Christmas in June?

Christmas is over now.  During the Christmas season, though, I got to thinking about something.  How would our Christmas celebrations be different if we celebrated Christmas in the summer, rather than in the winter?

We wouldn’t have to celebrate Christmas on December 25, after all.  We don’t really think that was the day when Jesus was actually born.  It was a date that was chosen, somewhat arbitrarily.  What if a different date had been chosen?  What if, instead of celebrating Christmas right after the winter solstice, we celebrated it right after the summer solstice, say on June 25?

Well, we probably wouldn’t be dreaming of a white Christmas, would we?  Maybe we’d dream of a green Christmas.  Santa probably wouldn’t be dressed all in fur and driving a sleigh.  Maybe he’d wear Bermuda shorts and drive a dune buggy.  We probably wouldn’t use all that tinsel, either.  Maybe we wouldn’t even do lights on our houses, since it’d be about ten o’clock at night before they’d even show up.  It’d make it harder to do candlelight services, too.

On the other hand, there’d be a good side to it.  It’d be a lot easier to travel to see relatives at Christmas if it was in late June.  We wouldn’t have to worry about snowstorms or having to cancel Christmas Eve services.  We could have Christmas picnics.  Baseball teams could play Christmas doubleheaders.  There’d be all sorts of things we could do that we can’t do now if Christmas was in late June, rather than late December.

Our Christmas traditions would be a lot different if we celebrated it in June instead of December.  But there’s one thing that would not change, and that’s the essential message of Christmas.  We would still celebrate Immanuel, God with us.  We would still celebrate the fact that God took human form.  We would still celebrate the fact that Jesus lived among us, experienced the things we experience, felt the things we feel, taught us, healed us, and ultimately died so that our sins could be forgiven.  And then, the best thing of all, we would still celebrate the fact that Jesus conquered death itself, that he rose from the grave and prepared the way for all of us, so that by God’s grace and through our faith, we can all defeat death and go to be with the Lord in heaven.

And the best thing is that we don’t have to just celebrate that at Christmas.  We can celebrate it in December, in June, in October, or in April.  We can celebrate it in every month of the year, in every week of every month, and on every day of every week.  We can and should celebrate Christmas every day of our lives.

Maybe Christmas in June sounds strange, but it really doesn’t matter when or how we celebrate Christmas.  What matters is that, every day, we celebrate the salvation that was made available to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Rules of the Game

This is the message given Sunday, January 5, 2014 in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Mark 2:23--3:6.

It’s a new year, so that means it’s time to start a new sermon series.  This one is called “Road Trip!”

Jesus did a lot of traveling in his life.  Usually, he had the disciples with him, and a lot of times he had some other people with him, too.  And you know, if you’ve ever taken a trip with someone, that’s a time when you can really get to know people.  When you travel with someone, you find out all kinds of things about them that you never find out if you just spend an hour with them here or there.

The thing about a road trip is that it gives you time to talk about stuff.  Nothing in particular, necessarily.  Just stuff.  Thoughts about life.  Philosophy.  Biography.  Interests, whether shared or not.  All kinds of things.

Jesus and the disciples had a lot of conversations while they were on the road.  A lot of stuff happened to them while they were on the road.  Much of it, of course, is not recorded in the Bible, but some of it is.  And in this sermon series, we’re going to look at some of that stuff, stuff that happened to them and stuff they talked about.  

We’re going to start by talking about a couple of incidents that happened on the Sabbath.  In one of them, Jesus and the disciples started picking crops and eating them on the Sabbath.  In the other, Jesus healed a man on the Sabbath.

To the religious leaders of the time, especially the Pharisees, that sort of thing was Just Not Done.  You were not supposed to do any work on the Sabbath.  Period.  That was a law that went back to the time of Moses, when God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses.  God had said you are not to do any work on the Sabbath, not you, not your kids, not your servants, not your animals.  Nobody.  Now they did, out of practicality, have to make some exceptions.  For example, you were allowed to feed and water your animals.  You could leave your house, as long as you did not go very far.  They had all kinds of rules about what did and did not constitute work.  Some of them got kind of technical.  But everyone knew that picking crops was work, and that healing was work, and so you could not do those things on the Sabbath, because God said so.

And here was Jesus, this person who people called the Son of God, this person who had been raised in a Jewish home, this person who surely had to know better, doing those things.  And so were his disciples.  The Pharisees could not believe it.

Jesus acknowledged that they were not following the rules, but he explained it.  And here are his reasons.  First, he cites Biblical precedent.  He cites the story, found in First Samuel, of King David being allowed to take some consecrated bread, which only priests were allowed to eat.  Not only was David, who was not a priest, allowed to eat some of that consecrated bread, but so were his soldiers.  So, Jesus says, there are precedents for breaking some of these religious laws when the situation requires it.

