Three Hundred Sixty-Five Blank Pages

The Sunday night message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on January 1, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 43:15-19.

            It’s New Year’s Day!  It’s a new year!  2022 is over.  It’s 2023!

            When you think about it, New Year’s Day is probably about the most arbitrary holiday we have.  There’s no real reason the year needs to start on January first.  It could start on April twelfth or July ninth or October twenty-first.  And there’s no real reason to make a big deal out of the start of a new year anyway.  There’s nothing special that we’re commemorating.  There’s nothing important that happened on this day.  We simply turn a page on the calendar.  We change one digit in the way we track the years.  That’s it.  It’s no big deal.

            But when you think about it some more, turning that page on the calendar is kind of a big deal.  Because when you turn that page, the next page is blank.  In fact, there are three hundred sixty-five blank pages.  Do you ever think of a year that way?  Three hundred sixty-five blank pages.  And each one of us is going to write a story on each one of those pages.

            And the things is, each of those stories is going to be different.  There will be some common elements--elements of comedy, of tragedy, of drama, of warmth.  Elements of all the things that make up life.  But how much of each of those elements there will be, what order they will come in--that will be different for each one of us.

            And there’s one other thing that’s going to be different for each one of us.  That’s how we handle all those elements of life.  And that may be the most significant difference of all.  Because we know, as the author of Ecclesiastes tells us, that in life there’s a time for everything.  Weeping and laughing, mourning and dancing, love and hate--there’s a time for all of those things.  And the chances are that all of those things will show up on some of those blank pages that are stretching in front of us in this new year.

            So, how do you feel about that?  Are you happy, eager, looking forward to what’s going to happen, to how you’re going to fill those three hundred sixty-five blank pages that make up 2023?  Or are you worried, apprehensive, fearful of what may happen, of what those pages may hold?  Or, are you just kind of blasé about the whole thing, just kind of neutral, figuring that whatever happens is what’s going to happen and that’s just the way it is?

            I’m not saying that any of those attitudes is wrong.  It’s not like our outlook on 2023 is sinful, whatever it is.  But I think God tells us how God would like us to feel in our reading from Isaiah for today.

            Listen to this part of our reading again:

I am the Lord, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.  This is what the Lord says--Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past.  See, I am doing a new thing!  Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?

To me, God sounds excited in that passage.  God is eager to do something new.  God is so fired up about this new thing God is going to do that God can hardly wait to get started on it.  And God wants us to get just as excited about this new thing that God is going to do as God is.  I think you can just sense that excitement in the words God says there.

            And it makes perfect sense to me that God would be excited about this.  I mean, think of a time you decided to create something.  You were excited about it, too, right?  We’re always excited when we decide to create something.  And the farther we get into it, and the more we can see that it might turn out to be something good, the more excited we get.  And as it starts to really take shape, we just can hardly wait to show it to someone.  And of course, when we do, we’re hoping they’ll be just as excited as we are about it.  We want them to share the excitement we feel over this thing that we’re creating.

            I think God feels that same way.  I mean, God must enjoy creating, right?  God created this world and everything in it.  And God did that with care.  God did that with love.  God did that with attention to detail.  Think of all the things that have to be just right for the world to be the way it is, for the world to work the way it does.  When God created the world, God created a hundred, a thousand, a million things that would work together in just exactly the right way for everything in the world to work right.  You only do that when you love to create.  God loves to create.  And God is happy when we appreciate God’s creativeness.

            Our future, our 2023, is going to be created by God.  Yes, the things we do have an impact on it.  The things other people do have an impact on it, too.  But if we truly mean what we say in our prayers, if we really mean it when we say “Thy will be done”, if we really surrender to God’s will and allow God’s Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us through life, our 2023 will be created by God.

            So I think that, in large part, how we feel about those three hundred sixty-five blank pages that will make up our 2023 depends on how much we trust God.  Do you, do I, trust God enough to allow God to write what goes on those three hundred sixty-five pages?  And do you, do I, trust God enough that we believe whatever God writes on those pages will be good, will be right, will be best not just for ourselves but for everyone else, too?

            This is not a rhetorical question.  I want us all to think about it.  Including me.  We know what the answer should be.  We know we should trust God with those three hundred sixty-five pages.  But the question is not should we trust God.  The question is do we trust God.

            Because the truth is that it’s not always easy.  It’s not always easy to trust God.  Each one of us, sitting here tonight, and each one of us watching the livestream, has hopes and dreams of what 2023 might bring.  We may not have told anyone about them.  We may not have even really thought them through ourselves.  But we have them.  They may not be for anything fancy or special.  They might be--we might have hopes of getting a better job or a new relationship or better health.  We may have hopes that things will get better for a loved one.  But our hopes may just be that our lives will continue on the same path they are right now, because we’re happy that way.

            But whatever it is, we all have hopes and dreams of what 2023 might bring.  That’s natural.  But our hopes and dreams for 2023 may not be the same as God’s hopes and dreams for us in 2023.  They might be, but they might not.  God may have an entirely different plan for those three hundred sixty-five blank pages.

            Now, sometimes we can see that God’s plan is a lot better than ours.  When that happens, we eagerly jump on God’s plan.  But sometimes, we cannot see that.  In fact, sometimes we don’t understand God’s plan at all.  Sometimes God’s plan makes no sense to us whatsoever.  Sometimes we look to the heavens and say, “God, seriously?  This is your plan for me?  This is where you want me to go?  This is what you want me to do?  For real?  How’s that ever going to work?”

            It’s okay to ask questions like that.  For one thing, asking questions like that helps us be sure that what we see really is God’s plan.  Asking those questions can clarify in our mind if we really are being led by God, or if there’s something else going on here.  

For another thing, God never minds if we ask honest questions.  Remember the story of God telling Moses to go to Egypt and tell the Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go?  There’s page after page of Moses questioning God.  And God does not get mad at Moses for asking those questions.  God just patiently answers them all.  God does not mind if we ask questions.

