Category: News

Hespeler, 25 December, 2022 © Scott McAndless

Matthew 1:18 21, Luke 1:26 38, Luke 2:1 20, Matthew 2:1 12

The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told. But, as they travelled along, they just couldn’t help but talk to each other about what they had seen and about how it had and had not fit with what they had expected.

One of them in particular was one of those shepherds, you know, who spends way too much time out alone with the sheep on the pastures and develops a liking for the sound of his own voice. He had developed a habit of constantly giving voice to his thoughts – every little thought that ever came into his head immediately passed through his lips without ever bothering to pass through any sort of filter.

“Man, wasn’t that great,” he said? “And it was just like the angel said. There was the baby and the manger and the swaddling clothes – everything. Still, I can’t quite say that everything was exactly what I was expecting. I was thinking that when we got there it would be a silent night, a holy night – that all would be calm, all would be bright round yon virgin mother and child. But I guess I didn’t reckon on what it is like to be in a stable full of animals in the middle of the night. Calm and silent are not really the words I’d choose.

But wasn’t that little baby something? He was so cute when his little mouth screwed up funny. Looked just like his mom too. And he was so good natured! You know, he was behaving so well that at one point, when he was sleeping and the cattle were lowing because they needed to be milked, the baby awoke. And I said to myself, “The little Lord Jesus, no crying he’ll make.” But, of course I was wrong. No sooner had the lowing gotten going than Jesus started to scream his little head off. And he wouldn’t stop neither – kept right on screaming until his mom gave in and started nursing him. I’ll give that to him, that kid knows what he wants.

Oh, and by the way, Simon, thanks for suggesting that we needed to get back to the flocks when you did. I’m kind of thinking that we just got out of there in the nick of time. Something just didn’t quite smell right (if you know what I mean) and I had the impression that maybe Mary was about to suggest to one of us that we could have the very special honour of changing the baby’s swaddling clothes.

Oh, I’ll never forget this night! It might not have been what I was expecting, but I know that it was just as it needed to be. And I’ll tell my children and my grandchildren all about it. And, maybe when I tell them, I will say that it was a silent night as well as a holy night. And I might even say that when the cattle were lowing and the baby awoke that the little Lord Jesus didn’t cry because, of course, you have to tell the kids something to get them to settle down at Christmastime (or Hanukkah or whatever it is that we celebrate at this time of year).

But I’ll remember that that little baby in the manger was a child just like I once was – with all of the problems and troubles any child has to deal with. Somehow that makes this birth more important than just about anything else.

Do we romanticize the manger and the stable when we think about the Christmas story? Of course we do. And one of the reasons why we do that is that Christmas is such a special time of the year. When we think about where it all started, we certainly don’t want to dwell on the negative aspects of the story – the lice that infested the straw, the cow dung on the floor. But it is not just a matter of trying to create a positive feeling of Christmas. It is also about how we think about that child who lay in that manger.

If you ask most Christians who Jesus was – what was his essential nature – you will often get the simple answer that Jesus was – and is – God. We tend to think of Jesus, above all, as being entirely divine. I mean, maybe he looked human and sometimes acted human, but his humanity was just a matter of appearance. And so the Jesus we think of doesn’t have to  struggle with the kinds of things that we struggle with in this life.

But that is not what the Bible tells us about who Jesus was – nor what the church has agreed about the nature of Jesus down through the ages. The Jesus presented to us in the Bible may be entirely divine, but he is also is entirely human. Yes, he does extraordinary things – miracles and wonders. And yes – the New Testament writers all insist – he was “without sin,” which means more than anything else that he lived his life in a perfect and unbroken relationship with God. But, for all that, he was completely human – perhaps the most complete human who has ever lived, if you want to think of it that way.

But what about what the angel said to Joseph in his dream, “what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” What about Jesus being the son of God and the very incarnation of God? Isn’t that what Christmas is all about? Absolutely! But you need to understand what that word means – in-carn-ate – it means, literally, to turn something into meat. To say that God became incarnate in Jesus is to say that God became flesh – human flesh –  completely and utterly – that God became just like you and like me. And it has to mean that Jesus, as a man, shared in everything that we as people have to go through. Otherwise, what’s the point? Otherwise it’s all just a big charade.

You know, sometimes I think that the song that best captures what was achieved on Christmas two thousand years ago is not any Christmas carol that I have ever heard (as wonderful as some of them may be) but a pop song that was recorded by Joan Osborne in 1995: “What if God was one of us / Just a slob like one of us / Just a stranger on the bus / Trying to make his way home.”

That, in my mind, is what Christmas is really about. It is an exercise in “what if.” What if God didn’t just hang back in his comfortable heaven – watching us from a distance (to quote a different pop song)? What if God decided to enter completely and utterly into human experience and to do it for a lifetime. The answer to that “what if” question, leads us to the Christmas story and to the life of Jesus.