But Jesus’ reasoning is more than just, “We had to break the Sabbath laws because we were hungry.”  That would’ve just been an excuse.  His real reason is this:  “The Sabbath was made for people, not people for the Sabbath.”

Think of the implications of that statement.  Again, we’re not just talking about any old rule here.  We’re talking about one of the Ten Commandments.  We’re talking about laws that came to Moses directly from the mouth of God.

What Jesus said about the law about not working on the Sabbath, and by implication what Jesus is saying about all of the other Ten Commandments, is, look, God did not give you these laws to make your lives harder.  God gave them to you to make your lives easier.  God did not intend these laws to make your lives miserable.  God intended them to make your lives better.  God did not give you the Ten Commandments to create burdens for you.  God gave them to you to ease your burdens.

And that’s demonstrated further when Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath.  Jesus says to the Pharisees, look, the way you’re interpreting these rules is making life hard for people.  You’re telling me that I cannot heal this man because it’s the Sabbath.  Does that really make sense to you?  Do you really think God wants this man to continue to suffer, even if it’s just for one more day?  Would God really rather I walked away and let this guy continue to live in pain and misery rather than help him, just because it’s the Sabbath?

We read that, or hear it, and of course it makes perfect sense to us.  We wonder why in the world the Pharisees could not see it, when it seems so obvious.  And yet…

You know, the Pharisees were not trying to be evil or bad or anything.  They were trying to get it right, just as much as anyone else.  They just had fallen into a trap, and it’s a trap that it’s really easy for us to fall into, too.

What God had done in the Ten Commandments, and in a lot of the other Old Testament laws God gave the people of Israel, is lay down some basic principles for living.  And they’re really good principles.  All of us, including me, would be a lot better off if we lived the way God told us to live.  

But what the Pharisees did was turn those basic prinicples into a bunch of inflexible rules.  Do this.  Don’t do that.  Doing this is right, doing that is wrong.  If you do this, you’ll go to heaven.  If you do that, you’ll go to hell.  The Rules are The Rules.  Period.  No exceptions.

The thing is, as human beings, we like rules.  That’s why we make so many of them.  Rules make things simple.  If we have a rule, we don’t have to take circumstances into account.  If we have a rule, we don’t have to use our judgment all the time.  We just find out what the rule is and follow it.  It saves a lot of time and effort to just have rules.

But what Jesus is telling us is that God does not look at it that way.  And we should not look at it that way, either.  Because if we do, the rules can get in our way.  They can get in the way of doing good.  They can get in the way of following God.  They can get in the way of loving people the way Jesus told us to.

Now don’t get me wrong here.  I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as sin.  There is.  I’m also not saying we should just casually ignore all of God’s principles and do anything we want to do. Jesus did not say any of those things, either.  Jesus did not tell the Pharisees, “throw out all your rules and do anything you please.”  As I said, God’s principles for living are really good principles, and all of us, including me, would be better off if we lived the way God told us to live.

But what Jesus was saying is that a slavish adherence to rules can get in our way, just like it got in the Pharisees’ way.  As I said, the Pharisees were trying to get it right.  They thought that, by slavishly following the rules, they were doing what God wanted them to do.  They could not see that, sometimes, their strict adherence to the rules was keeping them from loving people and helping people.  They could not see that, sometimes, following the rules to the letter could lead them to do the exact opposite of what God wanted them to do.

As we start a new year, it’s something for us to think about.  Because all of us have rules, whether we realize it or not.  We have rules for what we do when we get up in the morning.  We have rules for how we spend our days.  We have rules for how we do our jobs.  We have rules for how we live our lives.  We have rules for how we treat people.  We have rules for who we like and who we don’t like.  We have rules for who we care about and who we ignore.  And we have rules for what’s right and what’s wrong, who’s good and who’s bad.  A lot of the time, we may not even have realized that we made these rules, much less that we’re living by them.  But we have, and we are.

The rules we have are not necessarily bad or wrong.  Sometimes they may be exactly the same as the principles God laid out for us.  But we need to take a look at them.  We need to know what rules we have.  And we need to make sure our adherence to those rules is not getting in the way of serving God and loving the people God created.  We need to make sure we have not fallen into the trap the Pharisees did, where following the rules was leading them to do the exact opposite of what God wanted them to do.

As we start a new year, let’s take a look at our rules.  Let’s understand where they came from and why we have them.  And let’s understand that, even if they’re good rules, we still need to make sure they’re not getting in the way of what Jesus said are the two most important rules:  to love God and to love other people.  Ultimately, that’s the standard by which every rule we have needs to be measured.

It Don't Come Easy

This is the message given at Oahe Manor Sunday, December 29, 2013.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23.

We’ve been celebrating Christmas, and when we do that in the church we always talk about the birth of Jesus, with Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus and the shepherds and the wise men.  For us, a lot of times, that’s where the story ends.  But for Mary and Joseph and Jesus, the story did not end there at all.  The story was just beginning.  And what we just read tells us the next chapter of that story, with Mary and Joseph taking Jesus and going to Egypt, literally running for their lives.