But, just as with Moses, there comes the time where we realize that God has answered all our questions.  And there’s only one thing left to be decided.  Are we going to follow where God is leading us or not?  Are we going to trust God enough to follow God’s plan, even when it’s different from our plan?  Do we have enough faith in God to follow God’s plan even when we don’t understand it and even when, maybe, it really does not make any sense to us?

God has given us the gift of 2023.  Three hundred sixty-five blank pages.  God wants to do a new thing for each one of us on those pages.  It is springing up even now.  May each of us trust God enough to allow God to write on each of the three hundred sixty-five blank pages that will make up our 2023.

 

God and Us

The Sunday morning message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on January 1, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Hebrews 2:5-18.

            It’s New Year’s Day!  Time to put the past behind us and move forward!

            At least, that’s how a lot of people tend to think of it.  We make New Year’s Resolutions.  We talk about “new year, new you”.  We think of it as turning the page, making a fresh start.  

            And none of that’s wrong.  In fact, in can be a good thing.  Sometimes we need a fresh start.  The last year–in fact, the last few years–have been tough in some ways.  It’s nice to think about being able to just put it all behind us, wipe the slate clean, and start over again.

            But you know what’s odd about that?  During Advent, and on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we talk all the time about how we need to keep the Christmas spirit with us all year round.  And yet, once we get to New Year’s Day, we tend to just drop the Christmas story completely.  We leave the baby Jesus in the manger with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds, and we move on to something else.

            And that’s not necessarily a good thing.  Think of it this way:  when we’re looking for a fresh start, we want that fresh start to be a good one, right?  We want to make sure it goes in a good direction.  In fact, we want to make sure it goes in God’s direction, the direction God wants us to go in.  And we’re not going to do that if we leave Jesus behind.  We’ll only go the way God wants us to go if we keep Jesus in the front of our minds.  And we can only keep Jesus in the front of our minds if we really stop and think about who Jesus is, what He did and does for us, and how incredible it is that we can have such an awesome relationship with him.

            Our reading from Hebrews tells us a lot about that relationship.  It starts by asking a question, a question we all should ask when thinking about our relationship with God.  It asks, “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him?”

            That’s a really profound question, when you think about it.  So often, we take our relationship with God for granted.  We assume we can always talk to God.  We know we can ask God for anything, and so we do.  And sometimes we take it farther than that.  Sometimes we try to tell God what to do, and we get upset when God does not do what we want God to do.

            We need to remember who we are, and who God is.  God is holy.  God is righteous.  God is perfect.  God is all-powerful.  God is almighty.  God is all-seeing.  God is all-knowing.  And yet, God is also all-caring, all-loving, all-gracious, all-compassionate, and all-merciful.

You and I are–none of those things.  We are not anywhere close to any of those things.  We are so far removed for any of those things that we can barely see them.  

And when you think about that, our question from Hebrews is a really good question.  What are we human beings, that God should care about us?  What am I, that God should care about me?  What are you, that God should care about you?  Why does the almighty, all-powerful God care about mere human beings like you and me?

There’s no logical reason, at least not from a human perspective.  And the author of Hebrews does not try to give us one.  He just says that God does, and he marvels at it.  After asking his question, he says of us humans:  “you have made them a little lower than the angels; you crowned them with glory and honor and put everything under his feet.”

Think about that.  God does not just care about us.  God does not just love us.  That would be incredible enough, but God goes farther.  God trusts us.  God trusts us so much that God has put us–we mere human beings, people like you and me–God has put us in charge of His precious creation.

We take that for granted sometimes, too, but really, think about it.  God created the world.  And God created it with great care.  God created it to be beautiful.  And God loved what He had created–He said Himself how good it was.  And then, God took this beautiful world that He loved, and He entrusted it to us.  God made us just a little bit lower than the angels themselves, in giving us the honor and the glory of being in charge of His creation.

We’ve not always done a good job with that.  In fact, sometimes, we’ve made a mess of it.  I’m not talking about environmental concerns–that’s a separate issue.  I’m talking about sin.  Our sins showed that we were not worthy of the status God gave us.  We are not worthy of being “a little lower than the angels”.  We are not worthy of the glory and honor God gave us.

But God did not give up on us.  Instead, He sent Jesus to us.  Jesus came to earth, the divine Son of God.  Fully divine, and yet, while on earth, fully human, too.  And while he was on earth, Jesus had the same status that we have.  As the author of Hebrews says, Jesus “was made lower than the angels for a little while”.  And he was sent here to die.  Jesus was “crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

Jesus, because of his death, was crowned with glory and honor.  But that’s not all.  Because of Jesus’ death, you, and I, and everyone who believes in Jesus as the Savior, has the same glory and honor that Jesus does.

            Let me say that again.  You, and I, and everyone who believes in Jesus as the Savior, has the same glory and honor that Jesus does.  Do you truly believe that?  Does it even make sense to you?  Does it make any sense at all, to say that we would have the same glory and honor as the divine Son of God, Jesus Christ?

            It does not make sense to me.  And yet, I do believe it, because that’s what the Bible says.  Listen to it:  “Both the one who makes people holy”--Jesus–”and those who are made holy”--you and me–”are of the same family.  So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”

            You are Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  And so am I.  Not because of anything we’ve done.  But because of what God did by sending the divine Son to earth.  And because of what the divine Son did by being obedient to God the Father.  “Obedient to death–even death on a cross”, as the Apostle Paul puts it in Philippians Chapter Two, Verse Eight.  

That death is the method God chose to give us the honor and glory that we do not deserve.  Let me quote Hebrews one more time:  “In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered.”  

            We could not have the honor and glory that God has given us if not for the obedient suffering and death of Jesus.  We could not have the honor of being Jesus’ brothers and sisters if not for the suffering and death of Jesus.  We could not have salvation and eternal life if not for the suffering and death of Jesus.