And what does that mean? It means that, if you turn to Jesus as your Lord, you are not turning towards a God who has no understanding of what it is like for you to make your way through this life. You come to a God who knows something about human frailties and human emotions and how much they can mess you up. I would even go so far as to say that Jesus struggled with things like doubt and depression and despair – even if he never gave into them – because these things are also part of what it means to be human and there is nothing essentially sinful in these things.

The angels sent the shepherds to the manger in order that they might meet a saviour who had been born “for them.” Well, the only kind of saviour that could really be for them was a saviour who knew what it was like to be them. It is the kind of saviour that God has sent for you too. Thanks be to God because, otherwise, where would we be?

So no, I don’t really think that there was a lot of real, practical silence in the place of Jesus’ birth that Luke describes in his gospel. But we need real silence in our own hearts to contemplate what that birth and that coming really mean.

A fun, short video for this evening.

Hespeler, 24 December 2022 – 8pm Christmas Eve Service
Luke 2:8-14

https://youtu.be/7gnqtAwO_dU

There is a famous Christmas story, I’m sure you have heard it. It is called The Gift of the Magi by O Henry. It tells the story of a loving young couple who both want to give the perfect Christmas gift to their mate.

The husband decides that he wants to give these beautiful pure tortoise shell with jewelled rim combs that will compliment his wife’s beautiful long hair. The wife, for her part, decides to give her husband a Platinum chain upon which to fasten the gold family heirloom pocket watch that he inherited from his father.

The Twist

The problem, of course, is that neither can afford to pay for these extravagant gifts. And so the wife decides to sell her hair to buy the chain, while the husband sells his watch to buy the combs. Both of them manage to give the gifts they want to, but at the cost of not being able to use the gifts that they receive.

It is a sweet little story about generous giving with a nice little humorous twist at the end. But it is perhaps a reminder that the gifts that we give can surely be a sign of our love. But then again, they can also be signs of other things, can’t they?

Another Couple

There was a young couple who were spending their first Christmas together. And the husband wanted to give the perfect gift to his wife.

The young wife had an ambition. She wanted to go to school and become a doctor. She had the marks to do it. And had earned scholarships that would make it, if not exactly financially easy, at least possible.

But her young husband wasn’t quite so sure about that. He was worried that if she pursued such a demanding degree, that she wouldn’t be able to take care of him, that she wouldn’t be the wife of his dreams anymore. He had been subtly trying to steer her towards a career that would demand less of her time and energy.

The Shopping Trip

And so he went shopping for a gift. After looking around all day, he had finally narrowed his choice down to two possibilities. One was a beautiful silk dress. He knew that this was just the kind of thing that would flatter her figure and appearance perfectly. She never really wore this kind of outfit, but he always just figured it was because she didn’t want to spend the money. It was, you see, a designer dress and very expensive.

His other option was one that he really wasn’t all that fond of. But he had heard her mention that it was something she really wanted. It was actually just an old used stethoscope. He found it in a second-hand shop so it wouldn’t cost much, but he could actually tell that it was really well made. But the gift seemed cheap to him.

The Gift Becomes a Sign

So, what do you think? Two gifts. One really expensive and all about making her fit his idea of who she was supposed to be. The other kind of cheap, but it would actually show, not only that he actually listened to her, but that he was willing to support what she really wanted.

And you probably have an idea which gift he ought to get. But I actually wanted to underline something else. Each gift would be a sign, wouldn’t it? Whichever he chose, it would be a sign about the health of their relationship and of where it might be going. And, honestly, the really expensive gift would probably be a bad sign, while the cheaper one might actually be a sign of hope for the future. So, you see, a gift can be a sign.

A Birth in an Odd Circumstance

And the angel said to the shepherds, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” So, you see, a gift can be a sign. And that sign is not just about God sending his own son to save us, it is about the form in which that gift is given.

I know that many people have told stories and given sermons about the Christmas story down through the years. They offer various explanations for why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem and for why it was that, when it came time for the child to be born, there was no room for the family and they had to lay the boy in a manger and wrap him in bands of cloth. But the author of this gospel does not really offer any explanation for it. He just says that this is what happened, he doesn’t say why.

The Explanation

No wait, that’s not quite right. He does offer one explanation. He says that all of it happened in precisely this way because it was a sign. It was a sign that the Saviour was born for a bunch of crude shepherds. It was a sign that the gift that was given was given with a deep understanding of people who struggle to find shelter or to put food on the table. It was a sign that the gift was given by a God who understands both the aspirations we carry in our hearts and the barriers we struggle to overcome to get there. It was a sign of the true nature of the gift.

That gift is a sign for you tonight.

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