And every time I read this story, I’m struck by how matter-of-factly Matthew tells it.  An angel appears to Joseph and tells him to take Jesus and Mary and escape to Egypt to get away from King Herod.  Joseph does it.  Then, after a while, we’re not told how long, maybe up to three years, the angel appears to Joseph again and tells them that King Herod is dead and they can come back.  And they do.  No big deal.

No big deal if you’re just reading the story, anyway.  If you actually had to live the story, the way Joseph and Mary and Jesus had to do, it was a pretty big deal.  Think about it.  They were in Bethlehem.  They’d gone there thinking they’d be gone a few days, maybe a week.  That was all they’d packed for.  They’d left everything else--their home, their furniture, their animals, Joseph’s carpentry tools, anything else they might have had--they’d left all that at home, just like you or I would.

Now, they’re being told they cannot go back and get it.  They have to go now.  Immediately.  They cannot even wait until morning.  They quickly pack up everything they can, get Jesus situated, and take off, in the middle of the night, headed for Egypt.  Depending on where they went in Egypt, they traveled about three hundred to three hundred fifty miles.  On foot.  Maybe they had a donkey for Mary and Jesus to ride, or maybe they did not, but Joseph certainly walked it, and Mary may have.  Three hundred miles or more, on foot, carrying a baby.  And always keeping an eye out for Herod’s soldiers, who they’ve been told are looking for them to kill their son.

And after they got to Egypt, what?  We don’t know if they could even speak the language.  Whatever money and provisions they had were almost certainly used up on the trip.  They had no place to stay.  They had nothing to buy or rent a place with.  Maybe they found someone they could stay with, or maybe they stayed in a cave or something.  Maybe they simply slept out in the open.

Somehow they survived in Egypt.  Maybe Joseph was able to use his carpentry skills to find work.  After all, it seems like someone who can work with their hands is always in demand.  Maybe Mary was able to do something to bring in a little money.  We don’t know what they did.  But somehow, they survived.  And then, they were told it was time to leave Egypt and head to Nazareth.

At least this time they were able to pack.  But again, they probably walked the whole distance.  And to go to Nazareth was even farther, about four hundred miles.  And this time, they had a toddler.  Jesus might’ve been old enough to walk on his own part of the way, but I’ll bet they had to carry him a lot of the way, too.  And he’d have been a lot heavier at age two or so than he was when he was a baby.  Again, it’s possible that they might’ve had a donkey, but we don’t know that.  It was a long and hard trip.

The point is that God did not make Joseph and Mary’s lives easy in the first few years of Jesus’ life.  You would think that if God was going to make life easy for anybody, it would be for the earthly parents of the divine Son, Jesus Christ.  But that was not what happened.  God protected them.  God made sure they survived.  But it was never easy for them.  In fact, most of the time, it was really hard.  We should not let the matter-of-fact way Matthew summarizes those first years of Jesus’ life keep us from realizing how very hard it was for them.

And a lot of times, that’s how it is for you and me, too.  There are a lot of times when God does not make our lives easy.  Sometimes God does.  I’ve had a lot of good things happen to me over the course of my life.  But a lot of times, God does not.  God will help us.  God will help us survive.  But God often does not make it easy for us.  In fact, a lot of the time, it can be really hard.

But through all their hardships, Joseph and Mary kept trusting God.  We’re not told about their reaction to the things the angel said.  Maybe they were upset, maybe they were disappointed, maybe they were scared, maybe all that and more.  We don’t know how they felt.  The Bible does not say.

But we do know what they did.  They did what the angel said.  They obeyed God.  They trusted God.  They had no idea what they’d find in Egypt.  They had no idea how long they’d be there--after all, they did not know how long King Herod would live.  They had no idea what they’d find in Nazareth, either--after all, they’d been gone for years.  But every step of the way, they did what they were told.  They trusted that God would protect them and take care of them.  And of course, God did exactly that.

And God will do that for us, too.  There are times when we have no idea what will happen if we do what God wants us to do.  But if we can trust that God will take care of us, God will do exactly that.  It won’t always be easy.  But in the end, things will work out for us, just as they did for Joseph and Mary.

Making It Work

Below is the message given in the Wheatland Parish on Sunday, December 29, 2013.  The Bible verses are Matthew 2:13-15.

            On Christmas Eve, we talked about how a lot of times, we’d like to just leave the Christmas story where our Nativity scenes leave it, with the baby Jesus in the manger with Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and the wise men.  The thing is that the people who were actually involved in the story, including Jesus and Mary and Joseph, did not have the option of leaving the story there.  They had to go on living their lives.  And today we heard what came next for them.  They had to leave their native country and escape to Egypt, so King Herod would not kill Jesus.

