Saint Luke 2:21-52
The world has moved on from Christmas.
Even though the song tells us quite correctly that there are twelve days the world gives the celebration 24 to 48 hours at best.
The rest is all prelude with Christmas music being played non-stop on one Chicago radio station since {And I’m not making this up} November 1st.
Throngs shopped at the Christkindl market which the time Lowell and I visited before Christmas was crowded with smiling faces eating, and buying, and drinking but last Wednesday as we walked through to go to the theatre was filled only with workers dismantling the place.
It is enough to make you want to sigh.
Some sigh in sadness that Christmas is over. Other’s sigh in relief.
You can always tell the difference between the two groups by the way they talk about their Christmas celebrations. If they say, “We’re having people over this Christmas!” that’s good. If they say, “We’re having people over this Christmas” not so much.
When either group goes home, and the dishes are done and put away there may also be a sigh of contentment or relief.
Airline passengers may be sighing that they finally are where they want to be.
But in the church, we continue to celebrate. {Check under your tree for the eight milking madens which should have arrived today! What you are going to do with them I’ll never know except to put them with the menagerie that is already there.}
Christmas goes on because the story of Jesus only begins with a baby lying in a manger. We love that image, but Saint Matthew reminds us in a seldom read passage that this very same child grew, became strong, and had the favour of God upon him.
Jesus grew up and became a man whom the favour of God rested.
It is an image we gloss over. It is an image we sometimes forget but Jesus grew up, grew strong, and taught us the important things about God’s presence and love.
Jesus doesn’t remain weak and helpless he grows.
That is the only way we can know for sure that what St. John in his gospel tells us that the Word, the eternal Word of God – God from God, Light of Light, the One who set the stars in the courses at creation and flung the planets into being – God has “become flesh.” Or, as Dr. Eugene Peterson paraphrased it in The Message. “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”1
This is regentrification at his very best! Why would God choose to do this? We may sigh as we wonder why God would do this. Why would God bother?
In 1957 J.B. Phillips, writer and Bible translator, wrote a short story entitled “The Visited Planet.”
Phillips imagined a tour of the universe by two angels, one as old as creation, and the other newly formed amidst the host of heaven.
The older angel showed off wonder upon wonder, the birthing fields of stars, nebulae thousands of light years across, distances and depths beyond imagining.
At length, as the attention of the young angel began to flag, they entered a back lot of the Milky Way, the galaxy that includes our sun.
As the two of them drew close to our star, and its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked dull as a dirty tennis ball to the little angel whose mind was filled with the size and glory of all he had seen previously.
“I want you to watch that one particularly,” said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.
“Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me,” said the little angel. “What’s special about that one?”
“That,” replied the senior solemnly, “is the Visited Planet.”
“Visited?” said the little one. “You don’t mean visited by...”
“Indeed, I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and perhaps not over-clean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory.” And at these words he bowed his head reverently.
“But how?” queried the younger one. “Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendours of His Creation, and millions more that I ‘m sure I haven’t seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?”
“It isn’t for us,” said his senior a little stiffly, “to question His ‘whys,’ except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers as you seem to be. But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that. As to why He became one of them...how else do you suppose He could visit them?”
The little angel’s face wrinkled in disgust.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he said, “that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?”
“I do, and I don’t think He would like you to call them ‘creeping crawling creatures’ in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them."
Phillips concluded his story with these words: “The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.”2
It is almost beyond ours too. That God would not only visit us but move into our neighbourhood to stay with us.
While such thoughts may be beyond our comprehension for the present all we need to do is open our hearts and minds and accept that the visit did occur and all because God loves us.
It’s amazing I know but it’s the story of Christmas and it does not end with a sigh.
As the carols fade and the decorations come down you may sigh and wonder if it was all true but stick with the story, watch that child grow, listen to his words, and see what he did and it just may be enough for you to keep Christmas in your hearts all through the coming year knowing that you are loved and remembering as you sigh in either joy, or sorrow, or just plain exhaustion:
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine.
Love was born at Christmas.
Star and angels gave the sign.
________________
1. St. John 1:14. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).]
2. J B. Phillips, “The Visited Planet,” Sermon Central, December 14, 2009, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon-illustrations/74708/the-visited-planet-by-sermon-central.
________________
Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke
1 January 2023
(82) January 1, 2023: The Name of Jesus | Saint Luke Chicago - YouTube
No comments:
Post a Comment