            Think of the incredible love for us that shows.  As the author of Hebrews points out, God did not do that for angels.  God did that for human beings.  That shows that, at least in some ways, you, and I, and all other human beings are more important to God even than the angels!  After all, the angels are not Jesus’ brothers and sisters.  The angels are not put on the same level as the divine Son of God.  You are!  And so am I!  And so is everyone else who believes in Jesus Christ as the Savior.

            God did not have to do that.  God could have any relationship with us that God chooses to have–that’s part of what being God is all about.  God could have just cut us off and had no relationship with us at all.  God could have treated us as slaves and required us to serve Him.  God could have treated us as a nuisance, people who were not worthy of His time.

            But instead, God chose to treat us as His children.  God chose to give us honor and glory.  God chose to treat us as brothers and sisters of the divine Son of God Himself.  That is such an awesome, incredible, amazing, astounding, unbelievable thing.  In fact, I don’t think we have words to describe what God does for us.  

            It’s a new year.  And it’s fine to want to make a fresh start.  But let’s make sure that fresh start is the right kind of fresh start.  Let’s make that fresh start a start that repents of our sins and asks for forgiveness.  Let’s make that fresh start a start that acknowledges and claims faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  Let’s make that fresh start a start that expresses gratitude and thankfulness for the glory and honor God gives us in making us His children.  Let’s thank God and praise God for the love God gives us.  And let’s make that thankfulness real, by showing God’s love to everyone we can.  Then can be a happy new year, not just for us, but for everyone!

 

Not Just Today

The Sunday night message in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  December 25, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Luke 2:1-20.

As we’ve been looking at the Christmas story, we’ve been pointing out how many of the people in it were ordinary people.  They were people like you and me, going through their lives one day at a time, doing nothing particularly remarkable.  Then, all of a sudden, God called on these ordinary people and asked them to do some extraordinary things.  Today, on the day we celebrate the birth of the Savior, we’re going to take a look at the shepherds and their role in the Christmas story.

            If you want to get an idea of who the shepherds were, think of some of the cowboys who were in this country in the first part of the twentieth century.  I don’t mean the Hollywood version of cowboys, I mean the real thing.  I’ve had the privilege of getting to know a few people who, when they were young, were involved in some of that, and some of you have, too.  They have quite the stories to tell.

            Contradicting what Hollywood says, it was not a glamorous life.  It was a very hard life.  You were out in the elements constantly, no matter what those elements were.  In the summer, it was high heat and humidity.  In the winter, it was bitter cold and snowstorms.  There was everything in-between as well.  You found shelter whenever and wherever you could.  You did not get paid very much.  You were kind of looked down on by the higher-ups in society.  It was not the kind of life very many people actually aspired to live.

            That’s pretty much who the shepherds were, back in Jesus’ time.  They were better than the beggars—at least they were working for a living—but they were pretty much on the bottom rung of that part of society that was employed.  Those are the people to whom God chose to send an angel.  Those are the people God chose to be the first ones to know about the birth of the Savior.

           I’m sure that, on that first Christmas night, the last thing these shepherds expected was that they’d see an angel.  I don’t doubt they believed in angels.  Angels show up quite a few times in the Old Testament, and they’d have heard all those stories.  The thing is, though, that these shepherds knew they were considered low-class people.  They might have believed that angels could appear to people, but if they ever thought about it, they probably thought they were the last people on earth God would send angel to.

            Then, as they’re doing their jobs one night, there’s an angel in their midst.  We don’t know if this was Gabriel again, the one who appeared to Mary and Joseph.  The Bible just says it was an angel.  But just as almost every other time an angel appears in the Christmas story, the shepherds are terrified.  The angel tells them not to be afraid.  Then the angel says those words that many of have heard so often, the words we hear every time we watch the Charlie Brown Christmas show.  “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.  Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign to you:  You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

            “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’”

            And that’s it.  That’s all the Bible says about the angels coming to the shepherds.  Do you think it really happened exactly that way?  I mean, I’m not saying the Bible is wrong or anything, but think about it.  If you read the words the angel said, it takes about thirty seconds.  If you allow some time for the appearance and disappearance of the angel and the heavenly host, it takes about a minute.

            Was that really it?  Did the angel say some more stuff that’s not recorded?  Did the heavenly host have more to say, too?  Or did this all really just take a minute or less?  Did the angel and the heavenly host just pop in, say their bits, and leave?

            If so, try to imagine how you’d feel if you were those shepherds.  You’d think you’d been seeing things.  You’d wonder if you’d fallen asleep and dreamed that.  You’d be hesitant to even say anything to the others.  You’d be afraid they might think you’d gone nuts if you even started talking about seeing an angel, much less a heavenly host.

            You look around at the others, and you notice everyone else kind of doing the same thing.  They all have strange looks on their faces.  Finally, someone says, “Hey, did you guys see something?”

            You go, “Well, uh, maybe.  What kind of something?”

            “Well, I don’t know, just sort of like, well, a person, kind of, but not exactly.  It was sort of like they had this light around them.”

            “You mean, like an angel?”

            “Well, now I’m not saying an angel, but, you know, now that you mention it, yeah, sort of.  I mean, I’m not saying it was an angel.  I’m just saying that, now that you’ve put that idea in my head, it did kind of look like an angel, in a way.  You know?”

            You go on like that for a while, and eventually everyone admits that they saw the same thing.  They all heard the same thing, too.  So, you all decide you’re going to go down to Bethlehem and see what the angel was talking about.  When you get there, there it all is, just like the angel said.  There’s Mary, and there’s Joseph, and there’s the baby, this baby who’s going to be the Messiah, the Savior.  In fact, that’s not really accurate.  The angel did not say the child is going to be the Savior, the angel said the child already is the Savior, even though he’s still a baby.  The angel did not tell the shepherds about something that was going to happen someday.  The angel told them about something that was happening right now, in their presence.