            In telling us about this, Matthew does not seem to make a big deal out of it.  He tells us that an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream to tell him to take his family to Egypt, and so they went.  A little later, in verses we did not read, we’re told that after Herod died the angel appeared one more time and said it was safe for them to go back to Israel.  And we’re told that all this happened to fulfill the words of the prophet Hosea, who said, “Out of Egypt I have called my son.”

            That’s all well and good, but it kind of minimizes the reality of it, don’t you think?  I mean, imagine you’re Joseph or Mary.  You’re already a long way from home in Bethlehem.  Now, you’re told you cannot go back home.  You have to go to a foreign country.  You have nothing but whatever you brought with you when you came to Bethlehem.  You have no idea whether you’ll be welcome there.  You don’t even know how many people will speak your language.  But like parents today, you’d do almost anything to protect your baby.  So, if that means you have to go to Egypt, then you go to Egypt.  And you hope to figure out what you’ll do when you get there.

            But the thing is, you don’t really get to know why.  I mean, yes, we’re told this is to fulfill the words of the prophet, but that’s an explanation that really does not explain.  The prophecy was the word of God, spoken through Hosea, but there was nothing that said God had to tell Hosea that the son would be called out of Egypt.  God could’ve said “the son will be called out of Bethlehem.”  God could’ve said “the son will be called out of Nazareth”.  We assume God had a reason for telling Hosea “Egypt”, but we have no idea what that reason was.  And neither did Joseph or Mary.  All they could do was trust that, if God was behind it, then God must know what God was doing and that there was a reason for it.  Maybe some day they’d find out what it was, or maybe they never would.  But for now, all they could do was to do what God was telling them to do, go where God was leading them to go, and trust that it would all work out somehow.

            And it seems to me that this is how it works for us in our lives, too.  We don’t have an angel come and tell us what to do, of course.  And our lives are not lived to fulfill the words of any Old Testament prophets.  But even so, I think it happens this way for us an awful lot of the time.  Things happen, and we have no idea why they’ve happened.  Sometimes they seem to happen for the good.  Sometimes they seem to happen for the bad.  But either way, they happen.  And maybe there’s a reason for it, but we don’t know what that reason is.  All we can do is trust that, if God is behind it, then God know must know what God is doing and that there must be a reason for it.  Maybe some day we’ll find out what that reason is, or maybe we never will.  But for now, all we can do is to do what God is telling us to do, go where God is leading us to go, and trust that it will all work out somehow.

            And that’s really hard to do.  I’m sure it was hard for Mary and Joseph to do, too.  Even with the angel saying what it did, there must have been a part of them that said, “You know, maybe we could just go back to Nazareth and hide out for a while.  Nobody’d have to know we were there.  If any Roman soldiers came, we could always just hide Jesus somewhere.  We have lots of friends there.  We know lots of hiding places.  They’d never find us.  It’d be okay.  It’d sure be a lot easier than going to Egypt.”  They had to be tempted to take what must’ve seemed to them to be the easy way out.

            And we’re tempted to do that, too.  We can tell that God is leading us in a certain direction, but we don’t really want to go in that direction, just as I’m sure Mary and Joseph really did not want to go to Egypt.  And we’re tempted to think, “You know, maybe we could just go in this other direction instead.  It’d probably be all right.  It’d be a lot more comfortable.  It’d be a lot more familiar.  It’d be okay.  It’d sure be a lot easier than going in the direction God seems to want us to go.”  And sometimes we do just that.

            Could Mary and Joseph have chosen to stay in Bethlehem, or to go back to Nazareth, rather than going to Egypt?  Well, yeah, I suppose they could have.  I mean, they had free will, just like we do.  But God did not choose Joseph and Mary by accident.  God chose them precisely because God knew they had it in them to do what God had told them to do.  Not because they had no choice, but because they had faith.  God knew they had enough faith in God to go where God told them to go, even if it was to a foreign country, and trust that God would make it all work out for the best.

            And God does not choose you and me by accident, either.  God chooses us because God knows we have it in us to do what God tells us to do.  God gives us the choice, but God asks us to have faith.  God asks us to have enough faith in God to go where God tells us to go, and to do what God tells us to do, and to trust that God will make it all work out for the best.

            God knows we’d like to know why, but most of the time, God does not tell us.  Not only does God usually not tell us why, God usually does not tell us why God is not telling us why.  Maybe it’s because we would not understand it anyway, because God’s purposes can be so far beyond our understanding.  Maybe it’s because if we knew why, we would not have the courage to obey.  Maybe it’s because if we knew why, we’d start arguing about it with God.  I don’t know why we don’t get to know why.  But most of the time we don’t, and even if we do, it’s usually a long time after the fact, when we can look back and see the reasons for what happened.  At the time, all we can do is what Joseph and Mary did:  go where God is leading us to go, do what God is leading us to do, and trust God that it will all work out.

