|
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Grace, mercy and peace be to you …
Well, if you were with us for one or both of our earlier services this evening … we hope you got caught-up in the party spirit of celebrating what God has done for us this night in Jesus Christ… That was earlier.
And so now… let’s take some time to exhale… to catch our breath … as we have the opportunity, at this hour, to take a more reflective and contemplative approach to the events of the First Christmas.
Time for us to think about what this event means for us personally … as we are on the brink of entering the second decade of this new century and millennium.
And the key to this… is thinking about Christmas not so much as a one-time event. Not as something that happened back in a stable in Bethlehem on a given night during that time when Caesar Augustus ordered a census of the entire Roman world … nor an event that takes place tomorrow, in homes across Louisville and the world in the year 2009.
Not an event that gets remembered for a week or so … or until the tree is dismantled and packed away until next year.
That’s sort of the way we looked Christmas earlier tonight. Something that hits the short-term memory with a big bang … and is soon relegated to the past, as more pressing items jump out at us on the calendar…
Sort of an occupational hazard of the event-to-event world many of us … maybe, especially the younger ones of us … live in.
If we want to get into psycho-babble terminology… we might define the distinction we’re making as the difference between process and the product. The question being is the end product what’s most important?… or the process which produced it?
Earlier, I will admit, the spotlight was on the end product. Christmas. Jesus, our Savior, is born. God has come into the flesh. God and man are reconciled. Sleep in heavenly peace.
Indeed there’s nothing wrong at all with the end product. If fact, we’ve noted that it’s probably the greatest miracle God has worked in creation outside of the resurrection. And something we spent a couple of good hours or more celebrating earlier this evening.
The only problem is … as an event, even as miraculous as it was, we tend to see it as a one time happening. Something like the Fourth of July. We celebrate it once a year. And yet, how often do we take note of what’s different today, tomorrow and the next day because of it?
My mother’s most un-favorite day of the year was Mother’s day. Be nice, celebrate Mom one day a year … and then take her for granted for the other 364. She actually accused us of that once.
That’s why we’re stepping back a bit at this hour. The end product, Christmas is great … but what about the process? What about what made it happen? … What about what brought it about? … What about what found it’s fulfillment in Christmas? And how are we part of that?
Well, we’ve often referred to the Bible as God’s Love-letter to mankind. Or even more succinctly, His Valentine. If we could refer to that as an end product, the Bible … to what could we compare Christmas? Perhaps in the same way … Christmas is God’s greatest Gift to us, namely Himself.
And so, if that is the real end product, … what is the process that brought Christmas into being and is still at work in the world today.
God’s love? Well, God IS love … Love goes more to who God is, than what He is doing.
Perhaps backing up to Advent would help … we saw that our Season of Advent was all about preparing for Jesus’ coming … or … preparing our hearts to receive this Gift of God we refer to as Christmas.
But we also noted that this gift of God was also coming again … as the fulfillment of all the prophecies that speak of Jesus’ second coming at the end of time.
And yet, Jesus comes to us even now … as we receive Him on a daily basis.
And that’s what we’ve been looking for!… That’s the process that we want to spotlight in this Hour. A Christmas gift of God that does not end … that’s not put away with the decorations … that doesn’t go into hiding during Lent … a gift of God by which Christmas comes and continues to come and produce what God desires in our hearts.
Now, pardon us if we get a little bit away from Luke 2 this hour … That describes the event. But the apostle John better records for us these words of Him who came … and what is now happening because He came …
Jesus speaks in prayer to His Father about His disciples and also us:
20"My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me…
"Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them." (John 17:20-21, 25-26 NIV)
You see … that’s Why the event, we call Christmas, occurred. As Jesus prayed: “That I myself may be in them.”
Why? He says, “That the world may believe that you have sent me.”
Ha! That’s Christmas in Process! God now in us! Christ Jesus in us, in such a way that the world would Know that Jesus is God and Lord, sent by His Father … Christmased By Him, if you will … for the sake of the whole world.
So, whether WE like it or not … we CAN’T put Christmas away with the ornaments. We CAN’T … forget about it until next year! We CAN’T ignore the reason why Jesus came on Christmas, or just consider it only during the month of December.
He has now involved us in the process that made Christmas Come. The Love of the Father that caused Him to Send Jesus is the same Love that is in our hearts … that makes us a representative of Jesus to the world.
He has put His name on us. We’re Christ-ians. We are now Jesus’ sons or daughters … those who believe in Him through the message of the Disciples. Part of the family … those who have an inheritance in heaven.
For why? So that the Process of Christmas can continue. That Jesus might be Christmased in the hearts of those who do not yet Know Him as God, Savior and Lord.
And again … we don’t have a choice about that. When God Christmased you at your baptism … when that Love of Christ, and Christ Himself came to live in Your heart by the Power of the Holy Spirit … God had a purpose.
Yes, part of that purpose was that He loved you so much from the beginning of the world that He determined to make you His own … and at the same time, He had a purpose for Your life on earth as well … Just as He had a purpose for Jesus in the manger.
God would have the world to know that Christmas is truly about His sending of His Son into the World … to free it from the bondage of Sin.
And God would have the world know that you have been sent as well to express His love in a way that only a person who has Christ in His or her heart truly can … that the world might truly come to know Jesus as well.
So … You now are “Christmas in Process.” You are the means by Which Christmas now comes into the lives and souls of others.
Christmas doesn’t come today by angels, nor by a company of heavenly Hosts … but by Jesus Himself who now lives in your heart. That though the message of your words and deeds by the Spirit of Christ in you … the light of Christmas may dawn in other hearts whom God touches through you.
All praise to God, who has Christmased us to be His!
In Him
Amen.
|