            The shepherds told everyone there what had happened, about the angel and the heavenly host and all that.  Everyone was amazed, as of course you would be.  Then, we’re told, “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.”

            We never hear about these shepherds again in the Bible.  We don’t know what happened to them.  We don’t know what they did.  Again, though, try to imagine yourself as one of them. You’ve seen the angel.  You’ve seen a great company of the heavenly host.  You’ve seen the baby who is the Savior.

            You think things would just go back to normal after that?  I don’t.  Now, they may have stayed shepherds.  The prospects for career advancement for a shepherd were not that great back then, and they still had to make a living.  I don’t think they just went about their business, though.  Listen again to what the scripture says.  It says “the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

            I don’t think that’s something the shepherds just did that night.  I think it’s something the shepherds did the rest of their lives.  I think they told this story every chance they got.  I think they glorified and praised God every time they could.  Every time they saw someone, they talked about this.  When they were by themselves, they talked about it to each other.  I think they re-lived this night and glorified and praised God every day that they remained on this earth.  That might even be how Luke knew about the story and included it in his gospel.  If so, that would make these ordinary, low-class people among the most important people who ever lived.

            There’s a lesson there for all of us, I think.  What those shepherds did is what all of us are supposed to do.  No matter what we do for a living, no matter what our job is, even if we don’t have a job at all, this is what we’re supposed to do.  As we go about our lives, we’re supposed to glorify and praise God always.  We’re supposed to talk about the Savior every chance we get.  We’re supposed to spread the story of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ all our lives, for whatever time we have left on this earth.

            Do we do that?  For most of us, the answer is no.  It is for me.  I don’t do nearly as good a job of glorifying and praising God as I should.  I’ll do it in church.  I’ll do it at a gathering where a prayer is expected.  But just as I go about my everyday life?  Not very often.  That’s probably true of a lot of us.

            The point is not to make anyone to feel guilty.  The point is that we need to change.  That’s one of the points of the whole Christmas story, really.  We need to change.  That’s part of why Jesus came to earth.  We need to change.  Jesus brought a message that said we need to change, that we need to turn away from our sins, that we need to glorify and praise God always.  It’s a message that was true two thousand years ago, and it’s a message that’s still true today.

            Any time is a good time to make that change.  There could be no better day, though, than this day, Christmas Day.  On this day, we are doing what the shepherds did.  We’re celebrating the birth of the Savior.  Let’s not stop with today.  Let’s do what the shepherds did tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that.  Let’s glorify and praise God every day of our lives.  Let’s spread the message of the Savior every chance we get, as long as we’re on this earth.

 

We've Got Connections

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 25, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Luke 2:8-21.

            What we read for today in Luke is what we think of when we think about the Christmas story.  It’s the bit Linus reads in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.  It’s Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus in the stable with the shepherds around.  This is what we want to hear on the Sunday before Christmas.  After all, who does not love hearing a story about a baby?

            And it is an amazing story, really.  The divine Son of God, taking human form, coming to earth to live among us.  Living as a human being, feeling all the things we feel, enjoying all the things we enjoy, suffering through all the things we suffer through.  Limited by all the limitations we have.

            You know, at Christmas, we talk all the time about Mary and the faith she had and all the suffering she endured.  And that’s appropriate, because she did have tremendous faith and she did have to endure a lot of suffering.  And we talk about Joseph, and the faith he had, and all the things he had to do, taking care of his family and so forth.  And that’s appropriate too, because Joseph did have tremendous faith and he did have to do a lot of things to take care of his family.

            But we never talk about the sacrifice Jesus made and the suffering he endured.  I mean, we talk about that during Lent.  We talk about how Jesus was arrested and beaten and tortured and ultimately killed on a cross.  But we don’t talk about the sacrifice Jesus made just by coming to earth in the first place.  In fact, we usually don’t think about Jesus’ birth that way at all.

            But we should.  After all, we’re told that Jesus, the divine Son of God, was with God the Father from the beginning.  Remember what we read in John:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Jesus, the Word, was with God the Father from the very beginning.  And Jesus had been with God all through everything that had happened since, everything that had happened up until this point in history.

            And now, Jesus was separated from God, just like we are.  I mean, yes, Jesus had divine powers, power that you and I do not have.  But I have to think he could not possibly feel the sort of connection to God the Father that he had in heaven.  He had that same separation from God that we have.  He could pray, of course, just like we all can, and he could go meditate and try to feel close to God, just as we all can.  And there were times, such as at the transfiguration, when he was briefly given some of that connection back.  But for the most part, when he was on earth, it looks like Jesus was separated from God just like you and I are.

            I wonder when Jesus really felt that.  I assume he knew it was going to happen, but when did he really start to feel it?  Did he not feel it until he was an adult, and fully realized who he was?  Did he feel it already when he was young, during that episode when he was twelve and went off by himself, away from his parents, to go and visit with the rabbis?  Or did he already feel it in this scene, as a baby, when he was lying in the manger with Joseph and Mary beside him?

            Whenever it was, it had to be really hard for him.  He knew it was going to happen, or at least I would think he did.  I’d think Jesus would have to have known, when he agreed to come to earth and live among us, that he would not have that same connection to God the Father that he had while he was in heaven.  But did he really understand what that was going to feel like?  Did he know how hard it was going to be to lose that connection with God, even if it was only going to be for those years on earth?

            It had to be a hard thing for Jesus.  It was a tremendous sacrifice Jesus made.  He voluntarily gave up that connection he had with God.  And he did it for us.  Jesus gave us an amazing gift when he did that.

            You know, when you think about it, Jesus really gave up his life twice for us.  We know about how Jesus gave up his earthly life for us when he died on the cross.  But Jesus also gave up his heavenly life for us when he was born to Joseph and Mary in the stable.