            It cannot have been easy for Joseph and Mary in Egypt.  We’re not told anything about their life there, but we know they went there with very little, and without any real plan for what they were going to do when they got there.  But with God’s help, they figured it out.  We assume Joseph must have used his skills as a carpenter to provide for the family.  Maybe he got a job, maybe he went into business for himself.  Somehow, they made it.  They did what they had to do.  And God saw them through all their hard times.  They made it through, and things did work out for them.

            It’s not easy for us sometimes, either.  Sometimes we don’t have any real plan for what we’re going to do.  But with God’s help, we figure it out.  Somehow, we make it.  We do what we have to do.  God will see us through all our hard times.  We’ll make it through, and things will work out for us.

           We’d like to leave the story of Christmas with the baby Jesus in the safety of the manger.  And we’d like to leave our lives in places where we’re safe, too.  But we don’t have that option, any more than Joseph and Mary and Jesus did.  We have to go on with our lives, just as they did.  But if we can trust God the way they did, if we can go where God is leading us to do and do what God is leading us to do and trust God, God will see us through.  We won’t always be safe.  But we can trust that somehow, God will make things work out for us.

The Best Christmas Ever

This is the Christmas Eve message given in the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 2:13-18.

            That last scripture we read is one that gets left out a lot when we tell the Christmas story.  We like to leave the story with the baby lying in the manger surrounded by shepherds.  Maybe we include the wise men, too.  That’s kind of a neat story, after all, the way they followed the star to the manger and gave Jesus gifts.  And then we kind of like the part about how they tricked mean old Herod, too, and went home another way so they would not have to tell Herod where Jesus was.

            But that’s about as far as we want to go with the story.  We don’t want to go on and hear about how Mary and Joseph had to go on the run for their lives, and Jesus’ life too, of course.  We don’t want to hear about how they had to go live in Egypt to escape Herod.  And we certainly don’t want to hear the part about all those male babies and toddlers, up to two years old, being killed in Herod’s attempt to kill the one baby who was to become the king and savior of the world.

            And quite honestly, I don’t like to hear about it, either.  I mean, it’s one thing to read those words, but it’s another thing entirely to actually think about the reality of it.  Some of you have children, or grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, who are two years old or younger.  Think about what that would be like.  You’re at home one day, minding your own business, and there’s a knock on the door.  You answer it, and there are soldiers standing there.  They walk into the house and start searching for little boys.  They probably don’t even tell you why.  They find your son, or your grandson, or your great-grandson.  And they kill him.  And then they leave and go on to the next house.  No explanation.  No expression of regret.  No nothing.

            You’re stunned.  You cannot believe what just happened.  Then the reality of it hits you.  And you mourn.  And you grieve.  And most of all, you ask “Why?”  Why did this happen?  Why would anyone do this?

            That’s not the message we want to hear at Christmas.  And again, I don’t want to hear it, either.  We want to hear the warm, sentimental story about the baby being born in the manger.  We don’t want to think about what came next.

            Now, there’s nothing wrong with feeling warm and sentimental at Christmas.  But the thing is, Jesus did not come to earth to give us a warm, sentimental story.  Jesus came to earth to change us.  Each and every one of us.

            And throughout Jesus’ life, everyone who came in to contact with Jesus was changed.  That’s certainly true of everyone in the Christmas story.  Mary and Joseph’s lives were changed forever.  The shepherds who saw the angel and came to worship the baby had their lives changed.  The wise men, too, who traveled so far to worship the baby and give him gifts, had their lives changed.  I suspect even the innkeeper had his life changed when he found out what had happened and heard about these shepherds coming and about an angel and all that.

            And that’s still true today.  Everyone who comes into contact with Jesus has his or her life changed in some way.  We cannot help it.  If we come to believe in Jesus, and if we take that belief seriously, and if we decide to follow Jesus to the best of our ability, then obviously that is going to change our lives. 

Even if we don’t, though, even if we say we believe in Jesus but just kind of compartmentalize our belief and think we’re not going to let it change our lives, it will.  It’ll be that nagging voice in the back of our minds that says we’re not who we should be.  It’ll be that feeling that something’s not quite right about our lives, that even if things are going okay, they’re not going as well as they could be.  We can try to ignore that voice, we can try to ignore that feeling, but it’s still there.  It keeps after us.  We can decide not to listen to it, but it never goes away.  And it affects us.  It changes us, whether we realize it or not.

Even people who don’t come to believe in Jesus at all, if they’ve truly come into contact with him, will have their lives changed in some way.  They’ll look at Christians a little differently.  They’ll look at life a little differently.  If we, as Christians, truly live our Christian faith, so that when people who don’t believe come into contact with us, they can see it, that will affect them in some way.  Maybe, at some point, they’ll want to learn more about our faith.  Maybe they won’t.  But they’ll still be changed, they’ll still be affected in some way by having come into contact with Jesus Christ.

