Oak Chapel United Methodist Church

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Advent is over. Whatever we were going to do to prepare for Christmas is done. We had three full services Christmas Eve, all celebrating the coming of Jesus Christ. Christmas Day has come and gone. The gifts have been given and the special meals eaten. Now we are left to clean up leftovers, return or exchange certain gifts, take advantage of the after-Christmas sales, and possibly take some vacation time. One other important thing remains after we have visited the stable. We are left with the question "What child is this?"

Jesus Is a Disruption

The question is not merely rhetorical, and it goes beyond the sweetness we may associate with the Christmas carol. We may concentrate for a while on the baby in the manger, but those of you who were here at five o'clock on Thursday evening may remember the chaos as children moved about in the sanctuary. I suspect with the number of people in Bethlehem and no space in the Inn, there was some chaos in the streets.

We may also romanticize the stable, but it is a building for the shelter and feeding of domestic animals. It was not a nice clean hospital ready for mothers to give birth. I suspect in the immediacy of the moment that no special cleaning had taken place, the smell of manure may have been prominent, and help for the mother and child was probably very limited. I can only speak from my own experience as an observer when our children were born, but natural childbirth is messy, and it is not serene for the mother or the child. "Silent night, holy night, all is calm" is not about childbirth. Serenity may come later.

Jesus is a Wonder

To poke at our sanitized image of the scene in the stable is not to diminish the wonder of what happened. If anything, my intent is to focus better on the reality of who Jesus was and is. Church doctrine tells us that Jesus was fully human and fully divine. Jesus' divinity and humanity were totally intertwined, not separate. In childbirth God experienced human birth, not just as an observer but as a participant.

Jesus Is a Sign of God's Involvement

In fact God has been a participant since the time of creation. Genesis tells us of God's direct involvement in creation. In later stories we hear of God raising the patriarchs and making covenant with them. Exodus tells of God leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. Moses was saved from death and eventually becomes God's spokesman and the peoples' leader.

Jesus Reminds Us of Moses

We did not read the gospel lesson this morning, but Matthew's gospel interjects into the birth narrative the story of Jesus' family's flight into Egypt and the murderous rage of Herod the Great. The so-called "slaughter of the innocents" (Matthew 2:16-18) recounts a crime so heinous that it continues to confound and confuse us even after 20 centuries of similar, periodic viciousness and conscienceless cruelty.

The flight of the holy family into Egypt allows Matthew to run the story of the exodus backward. Just as a divine word directed Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, in order to escape Pharaoh's cruelty and gain their freedom, now an angelic voice declares that only by returning to Egypt will Jesus safely escape Herod's murderous intentions.

Jesus Was a Threat to Herod Even at His Birth

Many scholars feel that Matthew's primary reason for including this story in his birth narrative is to show that from his birth, Jesus' life has been a divine replay of Israel's first deliverance. The wickedness and willfulness of Pharaoh are wholly reawakened in the person of Herod the Great. Israel's historic exodus out of Egypt is mirrored by the trip of Jesus' family back into Egypt. Like the baby Moses, the baby Jesus is born under a death sentence. Moses was condemned as a baby merely because he was Hebrew. Jesus and the young children of Bethlehem were condemned because Jesus was a threat to the established powers. Both Moses and Jesus were saved ­ Pharaoh could not stop God's plan for the people, Herod could not stop God's plan of salvation through Jesus.

Jesus Brings God's Grace to Us

The epistle lesson from Hebrews is not necessarily easy to follow, but it presents Jesus' solidarity with humanity and God's plan for salvation - past, present, future. From the perspective of what some commentators would call the Glorious Son, the writer includes a verse from Psalm 22, covering the intention of the Son to proclaim God's name and giving a reason for the Son to come in the flesh and dwell among us. We then hear of the Suffering Son, bound to humanity, puting his trust in God in the midst of persecution. Finally we hear the Triumphant Son who was victorious over the powers of death and who through his sacrifice is able to help us. The one who escaped death as a baby, who suffered the oppression of his people and threatened earthly powers, and the one who was put to death is the one who represents God's grace for us in salvation history.

Christmas is the prelude for Easter ­ God coming in human form is the reason why Easter has meaning and without Easter Christmas loses its meaning. Indeed, love came down at Christmas, and Easter is the proof of God's love.

God's Grace for Sins Not Yet Committed

John Wesley spoke of God's prevenient grace, God's grace available to us before we even know we need God or before we are aware of God's presence in our lives. Christmas is one way God's grace has preceded us. But Christmas and even Easter are only part of the story of salvation.

God was at work in the world before Jesus was born, but Jesus marks a turning point where God dramatically changes the story and sets the stage for a new order. God came in a direct and personal way to affect history and to establish a new kingdom, very different from human kingdoms. We do not know when God's kingdom will be fully established, but Jesus has gone before us to prepare the way and to proclaim God's intention for us. The Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles begin to tell the continuing story of God's salvation plan for humanity, but the story is not finished yet. We only know how it will end.

Life is More Precarious Than We Realize

Sometimes God's grace may not seem apparent to us until we look back on a situation to see how God was with us and prepared us. In looking back we may even realize the precariousness of our position. Like childbirth, our rebirth into a new way of life or reclaiming what we may have had can be a difficult experience. It may even be traumatic.  