            Jesus gave up his earthly life on the cross to save us from the consequences of our sins.  He took the punishment that should have gone to us, so that if we simply believe in him, we will go to heaven.  And that’s an incredibly awesome thing.

            But Jesus gave up his heavenly life to do something just as important.  Jesus gave up his heavenly life to come here to earth and live among us.  Jesus gave up his heavenly life so we could know God better and understand God better.  Jesus gave up his heavenly life so that we could see who God is and how God wants us to live.

            In other words, Jesus gave up his connection to God the Father so that you and I could have a connection to God.  Before Jesus came, people did not know God, not in the way you and I can.  They did not have a personal relationship with God.  Oh, maybe a few of them did, the great prophets like Moses and Joshua and people like that, but not everyday people.  Not people like you and me.  There was no thought that common people could just talk to God.  Why would God listen to you?  Why would God listen to me?  If you wanted to talk to God about something.  You asked him to pray for you, and they you waited and eventually asked the priest for God’s answer.  The priest might be able to talk to God, especially if he was a high priest, but you and me?  No way.

            And Jesus changed all that.  Jesus came and showed us, individuals, common people like you and me.  He showed us how to talk to God.  He showed us how to listen to God.  He showed us that we did not need to go through a high priest to talk to God, we could do it ourselves.  Everyone—you, me, and everyone else you can think of, from the highest of the high to the lowers of the low—can have a personal relationship, a personal connection, to God.  Jesus gave up his connection to God so that you and I could have a connection with God.

            Did Mary and Joseph understand that, do you suppose?  Probably not.  Not totally, anyway.  They probably understood some.  They knew this was a special child.  The angel had told them that he was the divine Son of God who would save people from their sins.  But did they really appreciate how that was going to work or exactly what it meant?  We don’t understand it that well now.  Could they really have understood it then?

            But you know who maybe did understand it?  The shepherds.  You know, as you look at this story, the shepherds really don’t seem to have that much of anything to do with it.  They did not know Joseph or Mary.  They were nobody important or special.  They were just ordinary people, people like you and me.  They were just getting by in life, doing their jobs, doing what they had to do.  In George Carlin’s phrase, they were doing just enough work to not get fired and getting paid just enough not to quit.

            And then, all of a sudden, an angel appears to them.  And then a whole company of angels.  And they tell these shepherds about this incredible thing that’s happened.  And they tell them to go see the baby.

And they do.  And they know.  They don’t know everything.  They probably don’t understand what Jesus had to give up in order to be born as a human being.  But they know something is different.  They know they have a connection to God they’ve never had before.  And they know that, somehow, this baby caused that.  They know that somehow, in some way, the birth of this baby means that they are connected to God in a way they never were before.

And they know that they’re never going to lose that connection.  They know that connection they have to God will always be there.  And so they go away, happier than they’ve ever been in their lives, so happy that they cannot help but tell everyone they meet about this incredible thing that’s happened, this incredible thing that they’ve not only seen but that they’ve felt in their hearts.

We have that same connection to God that the shepherds had.  We have it through Jesus Christ.  And that connection will always be there for us, too.  We can give it up.  We can let it go.  But God will never take it away.  Any time we choose to turn back to God, that connection to God will always be there for us.

Jesus gave up his life in heaven to give us life on earth.  And Jesus gave up his life on earth to give us life in heaven.  It’s an incredible gift.  It’s the gift of Christmas.

           

Support System

The sermon given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 18, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Luke 1:39-56.

            The Bible verses we read today are a part of the Christmas story we tend to overlook.  And I’ve been as guilty of that as anyone.  Even though I preach about Advent and Christmas every year, I don’t think I’ve ever preached on these verses.  We tend to skip right from Mary and Joseph’s conversations with angels right to the trip to Bethlehem and the birth in the stable.

            But of course, that skips right over at least nine months of Mary’s life, right?  Mary had to go through the whole pregnancy.  She had to go through everyone knowing she was an unmarried woman who was going to have a baby, and of course that was a lot more of a scandal in Mary’s time than it is today.  

            Mary obviously knew she had done nothing wrong.  She knew about her conversation with the angel Gabriel.  But nobody else knew about it.  We don’t know if she told people.  I mean, she must have told someone at some point, or Luke would not have found out about it.  I would think she probably told Jesus about it at some point, although the Bible does not tell us that.

            But at this point in the story, we don’t know if she’s told anyone, or how they reacted if she did.  We don’t even know if she’d told Joseph yet.  What the Bible says, right after giving us the account of Mary’s conversation with Gabriel, is “At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth.”

            Elizabeth, as you probably remember, was a relative of Mary’s.  Gabriel had told Mary that Elizabeth, a woman well past child-bearing years, was going to have a baby.  

            And when you think about it, that’s probably why Mary went to Elizabeth.  Elizabeth was already going to have a child in a miraculous way, although not in the same way Mary was.  So if there was anyone in the world who was going to believe Mary’s story, it would be Elizabeth.  Mary went to the one person who she thought would accept her and believe in her.

            And of course, Elizabeth did.  In fact, Elizabeth more than accepted her, she welcomed her.  She was thrilled at what had happened to Mary.  Listen again to what she says:  “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear.  But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.  Blessed is she who believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her.”

            Can you imagine how Mary must have felt, when she heard that.  Elizabeth believed her!  Not only did Elizabeth believe her, she thought it was wonderful.  And she rejoiced that Mary had believed what the angel told her.  Mary had been afraid of what was in front of her, but the way Elizabeth looked at it was that Mary had been given an incredible honor.  That of all the women in the world, Mary, was the one chose to be the mother of the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

            That had to be so incredibly affirming for Mary.  It had to be such a relief, to know that someone believed in her, to know that someone would be on her side.  To know that she would not have to go through this alone.  That even if everyone else thought she was lying, and looked down on her, and would have nothing to do with her, there was at least one person who knew she was telling the truth and would be there for her.