Now, again, the change Jesus makes in us may not be a warm, sentimental, happy one.  Sometimes, as we heard in our last reading, coming into contact with Jesus can cause sorrow and grief and pain.  Not because that’s what Jesus wants, but because of the way some people react to him.  We’re never promised that coming into contact with Jesus would make our lives easy and carefree.  Ask the people who right now are being persecuted for their faith if coming into contact with Jesus has made their lives easy.

Jesus did not come just to give us a warm, sentimental story.  Jesus came to change us.  And the only way we can truly celebrate Christmas is to open our hearts and open our souls.  The only way we can truly celebrate Christmas is to allow the Holy Spirit to come into our lives.  If we do that, we will be changed.  And if we allow Jesus to truly change us, we will have the happiest and most blessed Christmas ever.

Not the Savior We're Looking For

This is the message given Sunday, December 22, 2013 in the United Methodist Churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Isaiah 9:2-7.

            So in our December messages we’ve been talking about all these Old Testament prophecies about the coming of Jesus.  We talked about how the Savior was going to be born of a virgin, we talked about how he would be born in Bethlehem, and we talked about how he would be a descendant of King David.  And, of course, we talked about how each one of those prophecies came true.

            But if we think about it, none of those prophecies, in and of themselves, is all that important.  I mean, yes, it was helpful to know where the Savior would be born, and it was important to people that he be a descendant of King David, the greatest king ever.  And this deal about the virgin birth, well, that was certainly cool.  That’d be a pretty sure sign that God had to be involved here.

            But the thing about all that is that all of it, even added together, only tells us so much.  It tells us that someone is going to be born, and that it’s going to be someone special.  But none of it tells us anything about the person himself.  Who is this Savior going to be?  What’s this Savior going to do?  Well, save us, I suppose, that’s why he’s called a savior, but how?  How are we going to be saved?  What does it even mean to say we’re going to be saved?  Saved from what?

            And so today, that’s what we’re going to talk about.  We’re going to talk about the prophecy of how the Savior actually is the Savior.

Our reading from Isaiah today tells us.  The Savior is going to lead us out of the darkness and into the light.  The Savior is going to take away our burdens, shatter them.  The Savior will govern over everyone and bring peace.  And there will be no end to his governing or to the peace he’s going to bring.  He will reign with justice and righteousness forever.

            And the people heard of Israel heard that, and no one had a clue what it really meant.  You cannot blame them, really.  After all, the only frame of reference they had for interpreting this was human rulers and human governments.  They heard about a person who was going to reign on David’s throne, a person who would govern and bring justice and peace, and they naturally assumed this was someone who was going to take over on earth.  They assumed this would be an earthly king who would take over, wipe out the bad guys, put Israel back in control of the Promised Land, and make everything the way it should be on earth.

            But there’s more to that assumption than a mistake because of their frame of reference.  An earthly Savior was not just the kind of Savior they expected, it was the kind of Savior they wanted.  And again, it’s hard to blame them.  We talked last week about how all these prophecies of Jesus came when the Nation of Israel was in trouble, about to be taken over by a foreign country or to be sent into exile or something.  When you’re in that kind of trouble, what do you want?  What do you look for?  You look for some kind of a leader who can save you, someone who can take care of you.  You look for someone who can defeat the enemy, put things right, and solve all your problems, someone who will usher in a new Golden Age of prosperity and peace and justice.  That’s what the people of Israel wanted the Savior to be.

            And sometimes, that’s still what we want the Savior to be.  We look at our Nation, and it seems like it’s in trouble, too.  I don’t mean this as a partisan political statement.  I have lots of friends on both the left and the right, and it seems like the one thing they all agree on is that the nation is in trouble.  They may disagree about what the trouble is or what the solutions are, but they all agree that we’re in trouble.

            And a lot of times, what we really want is a Savior to come along and take care of the trouble.  We want a Savior, either from the left or from the right, who will come along and defeat the enemy, whoever we think the enemy happens to be.  We want someone who can make everything right, someone who can solve all the problems and user in a new Golden Age of prosperity and peace and justice for our country.  Sometimes that’s who we want our Savior to be, too.

            But that’s not who the Savior is.  At least not now.  The Bible tells us that Jesus is going to come again, and at that point there will be a day of judgment.  There will, eventually, be the coming of the new earth and the new Jerusalem and everything will be as it should be.  The Savior will do that, someday.  But not now.  For right now, that’s not who the Savior is.

            When Jesus came, he was not who the people of Israel assumed he would be.  And he was not who the people of Israel wanted him to be.  And so, when he came, a lot of the people of Israel missed it.  They looked somewhere else for the Savior, not even noticing that the Savior they had been looking for all these centuries was right there with them.  That’s a really sad thing, when you think about it.

