Dec 25, 1999
This message was given on Christmas Day,
December 25, l999. The sermon preceded the baptisms of
six youth of the congregation.
Message of
Christmas Day, December 25, l999
"God's Gift in Our
Days" John l:l-l4
What is the message we believe and proclaim this
Christmas? Is the Jesus of faith a religious equivalent
to Santa Claus? If so, Jesus is running second in
affections since Santa Claus clearly has a lock on
popular sentiment and a near monopoly on commercial sales
of the season. As a symbol which conveys both the spirit
of giving and the probability of receiving, Santa Claus
is nearly unbeatable. If Jesus is only a religious
reflection of Old Saint Nick, he hasn't a chance except
as a distant runner up.
In the opening chapter of John's Gospel we are told
twice that Jesus was from the very beginning an also ran.
Jesus was in the world yet THE WORLD DID NOT KNOW HIM.
Followed by HE CAME TO WHAT WAS HIS OWN, AND HIS OWN
PEOPLE DID NOT ACCEPT HIM.
In John's era HIS OWN was a reference to the Jewish
people, the majority of whom rejected Jesus as the
Messiah. But who are "his own" now, in this time, in
this place? Are we not "his own?" If so, how do we
receive Jesus now in these days?
Oh, we receive him but in our way, and part of our way
is to blend and blur Jesus with Santa Claus. The result
is a friendly, reassuring Christmas spirit in which the
obligations of giving and the pleasure of receiving make
the economy surge and cause everyone to feel good at
least for the day. That Christmas we can package, unwrap,
and then forget about. While Santa Claus is a potent
symbol, the fact is that most Santa costumes remain
forgotten for eleven months of the year.
The fact that most Jews did not receive Jesus as the
gift of God shows that God does not operate according to
human expectations. If God had respected the messianic
expectations of first century Judaism, more Jews would
have received Jesus as God's appointed one. If God had
acted according to the logic of Greek philosophy, many
gentiles would have easily become Christians. And if
today God would play by our secular rules about
Christmas, God's Jesus would be a great deal more
popular.
But God refused to play by the rules of first century
spirituality as by the expectations of end of 20th
century spirituality. Instead, God chose to create a new
game and many did not understand or did not like God's
approach. God sent his gift but many did not receive the
gift.
The writer Madeleine L'Engle in her book, THE
IRRATIONAL SEASON OF HOLY MYSTERIES, says: "The only God
who seems to me to be worth believing in is impossible
for mortal man to understand, and therefore he teaches us
through this impossible. But we rebel against the
impossible. I sense a wish in some professional
religion-mongers to make God possible, to make him
comprehensible to the naked intellect, domesticate him so
that he's easy to believe in. Every century the Church
makes a fresh attempt to make Christianity acceptable.
But an acceptable Christianity is not Christian; a
comprehensible God is no more than an idol."
It is the incomprehensible God whom the gospel writer
John presents when he states: AND THE WORD BECAME FLESH
AND DWELLED AMONG US FULL OF TRUTH AND GRACE. BUT NEITHER
THE WORLD NOR HIS OWN KNEW HIM.
The unfathomable mystery of Christmas is that God
has embodied divinity in a particular person so that we
may know God better and yet we do not understand God at
all.
The human imagination can not dream up a God who
becomes fully human; the human vision cannot project a
Messiah who allows himself to be crucified. The mortal
mind cannot comprehend a baby's crib as a symbol for a
God who allowed himself to become caged, confined and
crucified.
The incarnation is central to the Christian faith. And
the incarnation is the stumbling block for faith. The
religious thinkers of Jesus' day began to plot his death
because he "called God his own father, making himself
equal with God" (John 5:l8)
Jesus made matters difficult for the religious of his
own time because God has, by the way he operates, made
matters difficult for the religious of all times.
The fact is that many of Jesus' own do not know him as
the Incarnate One. Many believers in Jesus can receive
Jesus as a baby, sweet and innocent. And later many come
to respect him as a wise teacher, a superb social
witness, and a prophet to our spirituality. But the
gospel states: Christ was with God at the beginning;
Christ was active in creation. Jesus was the Word and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word
came to be with us and we did not know he was the
Word.
The God who acts in Jesus upsets all expectations,
even our highest expectations because even our highest
expectations operate on our human plane. We can readily
embrace a love which fulfills us, but we do not want to
empty ourselves to show love. We pay any price to have
just a little taste of immortality, so how can we
understand a God who willingly strips himself of
immortality to become mortal.
We celebrate human success so how can we understand a
God who embraces the divine failure of the cross.
At Christmas it's not Santa Claus, or blatant
commercialism, or ourselves who give us problems, but
it's God who gives us problems should we really think
about the meaning of Christmas…the divine became
flesh and dwelled among us full of grace and truth but we
did not receive him.
Today a half dozen of our younger worshipers seek to
receive Jesus as their Christ, as their Lord and Savior.
We surely all hope that they know what they're doing
because they are asking for trouble. We pray that God
through the Holy Spirit will give them that humility and
willingness to bow before the crucified one and
acknowledge that God has come to us with a gift we can
only begin to comprehend at Christmas. Amen.
Pastor Gene
Preston
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