            And once she hears that, Mary can respond the way she did.  She responds with this wonderful song/poem we heard today, what’s become known as the Magnificat.  She says, “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.  From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me–holy is his name.”

            Think about that.  Mary went from being scared about what was going to happen to her–so scared that she left her home and traveled at least several miles, on foot–to being excited about what was going to happen to her.  She felt honored.  She felt privileged.  She was no longer scared about what was going to happen.  She rejoiced in it!  She said God had done something wonderful for her.  She believed all generations would call her blessed.  And that entire attitude transformation came because of one person who was there for her, who believed in her, and who she knew would be on her side no matter what.

            You have heard me say many times that God put us into families, and into communities, and into churches, for reasons.  And one of those reasons is that God knows life is too hard for us to go through alone.  We’re not supposed to go through it alone.  We’re not supposed to try to go through it alone.  We need each other.  We need to support each other.  We need to encourage each other.  We need to love each other.  We just plain need to be there for each other.

            You know, God would not have had to create the church.  God could have found other ways to spread the gospel message.  After all, God is God–God can do anything God chooses.  God created the church as a gift.  The church is a gift to us, to you and to me.  The church is a place where we can find that support, that encouragement, that love.  The church is the place where we can find people who will be there for us, and who need us to be there for them.

            Now, I know the church is not perfect.  The reason the church is not perfect is that it’s made up of people, and people are not perfect.  Anything that involves people automatically becomes imperfect.  Whether it’s a government, or a corporation, or a community club, or a school, or a sports team, or anything else, if it has people in it, it will be imperfect.  That’s just the way it is.

            But here’s the difference between the church and all those other groups.  The church has God.  That’s not to say people in those other groups don’t believe in God.  But none of them is led by God.  None of them has serving God as its top priority.  None of them has the love of God and the love of others as its primary goal.  The church does.  In its bumbling, imperfect, sometimes even sinful way, the church does try to serve God.  The church does try to be faithful to God.  The church does try to show love to God and show love to others.  

            That’s why we need the church.  That’s why we need even a bumbling, imperfect, even sometimes sinful church.  Again, that’s the only kind of churches there are.  But we still need them.  Because the church is where we can find people who are trying, in their imperfect way, to be faithful to God.  And they show that faithfulness by supporting each other.  By encouraging each other.  By loving each other.  By just being there for each other.  

And people like that are people we all need in our lives.  Even Mary needed someone like that in her life.  And you and I need people like that in our lives, too.

I pray that all of us will always be part of a church, so we can have those people in our lives.  If you’re watching on the livestream tonight, I pray that you can be part of a church, and have those people in your life.  And in fact you are part of a church.  This church.  We are here for you.  We want to support you, and encourage you, and love you.  All you need to do is contact us.  You can leave a comment, you can send a direct message through facebook, you can send a text, you can give me a call.  Our church’s number is on our facebook page.  My facebook page is under Jeff Adel.  If you’re watching on the livestream tonight, you are part of this church.  We want to be the people who are in your lives to support you, and encourage you, and show love to you, be there for you.

Because when we have that support, and that encouragement, and that love, we can accept the challenges of life.  And we can do more than just accept them.  We can do what Mary did.  We can embrace them.  We can thank God for them.  We can feel the honor, and the privilege, that it is to be chosen by God, and to be allowed to serve God in whatever way God asks us.  Maybe we will even feel blessed, the way Mary felt blessed after she received that support and encouragement and love from Elizabeth.

Let’s find ways to be there for each other.  Let’s find people who will be there for us when we need them, and let’s be there for them when they need us.  And then, let’s reach out to others who need people to be there for them.  When we do that, we will still be an imperfect church.  But we’ll be a lot closer to being the church God wants us to be.

 

The Warning of Herod

The message given in the Sunday night worship service in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on December 11, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 2:1-23.

            You know, when you come to tell the Christmas story, you have a lot of characters to deal with.  You have Zechariah and Elizabeth, the parents of John the Baptist.  You obviously have Mary and Joseph.  You have the angel Gabriel.  Later you have the shepherds and the wise men.  The thing about a good story, though, is that it always has to have a villain, and that’s true of the Christmas story, too.  Tonight, we’re going to talk about the villain, King Herod.

            Herod is not someone we want to talk about in the Christmas story.  In the traditional Sunday school Christmas pageants, he’s often left out entirely.  He’s certainly not part of anybody’s nativity scene.  None of the advent or Christmas lectionary readings talk about Herod.  The only time he gets in at all is on Epiphany Sunday, and then the focus is usually on the wise men, not on Herod.  At Christmas, we want to talk about the good stuff, about the angels and shepherds and the baby in the manger.  That’s understandable, but as we’ve said before, everything in the Bible is there for some reason.  So let’s look at Herod and think about why this is part of the Christmas story.

            Now, Herod was a king in some ways, and in other ways he was not.  This area, Judea, was still under the control of the Roman Empire, and so Herod could only be king as long as the emperor said so.  Still, as long as the empire could collect taxes from Judea and as long as Judea was not causing problems for the emperor, the emperor really did not care very much what Herod did.  So, in a lot of ways, Herod was pretty much in control there.  In that sense, he really was pretty much the king.

            At the time Jesus was born, Herod was about seventy years old.  Given how long people lived at that time, he was considered a pretty old man.  He’d been in power for over thirty years.  A lot of people in Judea could not remember a time when Herod had not been the king.  Herod himself probably had a hard time thinking of himself as anything but the king.  He was used to being king, he liked being king, and he was going to stay king any way he could.  Plus, Herod had three sons whom he hoped would take over after he died.

            Another fact we need to remember when we look at this story is that the political history of Judea was not all that stable at the time.  The Romans had only ruled Judea for about sixty years.  The people of Israel did not like the fact that they were ruled by Rome.  They wanted independence, and every once in a while there’d be a rebellion against the empire.  These were all things that Herod knew very well.