            But you know, even the people who were there with Jesus, and recognized him as the Savior, missed it in a way, too.  Because even though they believed in Jesus as the Savior, they still were trying to make Jesus into the Savior they wanted him to be, rather than the Savior he was.  They kept trying to make him fight, to make him take power.  James and John asked Jesus to seat them at his right and left when he took control.  When Jesus told his disciples that he was about to be arrested, the disciples looked around for swords to fight back with.  Some people think one of the reasons Judas betrayed Jesus was to try to force Jesus to use his power to defeat their enemies and take power on earth.  They kept trying to make Jesus into the Savior they wanted him to be, rather than the Savior he came to be, the Savior he was.

            And we still, too often, try to make Jesus into the Savior we want him to be, rather than the Savior he came to be.  We want Jesus to take power on earth, to make everything the way we think it’s supposed to be.  But that’s not who Jesus is.  That’s who Satan wanted him to be.  Remember, that was the biggest temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness, the temptation to take power on earth.  And Jesus refused.

Jesus could’ve taken power that way.  Jesus could’ve raised an army, taken power, and ruled on earth.  Or, really, Jesus would not have needed to raise an army.  He probably could’ve just commanded and everyone would’ve had no choice but to obey.  But if he had done that, Jesus would’ve taken power by brute force.  And that’s not the kind of Savior Jesus is.

            I think one of reasons why that’s not the kind of Savior Jesus is, is that the most important thing to Jesus is love.  Jesus came to earth and lived among us out of love.  Jesus said the most important commandments are to love God and love others.  Jesus died for the forgiveness out of sins.  Jesus is a Savior of love.

            And brute force cannot result in love.  It can result in fear.  It can result in obedience.  But it cannot result in love.  In fact, it results in the exact opposite.  We cannot love someone we fear.  And when we’re forced to do things against our will and without choice, we usually will come to resent whoever it is that’s forcing us to do it.  And the first chance we get, we rebel.  Brute force can require obedience, but it cannot result in love.

            Jesus is the Prince of Peace.  That’s what Isaiah called him, and that’s what he was and what he is.  And brute force cannot result in peace.  Only love can. 

So that’s how Jesus takes power—through love.  Jesus takes power through loving us.  Jesus takes power by loving us so much that he died so our sins would be forgiven.  And Jesus takes power when we open our hearts to him.  Jesus takes power when the Holy Spirit fills our hearts.  Jesus takes power when we feel his love and return his love and share his love with others.

The Savior who came was not the Savior the people of Israel wanted.  And sometimes he’s not the Savior we want, either.  He’s better.  He’s not a Savior through the power of force.  He’s a Savior through the power of love.  And there will never be anything stronger than the power of love.

A New Hope

This is the message given in the Wheatland Parish Sunday, December 15, 2013.  The Bible verses are Jeremiah 23:1-8 and Matthew 2:1-7.

            As you know, I’ve moved around some in my life.  I’ve never lived outside of South Dakota, but I grew up in Delmont, went to school in Vermillion for seven years, lived in Pierre for six and a half years, lived in Wessington Springs for almost seventeen years, moved to North Sioux City for three years, and now have been here for about two and a half years.

            That experience is not all that unusual any more.  Lots of people move a few times in their lives.  Depending on whose figures you rely on, the average person moves anywhere from nine to sixteen times in their lives.

            But there are some people who don’t move at all.  Some people, including some of you, have lived pretty much on the same place their entire lives.  In fact, some people live in the same house all their lives.  When you do that, it has to make you feel a real connection to your past.  You must feel connected both to that certain place and to those people who’ve gone before you.

            We talked a little about the connection to a place last week, when we talked about the Savior being born in Bethlehem.  But today, we’re going to talk about the connection to the people who’ve gone before.  As we continue to look at the Old Testament prophecies about the Savior, today we’re going to look at the prophecy that the Savior would be a descendant of King David.

            The book of Jeremiah, to the best of our knowledge, was written around six hundred B. C.  In other words, it was written six hundred years before the birth of Jesus.  You may have noticed that we’re moving forward about a hundred years at a time with these prophecies.  Our reading from Isaiah, two weeks ago, was written in about eight hundred B. C., our reading from Micah last week was written in about seven hundred B. C., and today’s reading was written in about six hundred B. C. 

We are getting closer to the birth of the Savior, although obviously six hundred years is still a long time away.  And as we get closer to the birth of the Savior, the prophets are giving people more information about him.  First we learned that he would be born from a virgin.  Then we learned that he would be born in Bethlehem.  Now, we learn that the Savior will be a descendant of King David.

And you’ve probably noticed something else.  At each of the times that one of these prophecies is made, the nation of Israel is in trouble.  At the time of our reading from Isaiah, they were under threat from two armies who wanted to invade.  At the time of our reading from Micah, they were essentially in control of Assyria.  At the time of today’s reading, Israel is in even more trouble.  It is about to be taken over by Babylon and the people are going to be sent into exile, away from their home.