Looking Death in the Eye

"The Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, senior rector at Trinity Church in the City of Boston, reminds us of the event that turned a good writer into a great one. Just before dawn on a cold winter morning in 1849, a group of Russian criminals were led out to face a firing squad. One of them was a young man named Dostoyevsky. All of them were revolutionaries against the brutalities of Czar Nicholas I; several were professed atheists, all were radicals. A priest carrying a cross and a Bible accompanied them. Lloyd continues:

The first three were handed white gowns and shapeless caps and ordered to put them on, and then they were tied to posts. The firing squad raised their guns and took aim. Drums rolled. And at just that moment a signal came, the rifles were lowered, and a horseman came galloping on the scene announcing a reprieve.

"Although the condemned men didn't know it, the whole thing had been staged to demonstrate the mercy of the czar, who then had them shipped off to Siberia. One of the men who faced the squad went mad. Another went on to become one of the world's greatest writers.

"That moment changed Dostoyevsky's life for good. Facing the absolute certainty of death shattered all of the assumptions he had built his life on, and sent him on a whole new course of reclaiming the Russian Orthodox faith of his childhood. He came to see in the lives of the peasant convicts around him a divine light; the hardened, poor, largely illiterate peasants were people of enormous dignity and great heart. He began to see in them, all of them, the image of Christ.

--Homiletics, November/December 1998

One might wonder if his experience is expressed in the Epilogue of The Brothers Karamazov. "You are told a lot about your education, but some beautiful, sacred memory, preserved since childhood, is perhaps the best education of all. If a man carries many such memories into life with him, he is saved for the rest of his days. And even if only one good memory is left in our hearts, it may also be the instrument of our salvation one day." [The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations, Columbia University Press, Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821­81), Russian novelist. Alyosha Karamazov, in The Brothers Karamazov, vol. 2, "Epilogue," sct. 3 (1880).]  

What Does God Expect from Us

I recently heard the story of a 21-year-old man who went into cardiac arrest while he was undergoing some tests at a hospital. In his encounter with death he was left with the questions of why God had saved him and what God has in store for him. The assurance that God was and is with him provided comfort, but his experience also pushed him in new directions. He was trying to discern God's call in his life and how he would respond to what God had already done for him. I would suggest that these are questions not just for those who have had a brush with death but for all of us as we come to grips with the initial question of "What child is this?"

For me the answer comes at least in part from the short section of a lament found in the reading from Isaiah 63:7-9. The community was crying out, remembering God's grace and mercy, during a time of exile when God's mercy was not evident. In the larger context this portion of Isaiah recalls the people's rebellion against God and God not immediately answering their call. We live in a time when there is much turmoil around us: there is political upheaval at home and wars and economic crises around the world. We are even confronted with six members of a family killed in a Christmas morning fire. When we see these things it may be difficult for us to see God's hand at work, and we may not feel the assurance of God's presence.

Remembering and Responding to God's Steadfast Love

First, the prophet brings to mind for the whole community what God has done in the past and who God has been shown to be. It is important for us to focus on the prophet's memory of the abundance of God's steadfast love. Steadfast means fixed, unchanging, unswerving. God is faithful, even to an unfaithful people. Similar to Isaiah, Dostoyevsky speaks of the "beautiful, sacred memory." When we are confronted with a world that does not seem to make sense, what memory do we recall?

Second, the prophet emphasizes the divine qualities directed to the people of God. "Surely they are my people, children who will not deal falsely." Once we have accepted that this child whose birth we celebrate is the Son of God and that we as brothers and sisters are children of God, how do we respond? Do we only come to worship for one hour each week or do we live a life that accepts what God has done for us and celebrates and shares God's love for us?

God's Presence With Us

And third, the prophet recalls God's personal, direct actions in saving the people when they were in distress and how God was with them all the time. God was with the people of Israel even when they did not realize that God was present. God is present with us in a very real way in the birth of Jesus. Through the gospel stories we have the testimony that "It was no messenger or angel but his presence." God was not only present in human form; God suffered for us to redeem us. God is present with us still through the Holy Spirit.

What child is this? This is the Son of God, come to redeem us.

Our Response

How shall we respond? Remember what God has already done for us and that God is with us. Accept God's precious gift and live a life of love in faith, even when we may not feel God's presence. Call on the Holy Spirit for guidance and strength to accomplish God's will for us individually, for us as a community, and for the world.

Our Prayer

Let us pray.

Lord, keep fresh in our minds the memory of your gift of love. You have been with your creation throughout time, and you have heard the cries of your people. Help us to realize that we are surrounded by your love, even in the midst of hard times, and that you feel our pain and suffer with us. You came to us not in some abstract way but in human form. Open our hearts and minds to accept you and to respond to your call in our lives. May we be a reflection of your abundant love in all that we say and do.

We pray this morning for those who suffer through disease; for those who suffer through prejudice, neglect, abuse, or oppression; for those who suffer for their own misdeeds. Grant them the assurance of your presence and your love.

We praise you for who you are, and we thank you for what you have already done for us. We know that you hear our cries and respond in love. Send us forth now in unity with you and with the faithful ones who have gone before us for we ask these things in your holy name.

Amen.