            Then, too, the position of king was not always the safest one to hold.  There were always people out to take over, and the way they’d usually try to do that was by killing the king.  When you were king, you always had to watch your back.  You had to be careful who you trusted, and you had to always be on the lookout for people plotting against you.

            When we think about all that, Herod’s actions in the Christmas story become more understandable.  Not okay, not excusable, but understandable.  You’ve got a king who has been king so long that he cannot envision himself not being king.  You’ve got a king who knows there are very few people he can trust.  You’ve got a king who knows there are always people trying to get him out of the way and take away his throne and his power.

            So, imagine you’re King Herod.  You’re sitting there, minding your own business one day, and these “wise men”, these astrologers, come by.  They tell you there’s someone who’s been born to be king, and he’s some place nearby, and they want to come and worship him.  Now, people back then tended to buy in to signs and stars and such, so this would not have seemed like a particularly strange story.  You’d tend to believe it.  So, how would you react?  What would you do?

            Our scripture says that Herod was frightened.  I’m thinking he was near panic.  Everything he’d worked for all his life was being threatened.  He does what to him seemed like the logical thing.  He calls together his advisers and finds out where, in prophecy, this king is to be born.  Then, he sends the wise men to that town, Bethlehem, tells them to go look for the new king there, and to let him know exactly where this king is when they find him.

            As you know, the wise men found Jesus, but did not report back to Herod.  Herod eventually found out about that and got even more panicky.  So he had all the male children in Bethlehem two years old or under killed.  

            What an awful thing.  Think about that.  Every boy two years old and younger was killed.  For no reason whatsoever, other than Herod’s fear that he might no longer be king.

            With all this, we come back to the question:  why is this part of the Christmas story?  You know, Herod died not too long after the events described in the Bible took place.  If the wise men had not gone to see him when they did, he might never have known about Jesus at all.  The children in Bethlehem would not have been killed and Joseph would not have had to take Mary and Jesus and run to Egypt.  Things would have been a lot easier for everybody.

            The Bible tells us this was to fulfill Old Testament prophecies, but that’s really not an answer.  Could God not have fulfilled these prophecies some other way?  In fact, God could have not had these prophecies be made at all.  If these prophecies came from God, then all these things have to have been part of God’s plan from the beginning.  We assume that God never does things without a reason.  I said at the beginning that every good story needs a villain, and that’s true, but God surely had more of a reason than just giving us a good story.  What would the reason be for this?

            Well, any time we start to think about God’s reasons for doing things, we’re speculating.  None of us can every fully understand the mind of God.  As I thought about it, though, I think I may know at least part of the answer.

            All the other main characters in the Christmas story are examples of people with great faith.  Mary, Joseph, Zechariah, Elizabeth, the shepherds, the wise men, all of them.  They all were told by God what to do, and they did it, even though they did not fully understand why.  They are wonderful examples for us.  They appeal to the good in all of us.  They give us role models.  We should all aspire to have as much faith as those people did.

            We aspire to that faith, but that does not mean we have it, or even that we can relate to it.  Herod, though, is something else.  Herod appeals to the dark side of our nature, and believe me, we all have that dark side.  We all want what we want and we all want to keep it once we get it.  We all want to keep control of our lives and keep control of the things around us.  When someone comes along and threatens all that, when someone comes along and upsets the apple cart, threatens what we have and our control of it, we don’t like that very much.  We tend to resist it.  Our response often is to do everything we can to keep things the way they are, to keep things the way we like them, and to fight against anyone or anything that changes that.

I think part of the reason Herod is in this story is to be a warning for each of us.  I ask you sometimes, when we read passages in the Bible, to try to put yourself into the story.  In the Christmas story, that means to think about what it would be like to be Mary or Joseph.  That’s a good thing to do, but it’s not really possible.  None of us can really imagine what it would be like to be involved in the virgin birth of the Son of God.  That’s something that’s so beyond our experience that we really cannot understand it.

I think it’s a lot easier to imagine ourselves as Herod.  I think it’s a lot easier for us to imagine having a fairly comfortable way of life, and then have that way of life be threatened.  I think it’s a lot easier for us to imagine having worked all our lives for something, and then hearing about someone who was going to take it all away.  I think it’s a lot easier for us to imagine how we’d react if we were Herod than it is for us to imagine how we’d react if we were Mary or Joseph.

I think Herod is there as a warning for us.  Herod is there to remind us that what’s important in life is not to accumulate power for ourselves.  What’s important in life is not to accumulate wealth.  What’s important in life is not to get our way.  What’s important in life is not to have things go the way we want them to go.  When we get that wrong, we can find ourselves fighting against things that are good.  We can find ourselves fighting against what’s right.  We can even find ourselves fighting against God.

In two weeks, it will be Christmas.  We’ll celebrate the birth of Jesus.  We’ll talk about Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds, and the wise men.  That’s fine.  But we need to talk about Herod, too.  Herod may be the villain, but there’s a little bit of Herod in each one of us, including me.  Let’s pray that God forgive us for that, and help us overcome it.  Let’s pray for God to help each one of us be someone who worships the Savior, rather than someone who fights him.

 

God Knows

The message given in the Sunday morning worship services in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on December 11, 2022.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 1:18-25, 2:13-14, 18-23.

            Angels play a really important part in the Christmas story.  We know that, but I don’t know how much we think about it.  Over the last couple of weeks we’ve talked about how the angel Gabriel spoke with Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, and then six months later spoke to Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Today, we look at the conversations an angel had with Joseph.

            We don’t know whether this angel was Gabriel or not.  Matthew just says, each time, “an angel of the Lord”.  It could’ve been Gabriel, but it might not have been.  It might not even have been the same angel each time.  We don’t know.

            Joseph hears from an angel three times.  We read all three today.  Each time, it follows pretty much the same pattern.  

First, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream.  That’s different from the times Gabriel appeared to Zechariah and Mary.  We did not hear anything about a dream in those stories.  Zechariah and Mary, as far as we know, were wide awake.  But for Joseph, the angel shows up in his sleep.

            Each time, of course, the angel gives Joseph a message.  And listen to what happens next.  The first time, we’re told, “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him.”  The second time, we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt”, which of course is what the angel had told him to do.  And the third time, we’re told, “So he got up, took the child and his mother and went to the land of Israel,” which again was what the angel told him.

            When Gabriel talked to Zechariah and Mary, they were given the chance to have a conversation.  They got to ask questions.  But not Joseph.  The way the story is told, the angel appears to Joseph in a dream, the angel tells him to do something, and Joseph wakes up and immediately does it.  No hesitation.  No questions asked.  He just does what the angel of the Lord told him to do.

            I wonder why that was.  Why did the angel not give Joseph the chance to ask questions?  Why did Joseph not get to voice any doubts or objections?  It was like what Joseph thought or felt did not matter.  He just gets his orders and does as he’s told.

            Did you ever think what would’ve happened if Joseph had not done that?  What if Joseph had said no?  I assume he could have.  What if Joseph had said, you know, I just cannot do this.  It’s too hard.  It’s too much.  I’m sorry, angel, but tell God you need to find somebody else.  I cannot do it.

            But you know, maybe that’s why Joseph was chosen.  Because God knew Joseph would not say no.  Because God knew Joseph had a faith that was strong enough to not ask questions.  Joseph had a faith that was strong enough to not raise any objections.  Did you notice, Joseph does not appear to have been afraid of the angel, the way Zechariah was and Mary was and most people are.  If an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph and told Joseph to do something, well, that was good enough for him.  He went ahead and did it.  Period.

            There’s one more thing that shows up in the description of all these angelic appearances.  Some of you probably caught it.  The first time, we’re told, “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.”  The second time, it’s, “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet.”  And the third time, “So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets.”

            Think about that.  Those prophets that Matthew refers to made their prophecies hundreds of years before Jesus was born.  That means    God knew exactly how this was all going to play out.  God had told the prophets about it all those years ago.  

God did not give them all the details, but God gave them enough so that, when these things happened, people would recognize what was going on.  People would know that Jesus was the Savior.  Some people, like the Pharisees, refused to admit it or acknowledge it, but that always happens, right?  We all tend to see what we want to see.  The Pharisees did not want to see that Jesus was the Savior, and so they did not.  But people who had their minds open and their eyes open did see it.  And they saw it because of what the prophets had said all those centuries ago.

            I have to think that God chose the key players in the Christmas story with great care.  God did not just choose Mary and Joseph, or even Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, at random.  As we said of Mary last week, God chose these people because they were people of great faith.  God chose them because they were people who would trust God.  They trusted God enough that they would agree to do things that seemed impossible.  They trusted God enough to do things they did not want to do.  They trusted God enough to do the things that were necessary for the things the prophets said to come true.

            And they did that deliberately.  After all, they knew about these Old Testament prophecies, too.  Everybody knew about them.  Mary and Joseph knew they were following a plan that had been laid out centuries before.  They did not know the details of the plan, but they knew God was behind it.  They knew that, whatever was going to happen, God was in control of it and that it would happen the way God wanted it to happen.

God has messages for all of us.  Sometimes, those messages are designed to shake us up. Quite often God asks us to start on a path without knowing exactly where that path will lead.

  That can be hard for us to do.  Most of us are fairly comfortable with our lives as they are.  We don’t want to change things, especially when we don’t know where that change might take us.  It takes a lot of faith, and a lot of trust in God, to be willing to do that.  It’s not always easy for us to have that much faith.

            Maybe it will be easier for us if we remember how all these things the angel told Joseph were to fulfill Old Testament prophecies, how God had planned all this stuff out centuries before.  Because that’s proof to us that God knows what’s going to happen in the future.  And God does not just know the future in broad strokes, either.  God knows the details.  God knew the details involved in Jesus’ story.  And God knows the details of your story and my story, too.

            Now, we still have free will.  Joseph had free will.  Joseph could’ve said no.  Joseph could’ve gone ahead and divorced Mary like he planned to.  Joseph was chosen not because he could not refuse to do what God wanted, but because God knew he would not refuse.  God knew that Joseph had enough faith that he would willingly do what God wanted.

            God knows our stories, just like He knew the Christmas story.  God has been planning our stories for a long time, just like God planned the Christmas story for a long time.  God has brought us to this point in time deliberately, and for specific reasons.  We may not know what the reasons are, but we know God has them.  

And now, God is giving each of us a message to take us to the next point in time.  God is asking us to take a step.  That’s all we get to see, that next step.  But God sees the whole path.  God knows exactly where it’s going to take us.  Just like God knew exactly what would happen with Zechariah and Elizabeth, with Joseph and Mary, and with Jesus, God knows exactly what will happen for each of us when we trust God enough to take that next step on the path God has laid out for us.

            But because we have free will, the choice is up to us.  We can be like Joseph.  We can hear God’s message, and get up, and do what God has told us to do.  We can trust God and follow that path.  Or, we can say no.  We can say, you know, I just cannot do this.  It’s too hard.  It’s too much.  I’m sorry, God, but you need to find somebody else.  I cannot do it.  

            God has a plan for each one of us.  God has a plan for you, and God has a plan for me.  God sees the whole path that’s ahead of us.  We don’t, but God does.  God knows our story, and God knows how the story will end.

            Joseph listened to God’s message.  Joseph followed God’s plan.  And the story came out just the way God had planned it.  If we listen to God’s message and follow God’s plan, our story will come out the way God has planned it, too.

            So let’s listen to God’s message.  Let’s follow God’s plan.  And let’s do it confidently, knowing that God’s plans are always best.