Think what that would be like.  To be forced away from your home.  To know that you could never go back.  I mean, yes, I’ve moved several times, but I’ve never moved that far away, and I’ve always know I could go back any time I wanted to. 

Think what it would be like to be forcibly taken to a foreign country.  Especially, those of you who’ve lived in this area all your lives, think what that would be like, to have somebody come and force you to go live in a completely different place, where nothing is going to be familiar to you.  And to know that, once you leave, you’re never going to be able to go back.  It must have been an incredibly hopeless feeling.

It’s at times like these, when things feel hopeless, that we need to find something, anything, to give us hope.  And so God, speaking through the prophets, gave the people hope.  God said yes, things look bad right now.  And sometimes, God said, you know what, things are going to get worse.  But God also said that things were not going to be that way forever.  God said that God had not abandoned them.  God said that someday, at the right time, a Savior would come.  God gave that message to the people of Israel.

And what better way to give the people that hope than to tell them that the Savior, the King, would be a descendant of King David?  After all, David had been the greatest king of all.  And God had promised David that David’s line would never die out, that David’s descendants would rule forever.  And everyone knew that.  And now, with the people about to be sent into exile, it looked like God’s promise had failed.

But it had not.  God, speaking through Jeremiah, told the people that God’s promise would be fulfilled.  David’s line had not died out.  David’s descendants would rule forever.  A King, a Savior, was going to come, and it would be someone who was a descendant of King David.  God would be faithful to God’s promises.

That’s why the gospels go to such lengths to go through Jesus’ genealogy and show that Jesus was, in fact, a descendant of David.  Both the first chapter of Matthew and the third chapter of Luke go through a lengthy list of Jesus’ ancestors.  The list in Matthew starts from Abraham and goes forward all the way to Joseph and then Jesus.  Luke goes backward, starting with Jesus, going back through Joseph, and then going back all the way to Adam.  The gospel writers wanted to make sure everyone knew that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s promises.  They wanted to make sure everyone knew that Jesus was the Son of God.

When things seemed hopeless, God gave the people a message of hope.  And that’s what God still does.  When things seem hopeless in our lives, God gives us a message of hope, too.

It’s important for us to understand that.  Because it seems like it can be really easy for us to lose hope sometimes.  We humans, after all, can be pretty impatient people.  We want what we want when we want it.  We tend to think we deserve to get what we want when we want it.  When we don’t get it, we can get upset.  We can get discouraged.  And sometimes, we can lose hope.

And that’s especially true when we what we want seems, as far as we can tell, to be a good thing.  I mean, it would be one thing if what I wanted was ten million dollars and I was upset when God would not give it to me.  But sometimes, what we want is something simpler than that.  Sometimes, what we want is just to have enough money to buy food and pay the rent.  Sometimes, what we want is just to have a broken relationship with a loved one be repaired.  Sometimes, what we want is to not feel sick any more.  And when we pray for those things, and God does not seem to answer, it’s really easy for us to get discouraged.  It’s really easy for us to lose hope.  Because we cannot understand why a good, loving God would not give us these things.

In Isaiah’s time, in Micah’s time, in Jeremiah’s time, the people of Israel could not understand why God was making them go through what they had to go through.  And you know what?  God did not tell them why.  God, speaking through the prophets, did not tell the people why they were having to go through this.  What God said was that it’s not going to be this way forever. 

What God said was that God had not abandoned them.  God said that, eventually, things are going to change.  You’re going to have to go through some hard times first.  Things are going to be bad for a while.  And after that, things may get even worse for a while.  But eventually, things are going to change.  Things are going to get better.  Keep your faith.  Trust me.  Don’t lose hope.  I am going to send a Messiah to you.  He is going to be born of a virgin, he is going to be born in Bethlehem, and he’s going to be a descendant of David.  And he’s going to save you.

And when we don’t understand why God is making us go through what we have to go through, when we start to lose hope, that’s what God tells us.  God knows when we’re going through hard times.  And God tells us that God has not abandoned us.  God says that, yes, things are going to be bad for a while.  And in fact, things may even get worse for a while.  But eventually, things are going to change.  Things are going to get better.  God tells us to keep our faith.  God tells us to trust God.  And God tells us not to lose hope.

The reason we celebrate at Christmas is that this is when God’s promise came true.  God did send a Messiah.  He was born of a virgin.  He was born in Bethlehem.  He was a descendant of David.  And he did save the people of Israel.

So if you’re going through a hard time right now, know that God sees it.  Know that God understands it.  And know that God has not abandoned you.  Things are going to get better.  Keep your faith.  Trust God.  Don’t lose hope.  Jesus saved the people of Israel.  And Jesus will save us, too.