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December
4, 2004
(Jimmie
Johnson)
Isaiah 2:1-5
The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be
established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised
above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples
shall come and say, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of
the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us
his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion
shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many
peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against
nation, neither shall they learn war any more. O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk in the light of the LORD!
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Matthew 24:36-44
“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels
of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of
Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those
days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they
knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too
will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field;
one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding
meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake
therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what
part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake
and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also
must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.
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THREE YEAR olds are intuitively theological. They constantly are
intrigued by life and death and relentlessly probe with the question:
Why? We had our three-year-old granddaughter, Hannah, for the weekend
before Thanksgiving. Because she was here, Sherry and I decided
to put the Christmas tree up early so that we could enjoy her helping
us decorate.
As we anticipated, the ornaments Hannah placed on the tree were
about two feet off the floor and mostly on one branch. But with
each ornament Hannah, Sherry, and I became more caught up in the
delight of such preparations. It was so much fun that we didn’t
stop with the tree. We also got out all our crèches. We have
manger scenes of all sizes. Hannah played with the smallest and
gotme to play the part of one of the animals. She typecast me as
a donkey, a talking one at that! I had to talk the way she imagined
a donkey would talk so that I could guide the wise men to where
the baby Jesus was. It was great fun and delight.
Then one morning she walked by the largest crèche and stopped.
She kissed the baby Jesus and then turned theological. She asked
her grandmother, “Who is Jesus and what is he dodin?”
(“dodin” is Hannahesee for “doing.”) As
I started preparing this sermon, I spent time staring at the same
manger scene which had prompted Hannah to ask who is Jesus and what
is he doing.
I knew someone was missing. I needed another character present in
order to really answer Hannah’s questions about the baby Jesus.
This missing character is the only one who can help us avoid sentimentalizing
and romanticizing Christmas. Yet none of us have a figure standing
in for him in our manger scenes. We have shepherds, wise men, the
baby, Mary and Joseph. We have lambs and donkeys and maybe an angel
placed at the periphery. That is pretty much our Nativity scenes.
There is no weird, scary- looking dude outfitted in camel’s
hair, whose appearance and gruffness would probably frighten the
baby and the parents, stampede the animals, and intimidate the magi
where Herod failed to do so. The annual Christmas Invader, John
the Baptizer, though not present at the original manger that first
Christmas, is essential if we are ever to grasp who the baby truly
is
and what he really does.So what little model figure would work?
No stores sell a John the Baptizer figure. So what would do the
trick? Perhaps a figure like the Incredible Hulk would work. I don’t
have such a toy, but some of you might. If you wish to give me an
Incredible Hulk figure, I’ll promise to place him in my manger
scene. I suppose a Godzilla figure would do. It’s the fiftieth
year of Godzilla, and he might work. He was a fire breather much
like John. It’s the shock value after all, the “cold
water in the face value” that either the Hulk or Godzilla
figures would provide as Christmas party crashers much as John invades
our Christmas plans each year during Advent with the sole purpose,
it seems, of growling at us. This shock value frightens us out of
our spiritual sleepiness and the lethargy of our usual preparations,
the decorating, hiring caterers, going to see the Nutcracker, listening
to the Charlie Brown Christmas CD.
Being yelled at by a man with bug parts in his teeth will get your
attention and set your own teeth on edge with his strange appearance
and his loud shouting about “repenting and preparing”
and insisting we confess our sins and get drenched. John believes
you can’t really be ready to meet God’s advent in your
life if it is just business as usual. In other words, we must consciously
make plans and preparations if we are to know the connection between
the Christmas baby and our lives, to know how he is doing something
for us and to us. Our daily spiritual sleepiness rarely produces
new growth nor bears good fruit.
The visitation of God’s presence requires a preparation called
repentance. Yet, repentance has been hijacked by angry religionists
with their punitive god images---images full of revenge, images
of an unquenchable fire that tortures with God’s fiery rage.
The rest of us tend to dismiss the whole idea of repentance if that
is the best God can do. At least, I do. If vengeance is all God
is up for, who cares? We ourselves can do better than that. Can’t
God?
But what if repentance is so much grander and more bodaciously transformative
than it is destructive? What if this morning we think of repentance
as the huge step of simply telling ourselves the truth, the honest
truth about who we are, who we have become?
There is another kind of fire, you know, the kind of which John
speaks. It is the kind of fire that doesn’t consume but transforms,
the kind of fire which cleans and makes new and clears away. It
has flames that melt and mold and refine what you thought you had
lost forever. Scripture says that “perfect love casts out
all fear” (I John 4:18). How’s that for a new understanding
of God’s fire? How’s that for an understanding of God’s
fire as a love which consumes God? After all, God could command
rocks to sing praise if God simply needed adoration. But God desires
us to enjoy God through sharing our lives with God.
The Baby Jesus is the great sign that God intends us no harm. A
God consumed with the desire to humiliate, to injure, or harm would
never send a baby as the sign of the approaching fire of judgment.
The Baby Jesus is the sign that God wants us to love God. The Baby
Jesus is the certain sign that God’s fire is never intended
as a weapon but as a warmth. The Baby Jesus in your crèche
is God’s own interpretation of what repentance is about. It
is about your turning from suspicion regarding God to trusting God,
turning to trust that God is only out to love you, not out to harm
you.
I promise you if you will once again remember God’s perfect
love for you, you will experience a Christmas like no other. You
will know the true reason for the season. You can tell the child
within you and all the children around you that the Baby Jesus is
Emmanuel and what Jesus is doing is God living up to God’s
Name: God with Us.
The strange character which should be in our manger scenes doesn’t
really despise us. John the Baptist is frustrated with us, for we
are in such danger of losing all that makes us and keeps us human
and in God’s image. Before it is all too late, why don’t
you discover repentance as the beautiful, though painful, turning
of your life to God’s perfect love so that all fear is burned
away.
Who is Jesus? And what is Jesus doing? Jesus is God as one of us.
Jesus is the consuming love of God, and what Jesus does is to show
us that God is not out to get us with hurt and harm butto transform
us with love so that what is left of us is what is most true of
us.
Put John somewhere in your manger. He could save the meaning of
Christmas for you.
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