him in prison. He managed to escape later on and the Council went on to determine
that yes, Jesus was both fully God and fully man. Arius was declared a heretic.
And the Nicene Creed was written, declaring Jesus as eternally begotten of the
Father, true God from true God. That’s also found in the second verse of “O
Come, All Ye Faithful,” and that’s why it says Jesus was “begotten, not
created.” Jesus wasn’t created, because he’s God. Yet in Jesus, God put on
human flesh. That’s the incarnation. And if you hear the phrase “living
incarnationally,” which I used to hear when I served in Nicaragua, it means
living with the people. God came
here, to live with us.
Christmas is about God being here. That’s what Emmanuel means, God with us. God is no longer in the
pillar of fire during the exodus or a spirit hovering over the water in Genesis
or kept only in the Ark of the Covenant. God with us. Emmanuel. We’ve been
singing “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” all Advent and now Emmanuel is here. God
became incarnate and is now here among us. That’s what we sang in the second
verse of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail
th’incarnate Deity, Pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.” It’s
curious that Emmanuel didn’t make it into the list of names in Isaiah 9, along
with “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.” Yet that’s because Isaiah already talked about Emmanuel back
in chapter 7. Just two chapters before Isaiah talked with the King of Israel,
King Ahaz, who was terrified at the imminent attack from an enemy country.
Through Isaiah, God told Ahaz that he would survive the attack and to ask for a
sign. Ahaz refused to ask God for a sign, yet God gave him a sign, anyway: “The
virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Emmanuel
(which means ‘God is with us’).”[2] Jesus, Emmanuel, is God-with-us.
I don’t know
if your family has a special family prayer that’s always said before my meals.
My mom’s family does. It’s actually from the hymnal, “Be present at our table,
Lord.” It’s usually a good sign when a new significant other joins the family
dinner table and is quick to learn the prayer, because it means they’re
invested in the family. It’s grace, said before dinner, an invitation, “be
present at our table, Lord.” We know God is everywhere, yet it helps us to
state the obvious and it helps us to make it an invitation to intentionally
include God at the family dinner table. God is here, present. God is with us.
God is with you. That’s Emmanuel. That’s what we remember and celebrate at
communion, too. This is our church family dinner table. We begin the Great
Thanksgiving, the great prayer before the meal, by saying “The Lord be with
you. And also with you.” Emmanuel. God is with you.
So, now what? It’s 2017, not 2,000
years ago. Jesus lived his life on earth, died, was resurrected, and then
ascended into heaven. He didn’t leave us alone, he send the third person of the
Trinity, the Holy Spirit, to be with us. God is still with us. Yet, what now?
Well, now we spread the good news. We offer light to those who still walk in
darkness. We hold out hope for those who have lost their hope. We spread joy.
We spread peace. We remind each other that God is with us, whatever situation
we’re going through. God is with you at school and at work and at home and in
the hard phone call and in the doctor’s office and in the waiting room and at
the graveside. God weeps with you at the bad news and celebrates with you at
the good. God gives you strength to give a hug to someone who needs it. God
gives you courage to help a stranger.
The
Trans-Siberian Orchestra has a song called “Old City Bar.”[3]
It’s about a bunch of strangers at a bar on Christmas Eve. A child comes inside
the bar and asks if the crowd knows that there’s someone lost standing outside
the door. The bartender takes all of the cash out of the register, flags down a
cab, puts the lost girl in the taxi with instructions to go to JFK so that she
can get home for Christmas. The next stanza says,
“If you want to arrange it
This world, you can change it
If we could somehow
Make this Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
To know who needs help,
You need only just ask.”
If we could somehow
Make this Christmas thing last
By helping a neighbor
Or even a stranger
To know who needs help,
You need only just ask.”
Now what? Now we spread that hope and
help and love from that Christmas. We can “make this Christmas thing last” by
helping those who need help, whether a neighbor or a stranger. We can be Jesus
by helping those who need help, by doing what Jesus did: walking alongside each
other, sharing our food, loving each other, forgiving each other, whether
neighbor or stranger. God is here. Let’s help make his presence known and felt.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment